I have to admit, I was a little worried about Lydia’s 6th birthday party. Little House on the Prairie parties work well outside, in a barn or at a farm. But inside my house? I just hoped it wouldn’t be boring. Well, with 18 kids and even more adults than that, we had an absolute blast!

Here’s some of the highlights in no particular order and with probably more words than necessary…

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Top Ten Ideas for a  Little House on the Prairie Party for Kids

 1. Costumes

It’s fair to say that I passed my love of costumes to my children. And oh my. Lydia was the cutest thing I’ve ever SEEN in her Laura-and-Mary costume. My mom made the dress and apron to go with her bonnet. Asa wore his coon skin cap, Woody and Buzz light-up boots and toted his shot gun around.

But the best part is my parents dressed up, too:

Oh, I wish Lydia had her boots on in this picture! Anyway, that’s my mom and dad. When Daddy walked in the house with his costume he said, “I look like PawPaw!” (His grandfather!) He looked awesome. They went to Goodwill and got their costumes for $4 total. Not bad. Plus, as Daddy said when he left, “I was a good decoration!”

2. Gifts

And just in case someone didn’t come in costume, we had bonnets and bandanas for all the kids. My mom made those, too. (Isn’t that awesome?!) It was so cute to see all the girls wear them during the party. And they loved taking them home, too! We also sent them home with a teeny tiny loaf of bread that Lydia baked herself. (I found mini loaf pans at Michael’s for 30 cents each!)

3. Lydia’s Mercantile

I love pretend play at parties. So, I set up a little Mercantile for the kids to play in. We had a few jars of old fashioned candy (or at least as old fashioned as I could get at Wal-Mart), scraps of material and spools of yarn (which was really just a clothespin with yarn wrapped around it) with labels.

Then we gave every kid a little bag (left over from Asa’s ACE Party!) with 10 pennies inside. And they went shopping!

{HEY. What’s baby Woody doing there?! Asa must have snuck him in. It was supposed to be American Girl’s Kirsten holding down the Mercantile!}

4. The Food

I ordered the The Little House Cookbook from my library. So, I didn’t really think about the food until I got the cookbook. I assumed I’d just pick a few things and make them. However. The food in the cookbook was authentic frontier food: chicken and dumplings, ribs, sun-dried blackberry pie and venison stew. Not exactly party food.

So, at the last minute I decided to do ham. I called Les at work and said, “Will you please stop and buy a Honey Baked Ham?!” And from there, it got EASY. We had ham, cheese, bread, pickles, apples and applesauce. Then everyone could choose between ham, cheese, ham-cheese sandwich, cheese sandwich, ham sandwich or bread with jam!

Oh yeah, I also had those fat pretzel sticks because they look like logs for a cabin. Kinda. And don’t you like the quilt as a tablecloth?

5. POPCORN

In Farmer Boy, Almanzo’s family would sit around the fire in the evenings eating popcorn and apples. We are big popcorn fans in our house so it was a perfect food for us. I stole this AWESOME idea from Pen N’Paper Flowers’ Rustic Popcorn Bar. We had a big container of popcorn, some paper cones & paper bags, then a few different popcorn seasonings to add to it. I don’t know about anyone else, but I loved it.

6. The Cake

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: THE CAKE. A few weeks before the party, I was on Skype and bemoaning that I didn’t have Lydia’s party planned yet. Staci was there and I said, “So, you wanna make a covered wagon cake?” I was, of course, joking because who makes a COVERED WAGON CAKE?

Well, Staci does apparently. Look how ADORABLE this thing is! She even made those wagon wheels. I’m tellin’ you, she outdoes herself every year!

7. Clothes Washing

After scouring Pinterest for Little House parties, the one activity that stuck Lydia more than anything: clothes washing. I don’t know if it was the bucket, the washboard, the clothes or the clothesline or what. But this was THE best part of the whole party. I cut out little shapes of clothes from left-over bonnet fabric and let the kids have at it.

It was so crowded out there, I finally had to take all the clothes down so they could wash them again!

8. Games

We had 2 other games. One was the old clothespin-milkbottle game. Basically you just stand with a milk bottle at your feet and try to drop a clothespin into it. Harder than it looks.

The second game I will not be able to explain but let’s try it anyway. You take a big aluminum can with one end open and the other end with a hole punched in the top. Then attach a string to the hole so you can lift the can up off the ground. While you are holding onto the string and the can is on the ground, place 3 balls around the can. Then lift it up and try to get the 3 balls into the can.

SO HARD.

And fun. Here’s my brother and Mandi‘s husband trying to play. Not sure if they succeeded.

9. Crafts

I thought there’d be lots of crafts at a Little House party. But everything was just a bit too crafty for us. So, we did button necklaces like the one Laura and Mary made for Carrie in On the Banks of Plum Creek. I just bought a bag of buttons from Michael’s (with a 40% off coupon, of course) and cut lengths of embroidery thread.

10. Butter

About halfway through the party I rang a bell (ok, it was a spoon on a tin can) and called all the kids into the kitchen. I gave them each a small baby food jar and filled it halfway with heavy cream. It was time to make butter!

After all the lids had been securely fastened, we began to shake. Not just a timid little shake. But a full-don’t-get-near-me-or-I-might-poke-your-eye-out shaking. I read online it takes about 20 minutes to make butter. I was hoping it was less.

When it got to 3 minutes and the kids looked like they were wondering if it was a joke, I called upon my likes-to-be-the-center-of-attention brother. He led the kids around the house in a butter-shaking march. Which they loved. And by the end of it, almost all of them had a little ball of butter in their jar. It kinda felt like a miracle!

*Bonus* 11. Asa

Asa had so much fun. I don’t think I saw him the entire party. Here he is chasing my brother (who is apparently a bandit) around the back yard. Later on, Asa had on the bandana and kept saying to me, “Fix my beard, Mommy.”

*Bonus* 12. Laura and Ma

Happy Birthday, sweet girl! I love you!

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Link up your Top Ten list and join in the Top Ten {Tuesday} fun! All you have to do is WRITE a top ten list, PASTE it  below, LINK back to me in your post & then start LOVIN’ on the rest of the participants with facebook likes, stumbles, comments, pins and tweets (#toptentues)! For better and more succinct guidelines see my Top Ten {Tuesday} page!

A Little House on the Prairie Party: Top Ten {Tuesday} is a post from: ohamanda.com
Happy New Year! Here are some of my favorite resources to help you make the most of 2012! One Bite At A Time: 52 Projects for Making Life Simpler, an ebook by Simple Mom!
Create Your Perfect Cleaning Schedule, finally get your house under control!
E-Mealz, online meal-planning with shopping lists! {20% off with code SKINNY when you choose one of their healthy menus}
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Related posts:

1. Nursing School Graduation Party: Top Ten {Tuesday} Catie & me at her Pinning Ceremony (she isn’t really...
2. Lydia’s Birthday Party: Top Ten {Tuesday} Do you know that Lydia’s 6th birthday is in less...
3. Asa’s Toy Story *3* Party: Top Ten {Tuesday} Asa’s Toy Story 3 birthday Party was the rootin’-est, tootin’-est...

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Catie & me at her Pinning Ceremony
(she isn’t really a giantess, she was wearing like 8 inch heels!)

My sister-in-law, Catie graduated from Nursing School this week. So, she had a little red and white, candy striped, slightly vintage party to celebrate. And I may have helped just a little bit! Here we go…

The Top Ten Fun Things For a Nursing School Graduation Party!

1. The Guestbook!

We bought a canvas, a bunch of fun band-aids and let people get creative! Some people made designs with band-aids. Others wrote notes about how many of these things Catie would probably use in her lifetime! It ended up being a really cute display!

2. The Favors

We filled up tiny zippered plastic pill bags with red and white candy. Everyone took one on the way out. Best medicine I’ve ever had!

3. Marshmallows!

Cake pops have lit parties on fire! But if you’re not Bakerella or Lulee, these are not even a possibility at a diy party. So, the poor man’s version is chocolate dipped marshmallows. And can I say that these things are utterly delicious? All I did was melt some chocolate, push a lollipop stick into the marshmallow, dip it in the chocolate, roll in colored sugar then place on wax paper!

4. Cupcakes

So, I really wanted to do this idea (only with a nurse’s hat) for cupcake toppers. But I couldn’t get it together. But a white cupcake with a red cross did nicely!

5. Streamers

Is that the cutest thing you’ve ever seen? It’s just construction paper! It’s the easiest thing ever. I found a tutorial on pinterest and it probably only took me 10 minutes to cut them all. I’m totally doing this again.

6. Fondue

We did all desserts (except the Cheeseball from Heaven) and our main course was FONDUE! We had oreos, pretzels, bananas, graham cracker marshmallows (see my oreo marshmallows for instructions) and then little containers of coconut, nuts, etc. to roll your newly chocolated food into. YUMMMY.

7. The Drinks

Since we were doing desserts, we decided to do coffee and punch only. The coffee was from my awesome Dolce Gusto. See my cute barista assistant?

And the punch was the same one we used for Asa’s Vintage Ace Party. YUM. (PS–that punch bowl thingie looks cool but it is the dumbest most ridiculous thing ever. I had to set it on top of a bowl to even be able to use it. Then it was so hard to turn no one could do it. I had to man it the whole time. I finally switched to a punch bowl.)

8. Party Favors (Part 2)

We also had masks and rubber gloves at each seat. It was funny how many people actually put them on. Or fun. Or both.

9. The Games

Catie bought some labeled body posters from a school supply store and covered up the names of the body parts with numbers. We had to fill in our paper with the correct body parts. Well, we tried to anyway. I missed 7 but it’s only because I had read them all when we were setting up. Ahem.

10. The Decor

Besides the awesome streamers we had red and white tablecloths, white candles and even a few cute craft foam nursing hats. We also printed some pictures from the internet (I googled “vintage nurse illustrations”) and put them in white frames. They looked really cute laying on the tables.

Oh, and the blood candy? Yeah. I spent $35 on it and it still hasn’t arrived. BUMMER.

:: :: ::

Link up your Top Ten list and join in the Top Ten {Tuesday} fun! All you have to do is WRITE a top ten list, PASTE it  below, LINK back to me in your post & then start LOVIN’ on the rest of the participants with facebook likes, stumbles, comments and tweets (use hashtag #toptentues)! For better and more succinct guidelines see my Top Ten {Tuesday} page!

Oh, I decided to use a photo linky today. Do you like it? Or is it cluttered?

Nursing School Graduation Party: Top Ten {Tuesday} is a post from: ohamanda.com
Happy New Year! Here are some of my favorite resources to help you make the most of 2012! One Bite At A Time: 52 Projects for Making Life Simpler, an ebook by Simple Mom!
Create Your Perfect Cleaning Schedule, finally get your house under control!
E-Mealz, online meal-planning with shopping lists! {20% off with code SKINNY when you choose one of their healthy menus}
:: :: ::

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I love me a good party. And there is nothing cuter than a sweet little invitation to get the party started off right. But I have learned that invitations are too hard for me. They are like Christmas cards. I have to collect envelopes, find addresses, hand write or print off a billion envelopes and then put stamps on all of them? I’m sorry, that’s cruel and unusual punishment!

I have tried evite a few times. Eh. It’s ok. Last year for Lydia’s Puppet Party I discovered Pingg. And it is my new best friend.

Let me give you a few screenshots and reasons why you will love Pingg as much as I do.

