A Dora rainbow party

When Elora turned 3 in April she decided she wanted a Dora party. I had already started planning a rainbow themed party in my head before she asked for Dora so I decided to combine the themes to make it a Dora rainbow adventure.

I bought Elora a Dora costume to wear and she looked so cute!! I decided to turn myself into a rainbow fairy and Bethany got a rainbow dress too.

 

I decided that to truly be a Dora party there had to be a map, and backpacks and an adventure. I printed out backpack's face from the Nick Jr website and then cut and glued them onto different coloured paper bags (so it was a rainbow instead of just purple), then I added a map to each bag, plus a plastic flute and star shaped sunglasses in various colours that we would need for our adventure.

The first stop was the crocodile jungle so we could incorporate Diego into things. I had a blow up crocodile we use for the pool and I found a blow up Diego on ebay (sadly neither the crocodile or Diego survived the experience!!).I put them on a blue car cover to look like water and made crepe streamer vines and big leaves out of green paper. I scattered a whole heap of plastic jungle animals in the 'water' and each child could have one but first they had to make the crocodile happy by using the flute in their backpack to make music for the crocodile. I downloaded a Dora and Diego crcodile rock song to play for this part but 24 kids playing plastic flutes is rather loud and you couldn't even hear it.

The next stop was star valley. I used the template on the Nick Jr website to cut out lots of explorer stars and drew faces on them then stuck them all around the playground at the church hall where we had the party. I also added some decorative shiny hanging stars for more effect and they actually glistened in the sun so as we walked outside to 'star valley' it was shining which was great!! Before we went outside the kids put on the star shaped glasses from their backpacks cause star valley is bright and then their job was to collect explorer stars. There was also a surpise guest in star valley beacuse swiper tried to beat us to the stars. It was my husband with a blue blindfold and gloves but Elora loved it!!

 

The last place we had to visit on our map was rainbow garden where we would find the lollies that Swiper had stolen from the lolly bags inside the rainbow pinata.

 

The kids all loved this map/backpack adventure and my girls still have their maps and use them to go on adventures in our backyard. This all actually happened halfway though the party though. To start with for when people arrived I had a craft table set up with some rainbow colouring sheets, glue and glitter and cotton balls for clouds. There was also a cookie activity table where kids could ice shortbread star cookies I made with lots of bright colours of icing and use lollies to make faces like explorer stars. There was face painting from a very talented lady who goes to my playgroup, there were lots of coloured balloons all over the floor to play with, plus plenty of food to eat.

The first game we played was pin the tail on swiper which I just printed off from the Nick Jr website and the prize was a stuffed swiper. Then Dora arrived. I found her on the internet and hired her which I was nervous about not having this person recommended by someone I knew but she was great with the kids and happily went along with what I had planned. I was hoping none of the kids freaked out and at first Elora was a bit anxious and I thought it would turn out to be a bad idea but she was so good with the kids that Elora warmed up quickly and then Dora wasn't allowed to leave her side. Once Dora arrived we played pass the backpack and I had wrapped parcels inside the backpack of Dora lip gloss bracelets and stickers for the girls wrapped in pink, and animal wristbands and Diego stickers for the boys wrapped in yellow. It was then time for our map adventure that I already shared above, followed by some singing and dancing with Dora until cake time.

 

 

Ready to grab the backpacks and head off on a rainbow adventure with Dora.

 

 

Next it was time for cake, goodbye cuddles with Dora and lolly bags to take home. I hired a friend of a friend to make the cake and she did such an amazing job, way beyond what I was expecting.

 

Originally I was going to just leave the backpack bags as the lolly bags but I saw these Dora rainbow bags and so many cute rainbow things and decided to do goodie bags as well.

The girls lolly bags. The little unicorn packet had lollies in it in shapes of rainbows, stars and unicorns.



The boys lolly bags with a sticky lizard instead of a unicorn toy and a Diego pencil instead of a Dora one.

Despite being a Dora party most of the decorating and all of the food was done in the rainbow theme. Using colours was cheaper and prettier than using Dora stuff so I used 1 Dora tablecloth for the table that had the backpacks and game things on it, a Dora scene setter for the back wall, I found a cheap Dora happy birthday sign with a rainbow on it and I got Dora and Boots helium balloons that I put on the Dora table. Everything else was rainbow.

