The Birthday Project - FAQ

If you missed the video posted on facebook the other day, here is a link:



I have been getting a lot of questions from people about the project so I thought I would provide some more information here.

Q - Where did you first hear about this?
A - I saw a posting on a blog written by a friend of a friend. She first learned about it through pinterest. The girl with the original idea is named Robyn Bomar and she is from Florida. I don't know her at all. This is the link to how she spent her 38th birthday. The whole project was born out of the tremendous response she received from that blog post. She then started a website specifically dedicated to The Birthday Project (link here).

Q - Where did you get all of the ideas for the 38 acts of kindness?
A - The list we used was a combination of things I had found online (Robyn's original post, other people who have done the birthday project for their birthdays, googling "random acts of kindness") and some ideas I thought of on my own.

Q- Where did you get all of the signs/cards used that day?
A - I found most of them on this girl's blog. She had just completed her own birthday project and very generously shared her creations online for others to use. I found the rest of them by looking in the quote section on pinterest or doing a google image search for quotes about kindness.

Q - How long did it take you to put everything together?
A - I first stumbled across the blog posting sometime last spring, and I knew right away I wanted to do this for my next birthday. I thought about things A LOT between then and now, and it's a good thing I did because in order to fit all 38 things in in one day, a lot of prep work was required.

Q - How exactly did you do all 38 things in one day?
A - I made a spreadsheet of all of the acts we were going to do. Then I grouped them by area of town. Then we went to those areas with our lists in hand and made sure we did everything in that location before driving off to another area of town.

Q - Was this expensive to do?
A - Yes and no. Since I had a while to plan, I tried to do/buy a little bit every week or two. Meg and Erin also helped contribute with different things ($, gift cards, package items, etc...) It helped a lot to have them do that. I donated a lot of things we already had (toy train set, old bridesmaid dress, Becca's old swing, etc...) to help keep the cost down. I also opted not to do some of the pricier ideas I came across (example: pay for someone's groceries) and instead did things like put coupons in the grocery store.

Q - