Does anyone RSVP anymore?

RSVP

Those four little letters that appear on most invitations.

RSVP  short for the French:  Répondez, s'il vous plaît.

In other words, "Are you coming to the event or not?  Let us know."

Responding to invitations has been around a long time.  I won't go into all the background on why we use RSVP, how it started, etc.  Let's just say that responding to an invitations is not a new thing.  Someone invites you over for dinner, you respond:  "Yes, I will be there." or "No.  I'm sorry, I won't be able to make it on Friday."

I have sent invitations out for various occasions over the years.  Some people respond promptly.   Some wait until the day before the event.  And, then there are those that don't respond at all. 

When you are planning a party, you need to know how many people will be attending.  If you are going out and buying food and drinks, you want to make sure that you have enough for everyone.  And, such is the case here, when you are planning goody bags for children at a birthday party, you want to make sure that every guest receives one.  No one wants to send one child home without a goody bag while all of the others are leaving with one in their hands.

If you receive an invitation, you should reply.  I also have read that you should reply promptly.  As in, as soon as you get the invitation.  Look over your schedule right away and find out if you can attend the event then call the host or hostess.  This person was so kind to invite you to their event.  They are trying to make plans to make it extra special for everyone.  Pick up the phone and call them.

I guess you can call this my public service announcement for the day.

Thanks for listening.

My Halloween Post

Hi!  Happy Halloween!

I'm posting this a little early. 

Here are some fun Halloween highlights.

Our church does a 500lb pumpkin drop every year.  If Alex heard me he would say, "Actually it was 466 lbs."  They do this in the church parking lot.  It was done for fun the first year and by popular demand has been brought back every year. 

they had to use a crane to raise the pumpkin high enough

The pumpkin is dropped into a small kiddie pool filled with water

and makes a HUGE MESS SPLASH *

Pumpkin chunks and seeds fly everywhere

The kids then rush in to grab a piece of the pumpkin to take home

Thankfully Bella just grabbed one of the rubber pumpkins in the kiddie pool

not sure what we would have done with a huge chunk of pumpkin

*it makes a huge mess, too..glad I don't have to clean it up!

Pumpkin drop

That's the action shot

If I ever get RT's video, I'll post it.  It's pretty cool

There was some Trick or Treating, too

my little witch

 

Ron's Garbage Co.

thought this one was cute

Then some pumpkins got carved

hoping they don't fall off the top of our deck

intense pumpkin carving...

 

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin paper mask

I thought I would share a halloween craft that we did with our brownie troop.  This is a quick, easy craft that proved to be quite fun with the girls.

Supplies needed:
 

Orange construction paper

Pencil

Scissors

Hole punch

Yarn 

Like I said, this craft is very easy. 

Draw a pumpkin on your piece of orange construction paper.  It doesn't have to be perfect.  Not all pumpkins are the perfect pumpkin.  :)

Cut your pumpkin out.  Draw a face on your pumpkin and cut the eyes (nose?) and mouth out.punch a hole on either side of the face.  Take a piece of yarn and attach to one side (tie in a knot).  Place the mask over your face, yarn going around the back of your head, and attach to the other side of the mask.

 

 

Then you can go and scare your dog.

BOO!

Fundraisers

The kid's schools are always doing fundraisers.

Order your school supplies and the school makes some money (yea, don't get me started on this one. I wrote a little about this subject here). Benefit nights: order food from a  specified restaurant and the school gets a percentage of the total dollar amount.  Overpriced wrapping paper.  Market Day.  Book sales. Ice cream social (one of the biggest fundraisers our school does). Yearbook. Oh, yea. They make money on the year book. Can you believe that?  

 

I could go on and on.  Everything the school does is to make money.  It's not like they need all of this money.  We do pay an arm and a leg through taxes to send our children to these schools (our public schools are decent, I have no reason to complain about the education they are providing my children).  There are a number of people who live in the area that (pay the taxes) and then send their children to private schools (almost like paying double for your child's education). And then there are the empty nesters who pay taxes and don't have kids in school (we are surrounded by them).  So, there should be a little extra cash floating around for the schools to use. 

