Make a Memory Archives - Page 2 of 5

Make a Memory {Butterfly Kit}

August 22, 2011 By Michelle Barneck 1 Comment

Here we are, week 13 of the Make a Memory series. Each Monday through Labor Day I will feature a special family tradition from one of my favorite bloggers. It is so important to create lasting memories with our families and this will be a fun way to get ideas for fun traditions we can start with our own families. So let’s dive right in and see how Amy from Positively Splendid and her family make a memory!

Hi, everyone! My name is Amy, and my blogging home is Positively Splendid. I am so excited to be taking part in Michelle’s Making a Memory series! As a mama of three (with one more due this fall), I strive to make every day special, and this series has been brimming with terrific ideas to do just that.

This summer, I started a new tradition with my children. We raised our very own butterfly “family” from teensy larvae all the way until they were ready to be released into our backyard! This was an activity we all loved, and it was a terrific learning opportunity for all of us.

To start, I purchased one of the Painted Lady Butterfly Kits from Insect Lore. I loved that with this particular kit, everything we needed for our butterflies was included, and next year when it comes time to raise butterflies again, we will be able to use the same habitat.

When the kit arrived on our doorstep, we found five tiny larvae in the bottom of a special cup containing just the right food to nourish them as they underwent their transition into caterpillars. Making sure to keep the cup out of direct sunlight, we eagerly watched our caterpillars and they grew bigger and bigger each day, until finally, about 10 days later, they all crawled to the top of the cup to form their chrysalises.

Once we carefully transferred the chrysalises into our habitat, we watched and waited until our butterflies hatched. This was the most exciting time of all! We discovered that our new butterflies loved to eat sugar water sprinkled on fresh flowers and the juice from fresh orange slices.

After we watched our butterflies in our habitat for a few days, it was time to let them go and say goodbye. We released them into our backyard, and my kids were thrilled that a few of the butterflies decided to stay nearby for about a week after we let them go.

This was such a fun, unique activity to keep the kiddos excited about learning even during the summer months. I know we’ll all be excited to raise butterflies again next year!

Thanks, Michelle, for having me over today. Y’all are welcome over at Positively Splendid any time!

—————————————————————————-

What a neat idea! I have never seen the butterfly process. I bet I would enjoy this as much as the kids. Thanks Amy, for another great way to make a memory!

P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for free Tipsy updates via RSS or email.

We have decided to truncate our feed to help protect against stolen content. I apologize for any inconvenience. Please love us anyway. 🙂

Make a Memory {The Red Plate}

August 15, 2011 By Michelle Barneck 5 Comments

Here we are, week 11 of the Make a Memory series. Each Monday through Labor Day I will feature a special family tradition from one of my favorite bloggers. It is so important to create lasting memories with our families and this will be a fun way to get ideas for fun traditions we can start with our own families. So let’s dive right in and see how Tam from Sew Dang Cute Crafts and her family make a memory!

Hi! I’m Tam from Sew Dang Cute Crafts and I’m so excited to be here as part of Michelle’s Making a Memory series.

My husband and I both grew up in a pretty big families with lots of siblings. Both our moms made extra efforts to make each child feel special. Today I’m going to share with you a tradition from my husband’s family we have carried on with our children.

The Red Plate

Have you heard of this one? I hadn’t until I got married and I love it! My husband grew up with it and thought it was a lot of fun as a kid.

The red plate is a “special” plate. Whenever a family member has a special occasion, big event, or just needs an extra boost, they get to use the red plate for the day. Most of the time we use the red plate on birthdays.

However, other times could be doing well on a test, making a sports team, etc. My kids get really excited when they get to be the “special” person and use the red plate. It’s been fun so far (my kids are still pretty young) and I expect it to get better as the years go on. It’s a little something that can create fond memories for my kids and hopefully, help them remember the times they got to be extra “special”.

Thanks for having me here today and I hope you will come visit me at Sew Dang Cute Crafts!

———————————————————————————-

Love the red plate! I forgot that my mom used to do this too. We had a red plate that said “you are special today.” What a fun way to celebrate a special day! Thanks Tam for another great way to make a memory!

P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for free Tipsy updates via RSS or email.

We have decided to truncate our feed to help protect against stolen content. I apologize for any inconvenience. Please love us anyway. 🙂

Make a Memory {Minute to Win it}

August 8, 2011 By Michelle Barneck 1 Comment

Here we are, week 10 of the Make a Memory series. Each Monday through Labor Day I will feature a special family tradition from one of my favorite bloggers. It is so important to create lasting memories with our families and this will be a fun way to get ideas for fun traditions we can start with our own families. So let’s dive right in and see how Sumo from Sumo’s Sweet Stuff and her family make a memory!

Hello everyone! Sumo, from Sumo’s Sweet Stuff here!

I’m so excited to be participating in Michelle’s Make A Memory series today. I’ve been loving all of the fun ideas shared so far, and have bookmarked a lot of them for when my girls get a bit older!

My family has an annual trip that we take every year to central Oregon. It’s something that we all manage to fit into our busy schedules. Tests are taken early for those in summer school, vacation time is spent for those with jobs, and the trek is made for some of us who don’t live as close anymore. We rent a huge house, pack in a ton of food, and enjoy the week together.

This is a recent tradition we started in our family, and for now, it is just for the adults. I imagine it will make a super fun tradition for the ‘littles’ (as my mom calls all of the grandkids), but considering that this year, all ten of the ‘littles’ were ranging from 4 months to 5 years old, it’s not quite something that most of the kiddos could participate in.

Aren’t those the cutest ‘littles’ ever?

And yes, we are those people who wear matching shirts for the 4th of July. My husband tolerates it every year. Barely.

And my awesome parentals, who make it all possible!

I’m sure most of you are familiar with the game show, Minute To Win It. Basically, it is a bunch of funny, near impossible tricks that you have to perform in one minute.

Let me just interject here by saying that in my family, we LOVE to see each other do stuff that makes us look ridiculous. And then continue to harass you about it for years to come. You basically can’t have a slip of the tongue, or do anything silly without a guarantee that it will be brought up time and time again in the future. We’re nice to each other like that.

Let me give you a sampling of some of the games we like to do.

Nut Stacker

This is for the steady of hands. You have to take the chopstick, and stack the nuts on top of each other. You’d be surprised how much you shake while doing it!

Don’t you all love the handlebar ‘stache action from my brother? Is my family the only one when on vacation, the boys do crazy things with their facial hair?

Balance Balls

Pretty self explanatory. Stack the golf balls. Seems like it might be easy, but really, it’s not!

Band Shoot

Shoot rubber bands to knock out the cups. Let’s just say that I am not a good band shooter. My bands didn’t even make it half way. Most of them ended up hanging around one of my fingers after my release. Good thing we were playing in teams and my hubby was awesome!

Face Your Cookie

This is by far the most hilarious game we’ve done to date. You put a cookie at the top of your face, and you have to use your face muscles only to move the cookie down to your mouth, when you are then able to eat it. No hands! Just your face! It really is hilarious, and you’ll find yourselves sick with laughter.

I have some really hilariously unflattering pictures of my mom and sister doing this. But I’m not quite sure I’m ready to be disowned from my family if I share them with the entire blogging world. So you’ll have to settle for a mildly unflattering picture of me doing it.

It is super fun, and provides a lot of laughter. You could get really creative with games, and like I said, this would be really fun with kids that are a little bit older!

Love, laughter, and something to hold over someone’s head in the future?

Sounds like family to me!

———————————————————————–
Oh so much fun! We love to laugh at each other as well. Lucky for me I saw Sumo’s topic in the queue and we borrowed her minute to win it idea for our family reunion. I did one where you put Vaseline on your nose and see how many cotton balls you can move from the table to a plate. My sis and her husband competed to see who could knock over the most cups with a ball in a nylon attached to their head. HILARIOUS! Or the one where you attach a pedometer to your head with a nylon as a bandana and see who can get the most “steps.” So many great options! Thanks Sumo for another great way to make a memory!

P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for free Tipsy updates via RSS or email.

We have decided to truncate our feed to help protect against stolen content. I apologize for any inconvenience. Please love us anyway. 🙂

Make a Memory {Twinkie Party}

August 1, 2011 By Michelle Barneck 5 Comments

Here we are, week 9 of the Make a Memory series. Each Monday now through the end of August I will feature a special family tradition from one of my favorite bloggers. It is so important to create lasting memories with our families and this will be a fun way to get ideas for fun traditions we can start with our own families. So let’s dive right in and see how Alison from Oopsey Daisy and her family make a memory!

Hello Tipsies!

My name is Alison, and I am the queen of oopsey daisies!

I am a crafting airhead, and my little blog, Oopsey Daisy, tells about my crazy creative adventures. I like to sew, modpodge, craft, decorate, photograph, hammer, paint, teach, and create!

But of course family comes first, and they are the reason behind everything I do. I am thrilled that I can share a little bit about my family with you today. So thanks, Michelle, for this fun opportunity!

Here’s my little family growing up. See me with my bangs and big red sash??

Something you should know about us…

I have the coolest family. We had tons of family traditions. And most of them are incredibly cheesy!! We did crazy fun things that I rolled my eyes at as a teenager–but now I beg my parents to bring on the fun once again!

Just this week we introduced my husband and son to a tradition we had growing up as kids…

The Twinkie Party!

In our family, a Twinkie party is a “fancy” celebration of our accomplishments.

This tradition is more like an inside joke, and it begs an explanation.

So here’s the story:

Once upon a time my Dad and Mom met at a little school called BYU. He liked her. Then she liked him. After a little off-and-on romance, my Dad decided that he definitely wanted to pursue their courtship seriously. So he planned a surprise!

He kidnapped my Mom from her apartment. Blindfolded her. Even placed a box over her head so she couldn’t see a thing. He drove her to a park and set up a chair. So there sat my unsuspecting Mother, blindfolded, as my Dad set the scene for a romantic date. He set up a small table and chairs. He even covered the table with a lace tablecloth and lit candles too. He set the table with fine china, and poured some soda pop in crystal goblets.

When he finally took off the blindfold, my Mother was in awe of the romantic scene, but finally laughed out loud a their entree. My Dad had cut a Twinkie in half horizontally and placed it on each of their plates. It was the first-ever Twinkie party.

Growing up, we were cheap. Really cheap. So whenever we wanted to throw a little celebration, we had a family Twinkie party!

It had been years since our last Twinkie Party. I couldn’t wait to share this tradition with my husband and son!! To spruce things up a little bit, I made this Twinkie stand. Don’t these Twinkies clean up nice?!

How about some Twinkie toppers?? (You can download these at the end of this post.)

And why not a fun frame?? This is a spin-off of Mique’s Rule the World printables. I was seriously laughing out loud the entire time I made this.

So we laid out our own lace tablecloth, and set out the fine china. We lit candles because my Dad always says, “This is called ambiance…. you pay twice as much for this in a restaurant!”

We filled our goblets with scrumptious Ginger Ale. Soda pop is always a delicacy–at least it was for us growing up as kids!

Before eating, each of us named some recent accomplishment. Then we all did a “Hip hip hooray!” cheer for that person. We cheered for big things like my parents celebrating their 33rd anniversary. We also cheered for little things like my husband having the chance to go wakeboarding recently!

It was my Little Man’s first time cheering, but he loved yelling “Hip hip hooray!”

After cheering for everyone, we sliced our Twinkies (my Dad says this is because it makes it feel like it’s twice as much!) and feasted on these little beauties! We ended the night by cleansing our hands on warm wash cloths–just like you would do in a fancy restaurant!

Do you want to know something funny? I don’t even like Twinkies! But this was one of the most hysterically fun nights I’ve had in a long time!

Do you want to throw your own Twinkie party??

Just click here to download your own Twinkie toppers, print them on cardstock, cut them out, and hot glue the front to the back with a toothpick sandwiched in between!

Download your own “Given enough Twinkies…” sign here. Print on scrapbook paper and slide into a 5×7 frame.

Michelle, thank you so much for having me here today!!

Come stop by Oopsey Daisy and say hello!

————————————————————————————–
The story behind this is great! I love that she cut them in half to make them last longer. It is the quirky family traditions that make the best stories. I love that her dad even sports the Twinkie shirt! What a fun way to celebrate any kind of achievement, though I think we would have to go with Ho Hos or the hard to find Chocodile. Thanks Alison for sharing another fabulous way to make a memory!

P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for free Tipsy updates via RSS or email.

We have decided to truncate our feed to help protect against stolen content. I apologize for any inconvenience. Please love us anyway. 🙂