Indian Summer

Meager October harvest

 Indian summer in the Bay Area is the best. It *almost* makes up for the lack of a real summer. It's warm but not hot. The light is gorgeous. You can wear whatever you want - shorts! t-shirt! pants! jacket! - and you'll be fine. Houses are putting out their autumn and Halloween decorations. We've started playing "Count the Pumpkins" on our daily walk to school.

A good 30 minutes of entertainment

Preparing to throw away my cilantro because she doesn't care for it

This week's weather has been amazing so we've spent some time in the backyard. I pulled out the remains of the Angry Birds birthday party knockdown game, and my son entertained himself for quite a while setting it up in new configurations ("levels"), just like the real game. Tip: Used the soccer goal behind the set-up to help with picking up and re-assembly.  My husband made the components of the game from rinsed-out cans, boxes that were in the recycling, the color printer, and some kraft paper with drawn-on faux-bois (to simulate the wood in AB). We definitely have gotten our money's worth out of his effort!

 Lots of cilantro going to seed because it's hard to use it all up when the kids don't eat it and my husband doesn't like it anywhere near as much as me. Sadly, very little else to pick. I still can't bring myself to yank anything, but Plantapocalypse is coming....

DIY Angry Birds Birthday Party

The finished pinata, looking awesome

 The older child is turning 5, and since he is obsessed with Angry Birds, it was the obvious choice for the party theme. Less obvious was the amount of work we were letting ourselves in for by going DIY for much of it, including pinata, knock-down game, and cupcakes. As my husband pointed out, were I not also somewhat of a fan of the game, we might not have gotten *quite* so into the theme.

Thanks to Shery K Designs who, according to the Internet, has made a pack of Angry Birds printables readily available to the rest of us. We used most of the templates.

Pinata in process

But, still - all in all, a lot of work. After resizing, laying out, and printing, it still took me about 2 hours to make 24 cupcake toppers (with some spousal support toward the end). I did construction paper circles with a bird or pig on either side. The DIY pinata (just google that phrase for many ideas and instructions) was ably handled by the birthday boy's father, with some "help" from the child. (Recurrent theme in our family.) It took a few hours. I don't begrudge the time making and decorating the actual cupcakes since that's my strong preference for getting something tasty out of a party ... but that was a couple hours too, now that you mention it.  Dyeing shredded coconut yellow for the yellow Bird cupcakes turned out particularly nicely.

Cupcakes with toppers, arranged in a tableau with knock-down game's cans

Target supplied the napkins and table covers, and "loot bags" (how I hate that concept, but it was handy for the pinata filling).  Now a distant memory, the invitations themselves were a fair bit of work too. I freehanded a yellow Bird and a piggie on construction paper, then cut out a text circle and glued it to each one. My child helped with that too.  We had to go hard copy invites since I wanted to invite his whole class and, it being so early in the school year, we didn't have an email list yet. No doubt this will also be a recurrent theme for his birthday each year.

Prep time aside, everything turned out great and the kid loved it. That's what's important. We didn't spend a lot, and we even got a few cute family photos out of it. Viva los Angry Birds!

Parenting by Rewards Chart

While I have been posting lately about the garden, I do also have kids around, and they do more than just mess up my new plantings. They also mess around generally and make it hard to get out the door in the morning to get to school on time. Thus, we decided that a rewards chart would help keep things humming at our house. We went through a couple iterations with vague rewards, and a dry-erase chart that resulted in numerous pen marks on the wall. Starting today, we have a new and improved chart I created in Word, and the reward is clear: 10 extra minutes of iPod time on Sunday evening. ie., more Angry Birds. It is all Angry Birds, all the time, at our house. This should help. I designed it as a grid, using the AB Feast of Flesh font, added in a motivating AB, and listed his chores. Then I drew them too, since he is still learning to read. Now we will add an X every time he completes a chore by himself. Fingers crossed!