Today I just received a flyer for yet another fundraiser. This one has a tiny copy of Bella's artwork. It's so small, you can barely see it. The idea is that I can order items and have this artwork imprinted onto them.  My problem?  Besides the overpricing of the items?  It doesn't look like any of the artwork that Bella has ever done!  Bella told me that the teacher had them draw a picture of an alien. (An alien?) I guess I can see some people good at drawing an alien, but, Bella?  Drawing an alien?  Yea. I hate to say it but it looked awful. Bella agreed. She said it was the first time she drew an alien. She didn't want to draw one, but that was the assignment. 

The sad thing is the teachers keep bringing up that the kids have to get their orders in. I don't like that the teachers are giving the kids this big push just so they can make money for the school.

I'm thinking this whole fundraising is getting a little out of hand.  I think I would prefer to be asked if I can just donate some money when needed.  Or how about giving us a break and limit it to a couple fundraisers a year?  

What do your schools do for fundraising? 

Bella's wish list

It's a good thing Bella put the little "TM" (trademark) after those wish list items. We don't want to be sued. 

Scary Journey's Black Pom Pom Spider Craft

Back again with another easy Halloween craft.  This time we are making a black spider.

I found this craft on Enchantedlearning.com.  Click here to view the tutorial.  They have some great craft ideas.  Check out the rest of their website!

Let's get started:

Supplies Needed:

Black yarn
cardboard
scissors
4 pipe cleaners
google eyes
glue

These directions are taken right from Enchanted Learning's website. I did edit them a little with some changes that I made when making my spider.

Cut a piece of yarn about 2 feet long; put it aside for later. Cut a piece of scrap cardboard about 3 inches long and 2 inches wide.

Wrap about a yard or two of yarn around the rectangular piece of cardboard (don't wrap the yarn too tightly or it will be hard to take it off the cardboard).  *
*I would go 3 yards or more on this one if you want the spider head to be really puffy.

Lay your 2 foot long string down and place your 4 pipe cleaners on top.

Carefully remove the yarn loops from the cardboard (make sure the loops retain their shape) and place on top of pipe cleaners.
 
Tightly tie the 2-foot-long piece of yarn around the middle of the loops plus pipecleaners. Cut the yarn loops at their edges. Trim the pompom so that it makes a nice circle. Bend the spider's legs and glue on googly eyes.

Again, this is another great kids craft. Also makes a great girl scout Halloween craft.

Scary!

Pumpkin and Ghost using Popsicle Sticks

Thought I should add to Scary Journey's Halloween crafts for the year before it's too late!  Halloween is creeping up on us.....fast!

I have an enormous amount of Popsicle sticks (unused) that were given to me.  I promised that I would do something fun with them. Why not use them to make something for Halloween?  A pumpkin?  Or a ghost?  Perfect!  I saw these two ideas all over the Internet.  I'm not sure who to give the credit to for the project.  If you want more images on what you can do, just google "Halloween craft using Popsicle sticks" and click on images.  There are a lot of cool ideas out there!

Well, here is my take on the project.

Supplies needed:
Popsicle sticks
orange paint
white paint
paint brush
hot glue
black foam
pipe cleaner (green if making a stem for your pumpkin, black or tiger striped to make pumpkin look like a trick or treat bag)

For the pumpkin:

Paint your Popsicle sticks orange.  Use a Popsicle stick (or two) on the back and start hot gluing the sticks to them.  Cut out your pumpkin's face out of the black foam and glue to the sticks.  Adjust your pipe cleaners (into a stem if using green) (into a half circle if making a treat bag) and glue to back.

For the ghost:

 

Paint your Popsicle sticks white and glue to two small sticks (I cut pieces from one of the Popsicle sticks).  Make a scary face by cutting it out of the black foam and glue to the sticks.

Easy project for kids!  This would make a great Halloween craft for girl scouts, too!

 

BOO!