For food I made rainbow cookies that I saw on pinterest, jelly cups that I made into a rainbow, honey joys, a fruit rainbow, fruit veggies, coloured popcorn, coloured lollies, it was fun to make it all so pretty. I also made som Dora, Boots and Diego choc pops that went home with the goody bags and some choc star pops for the table.

 

 

This party was so much fun to do and the kids all had such a great time, especially my little Elora the explorer :-)

Learning to flourish part 2: running my own race.

When I last blogged I mentioned that other things had spoken to me greatly at Colour conference this year about flourishing in my life and today I have finally made some time to sit down and blog about it. I can't pinpoint one exact moment when this message became loud and clear, it was a build up of many.

There was Wendy Treat talking about opening the door to a dark room, swithcing on the light and stomping her foot to scatter the bugs, and how sometimes we need to be stomping to scatter the critters in our own lives, to be pro-actve for our families. There was Bobbie Houston talking about how what we say changes the atmosphere around us, what's coming out of our mouths that young hearts are hearing? There was Dr Leaf with all her scientific wisdom on the choices we make and our thinking shaping our brains and that we can renew our minds and change our lives. There was Christine Caine talking about being people of excellence in our lives whatever we are called to do. There was Wendy Treat again talking about staying in our own lane in life and not comparing ourselves to others, then it all finished off with a beautiful presentation of girls walking in holding lanterns to 'light the way with our lanterns on' as we bring God's light to the world around us. I came home from Colour absorbing all that and so much more, including some amazing video testimonies of ordinary women using what they had where they were to do world changing things, amazing moments of meeting God in worship and knowing something deep had stirred and changed in my heart. It took me a few day to even figure out enough of what was going on inside me to put it into words, all I could do the day after the conference was cry!!

You see I went to Colour this year a very overwhelmed, stresed out uni student who wasn't even sure I had time to go to the conference but didn't want to miss it. I was tired, I was in survival mode with my house and kids and I was feeling enormous pressure to hold onto a dream that I thought was important even though it was crushing me. What came togther in my heart and spirit processing all the stuff above was that I wasn't running my race in life properly. I was looking at other people wondering why they could juggle it all and letting that condemn me as a failure, instead of realising that each family's needs are different and what I can do is unique to me. I looked at what I was doing in life, 3 kids, uni, leading a church team, husband, house, and I wasn't doing any of it very well cause I had too many things in my head all the time. I was always rushing to the next thing and yelling at the kids to hurry up or get out of my way, I had no quality time with anybody and I was so very tired. But uni has been a dream for so many years that I was holding it so tight in my hand, an unreachable goal that I have just never been able to complete. It's not from lack of ability, in fact probably the opposite because I am a perfectionist who is used to getting distinctions and high distinctions and was trying to convince myself I could live with a credit. Surely if God gave me academic ability then He wanted me to use it right, I mean a degree can open so many doors to achieve so much and especially this degree because it was about peace, development and human rights, the passions of my heart. I wanted this piece of paper to change the world.

And then Colour made me stop and look at my smaller world and realise that my passion was lacking there. I was finding motherhood such a challenge that I was constantly negative, rarely finding any joy in my days, just getting by and not being pro-active about anything, I couldn't even remember that last time I had purposefully sat down and prayed for my children and all they had heard from me was negativity about being 'stuck at home' with them. I certainly wasn't enjoying my children, I was wishing the days away until they were grown up enough so that I could do something important. And I had everything backwards. I'm not saying that other people can't study and be a good mum, i'm saying that I realised I can't. If I can't even be God's light in my own home cause i'm so busy and stressed trying to do something to be the light somewhere else then I have completely missed the point. My kids will grow up, other opportunities may come, but right now this is my race and it needs me to be passionate about it. I felt like I was in a triathlon, trying to ride a bicycle through the swiiming section of the race, not a good fit at all. So I took Bobbie Houston's advice to 'resolve' and I resolved that I will flourish where I am with what I have in my hand right now and that is my family, to be the light first in my own home and it will spread out from there.

I still have mind numbing days of kids fighting, house trashed and need a coffee just to get past 9am, and I have still had moments of losing it, yelling at kids, venting on facebook, but I am also finding so much more joy on the journey. I am seeing what a gift it is to have 3 healthy children, a home and a husband and I don't want to lose sight of that. I have a 4 year old who is incredibly fragile emotionally and is currently going through the process of being assesed for being on the autism spectrum, I have a 14 (this week) year old who is on the spectrum who is retreating within himself and who as school gets harder is hiding homework and throwing assignment sheets in the bin rather than asking for help, and I have a 3 year old who never runs out of energy. That's a different race lane to other people and God knew that the people in this lane need a focussed pro-active mother who has the time, the passion and the focus at this particular time for where they're at and what they need. And I can still be the light outside my home too. Whether it's the children we sponsor, the families I impact through kids ministry at church, the people around me I can encourage, meals I can drop to families, fundraising that I can help with at a pregnancy support service, or even signing up for my first ever fun run to raise funds for A21 as they fight human trafficking. There are many, many ways to change the world, but not all of them are part of my lane right now. I don't have to be 'important' or even visible to make a difference, I just have to be faithful. And so I choose to flourish first in my home and bring light to the world starting from here.

Learning to Flourish Part 1

Last year at Colour conference there was a lot of emphasis on the word 'flourish'. I went to that conference only recently having wrestled with God to a place of peace after a very emotional journey of losing my grandma and then having a miscarriage and I turned up as a bit of a wreck who just needed to meet with God. The weekend was a soothing balm to my soul and I left knowing it was time to heal, stand up, move on and flourish, I just wasn't exactly sure how. God started revealing to me bit by bit that an area I really needed to address and flourish in was my health. I was very overweight and facing some issues because of it and knew it was time to face the giant of food that has been an ever present nemesis since my teens resulting in more than a decade of struggling with bulimia. So here I was knowing it was time to face my giant and that God was with me, but no idea how this time would be different, then I heard Dr Caroline Leaf.

I had heard of her through a friends blog and knew she was a brain scientist person but wasn't sure what to expect when she came to Hillsong sisterhood one day. Her talk on renewing our minds through the power of our choices and that we can actually regrow the barren parts of our brains into flourishing trees by choosing God switched on a lightbulb for me and I went home different. I can't explain it any better than that, what she said (which was way more complicated that what I just said) just clicked. I suddenly got that everything is a choice and that as I submit my choices to God I can choose life and flourish, and so I did. Since that day I have lost 23 kg, gone down from a size 22 to a size 14, found energy and strength, and fixed hormone issues, fatigue and headaches with no medication, just by making good choices.

It wasn't a magic potion that made it easy, it was just a revelation on the power of choice, there was plenty of hard work involved in the process. I joined a gym and started exercising, including personal training which is not something I would've ever considered before and I really enjoy the challenge of it. I have found myself doing things I never imagined like bench pressing and boxing! And I started eating right, eating the food God created for our bodies and cutting out packaged, processed crap, the difference it has made not just in my weight but in my health and how I feel has been astounding!!

The picture on the left is from my birthday in April 2012, I don't even look like the same person!

 

These are examples of what I now eat, lots of yummy salad, veggies, protein, some whole grain carbs at breakfast and lunch, fruit and lots of water. Do I feel deprived when I skip the sugary stuff? Nope I feel empowered that I am making good choices for my body and health and I can say no food is worth the way I used to feel. I love clothes shopping now and it's a whole new world that I am LOVING!! I do have occasional treats but they are just that, treats, and then I return to normal eating, the difference is I used to think I needed 'treats' to get me through every single day!!

(This is home made hummus and it's so yum. This was afternoon tea for me and my kids and yes they ate the vegies too. The rice crackers were for the kids but I did eat a couple of them, they are not a regular thing that I eat though.)

 

And I have spent many hours literally sweating my backside off like this....

to achieve goals like this. When I first started at the gym I could barely last 2 minutes on the rowing machine. Once I started doing 5 my trainer set me the goal of doing 1km in 5 minutes, this was my personal best a couple of weeks ago, 1169 metres in 5 minutes. I love it when I smash goals cause then I just set them higher for the enxt time and I love the challenge!!

 

So this year I went to Colour conference and Dr Leaf was there, I got to hear her in more detail and learnt even more, I bought a new flourish t-shirt (in a much smaller size) and I came away with fresh revelation that I will share in another post about other areas of my life where I need to make better choices. It's a journey, I will always be learning, but I think I have made a good start :-)

 

 

An oceana party!!

Back at the beginning of March Bethany turned 4 and for months beforehand she had told me she wanted an oceana party. What the uninitiated may not know is that oceana is where Merliah is a mermaid princess in the Barbie movie 'A Mermaid Tale', Bethy's favourite movie, so what she wanted was mermaids. Since quite a lot of her friends are boys I added pirates to the mix as well and made it an 'under the sea' theme. This was the first party I have thrown one of my kids since I discovered the wonder that is pinterest and to be honest I was quite overwhelmed by all the amazing ideas I found on there. So overwhelmed in fact that at some points my perfectionistic streak almost drove me crazy trying to unfold the amazing vision for the party I had in my head. Something this control freak has no control over however is the weather and for the 4th year in a row it rained for Bethany's birthday party. This meant my fabulous plans for our huge backyard were all squashed into a tiny loungeroom and a back verandah and it was pretty much chaos, but the kids still had plenty of fun which is the point of a birthday party afterall.

 

Decorations

I was busy for weeks beforehand with all sorts of craft supplies making jellyfish from plastic bowls, fish from paper lanterns and paper plates, cutting sea creatures out of cardboard, and turning boxes into a pirate ship.

 

 

 

 Since we were stuck inside I got some fish covered plastic from the local cheap shop to protect the carpet!!

 

I found these inflatable mermaids on ebay and the kids loved them, my girls carried these around for days after the party.

 

Food

I found some great ideas on pinterest like a watermelon pirate ship and a capsicum octopus dip. My octopus looked rather sad but hey I tried and my hubby did the pirate ship cause I was too stressed setting up everything else by then. I made mermaid and sea creature cookies the day before which turned out well and the pirate ship jelly cups turned out great too. The cake was my major task, it looked so simple in the pictures I had as inspiration but it took me hours!!! I made the white chocolate moulds a couple of days beforehand and that was a lot trickier than I realised cause white chocolate is a lot more sensitive than milk chocolate and it kept clumping, it took 3 attempts to get it right. I have to say though that Bethany was very impressed with the final product and I was very proud of how it looked. The sand (biscuiut crumbs) obviously looked authentic too cause my nephew thought I really put sand on the cake.

 

Games

Doing the games I had planned was a bit tricky with the number of kids in a much smaller space than I had anticipated. We did pin the tail on the mermaid which worked fine, the next game was musical islands where I had pictures of treasure islands for the kids to stand on (like musical chairs) but because it was so squishy they all stayed right next to the papers and you practically had to steal one from a child to make it smaller and get anyone out so I ended up just giving out prizes when there were still a few kids left. I also had a colouring in table set up and a tattoo station and there was the pirate ship and inflatble things to play with, the pirate ship especially was a huge hit!!

 

The rest of the games were meant to be all part of a treausure hunt and you got a piece of the treasure at each stop which would have worked fine having it all set up in our very large yard but given the space we had we ended up having to do 1 activity then set up the next 1 so it didn't flow how I had planned and was very chaotic. It started with fishing using magnets to pick up plastic sea creatures that had paper clips attached to them, the kids kept what they caught. Then at each activity you picked up another prize, bubbles for tossing rings on the octopus, stickers for walking the plank etc and it ended up at the grumpy pirate (my husband) who was guarding the treasure.

 

(sorry I can't figure out how to rotate the photo)

This was a practice run at the fishing the week before the party. On the actual day there were so many kids crowded around it you can't see the container at all.

We did an octopus toss that you can just see at the bottom of this picture, then they walked the plank.

Limbo.

Treasure chest pinata.

I borrowed this treasure chest off my mum who has had it for years and put the bags of treasure inside. The girls bags had plastic jewellery in them and the boys had plastic coins and a little bendable pirate.

 

The scary pirate who had the treasure.

 

Extra Goodies

The original plan was that all the treasure bits and pieces and the pinata lollies would actually be the lolly bags as I gave them all little bags to put all their treasures in, but I couldn't help myself and did goodie bags as well and also made some mermaid and sea creature chocolate pops to take home. I found some really gorgeous things like pirate shaped chocolates, wooden mermaid bracelets, wooden pirate stamps, pencils with bobbly sea creatures on them but the pictures I had of those things seem to have vanished from my phone, most probably with the help of little fingers who like to touch my stuff!!

The bags in the process of being filled.

 

Happy snaps 

The birthday mermaid princess.

Pirate Elora and cousin Josh.

Pirate daddy.

Very excited birthday girl at cake time!!

Very blessed young lady, all the presents didn't even fit in the photo properly!!

 

It was certainly one of the most involved and time consuming parties I have ever done but I actually really enjoyed putting in all the special touches and details and Bethany absolutey loved it which made it all worthwhile.