First of all, there are tons of designs to choose from. And the designers are real live designers. Not kids who do myspace backgrounds in their spare time. The designer I chose for Asa’s invitation has her own etsy shop! Just look at all this cuteness I found when I typed in “purple” as a search term on pingg!

Once I press send and my emails hit their boxes, Pingg keeps statistics on my guestlist. I can see who viewed the invitation, who said yes/no/maybe and who hasn’t responded. I can get personal messages from guests. And I can get a running headcount!

Not only does Pingg send out the original invitation, it will also send out a reminder email. This reminder email can be sent to all guests, only those don’t reply or those that said yes. There is also a scheduled thank-you email that goes to all guests and includes a link to the…

Event Website!

Eeek! This is my favorite part! It’s a full party website that includes the invitation, the guest list and their replies, a photostream (for the host and guests to upload), wishlists (like for gifts!), video stream and yes, even a twitter stream with your own hashtag! (Asa’s hashtag is #pirateAsa if you wanna follow along.)

Now, if that doesn’t tickle your online fancy, guess what? You can mail matching printed invites to your unplugged family and friends. BUT you don’t actually have to do the licking and pasting! Nope, Pingg does it for you! Just enter the snail mail address and they’ll mail it off.

Update: I had to change the date of Asa’s birthday party all the way to October. I didn’t think I could pull of a birthday party when I’m spending 4 days in Savannah. (By the way, the funeral is today. *sniff*) So, I just sent an email to all my guests via Pingg telling them the new date of the party. They were able to amend their RSVP status and there were no confusing phone calls or emails. My event page has all the new details and anyone can refer to it if they need to check it!

How awesome is that?

So, next time you’re planning an event and want it to be organized, cute, simple and stress-free? You need Pingg!

This is not a paid or sponsored post. I just love love love Pingg. So, I’m linking this up to Things I Love Thursday at Diaper Diaries!

Pingg: Easy Online Invitations is a post from: ohamanda.com
Happy New Year! Here are some of my favorite resources to help you make the most of 2012! One Bite At A Time: 52 Projects for Making Life Simpler, an ebook by Simple Mom!
Create Your Perfect Cleaning Schedule, finally get your house under control!
E-Mealz, online meal-planning with shopping lists! {20% off with code SKINNY when you choose one of their healthy menus}
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Alternate Title: Easter Comes Early Around These Here Parts

Alternate Alternate Title: Our (Almost) Annual Spring Party Is Today!!

Alternate Alternate Alternate Title: My Kids LOVE Posing For Pictures.

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Why I’m Not Going To Post Today is a post from: ohamanda.com
Happy New Year! Here are some of my favorite resources to help you make the most of 2012! One Bite At A Time: 52 Projects for Making Life Simpler, an ebook by Simple Mom!
Create Your Perfect Cleaning Schedule, finally get your house under control!
E-Mealz, online meal-planning with shopping lists! {20% off with code SKINNY when you choose one of their healthy menus}
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Now, onto the decor…

I didn’t do much. Well, I did. I just did the same thing everywhere. I made the card garlands…

(just cut a slit in the middle of the card and thread some fat ribbon. this one had about 20 cards on it.)

(we did horizontal and vertical garlands. this one was asa’s birthday 9/20/08.)

(tissue paper puff balls. i found several tutorials online but basically: 10 sheets, accordian fold, tie in middle, fluff.)

(pictures of Asa, month by month. oh, and we used leftover cards taped together as cute little table tents.)

And there you have it: the ACE party!

:: :: ::

In case you missed it, here are the ACE food, diy activities & games and the diy invitations!

The ACE Party: Decor is a post from: ohamanda.com
Happy New Year! Here are some of my favorite resources to help you make the most of 2012! One Bite At A Time: 52 Projects for Making Life Simpler, an ebook by Simple Mom!
Create Your Perfect Cleaning Schedule, finally get your house under control!
E-Mealz, online meal-planning with shopping lists! {20% off with code SKINNY when you choose one of their healthy menus}
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I think I may have mentioned that Asa’s first birthday party was FUN! I enjoyed it so much. My parents came over to help me out before the party and if they had not been there, it would not have been as cute as it was. Once the party started I didn’t feel like I forgot anything or missed a beat. It was perfect!

I think we’ll start with the food. It was all EASY. I really didn’t cook anything. So, even better, right? I wanted all of it black, white or red. Let’s begin with the cake.

My bff, Staci has made all of Lydia’s birthday cakes and is absolutely a pro. We were having a hard time coming up with something creative for a black and white party that didn’t look scary or stupid. So, she ended up doing cupcakes with white frosting in a silver liner. I MADE, yes MADE cupcake toppers. And can I just say that I am SO PROUD OF MYSELF? Well, I am. PROUD. Because it looked stinkin’ awesome.

Yes! That is an actual playing card in the middle! Should I do a tutorial on these? It was just so easy and they are so cute! Oh, I love it. I could just stare at it all day. But where were we?

Oh, right. The food. Well, we also had the best and most famous black and white food ever:

Oreos. And how much better when they are stacked like poker chips?

I also grabbed some chessmen cookies. Because they look the part of an ACE party.

We had chocolate covered strawberries drizzled with white chocolate. Lydia and I made these in about 30 minutes. It was an easy peasy video recipe from Kraft Foods that unfortunately included lard shortening. I was going to half white on black and half black on white. But the white chocolate would NOT stick to the strawberries. It was weird. So, I just blobbed the white chocolate into a ziploc bag, snipped off the end and drizzled it  it on top instead. I think it turned out nice. Especially after I stopped trying to make it look neat—the more chocolate the more better.

Next was the ACE of HEART sandwiches. Nothing like an $.88 pack of white bread and a tube of squeezable jelly to make a fancy shmancy sandwich, huh? I just sliced off the crusts, cut the remaining bread in half, then popped out a little herat with a cookie cutter. We skipped the peanut butter because we were lazy peanut allergies who needs it? I coupled the sandwiches with my favorite red (and red-ish chips), Terra Chips. They are veggie chips and I could eat a whole bag in one sitting.

The only food I didn’t get a pic of needs no explanation introduction or review: THE MAGICALLY DELICIOUS CORN DIP from my friend Jessie at Vanderbilt Wife. I may soon be bottling this.

As for drinks, I bought some Spongebob Squarepants mini water bottles at KMart that were BOGO. Lydia tore the tags off and I created a SUPER cute label with some digital scrapbooking stuff. Alas, my printer ran out of ink and refused to print them. SO. I looked around and noticed all the playing cards I had used to make the cupcake toppers. They had a perfect hole in them for water bottles. And look how cute they turned out!

Easy. Frugal. Recylable-ish. Original. Creative. Totally works for me!

I decided to do a punch, too. I wanted something red that didn’t taste like Hawaiian Punch. In fact, I tweeted the exact same thing:

And within 4 minutes I had 2 punch recipes—one of them from two different people. So, without further googling, I took my tweeple’s advice and we served Amy’s Strawberry Punch. It was so yummy! Thanks, ladies for pointing me in the right direction!

And because I love Picnik-ing and because I think you really want to see it all in one spot, here is the final reveal:

Yummy, right?

And if you missed it: The Ace Invitations, The Ace Games, Decor and More!

{linking to My Insanity’s 3rd Anniversary Blog Party–link up YOUR Birthday Party and win big!}

The ACE Party: FOOD is a post from: ohamanda.com
Happy New Year! Here are some of my favorite resources to help you make the most of 2012! One Bite At A Time: 52 Projects for Making Life Simpler, an ebook by Simple Mom!
Create Your Perfect Cleaning Schedule, finally get your house under control!
E-Mealz, online meal-planning with shopping lists! {20% off with code SKINNY when you choose one of their healthy menus}
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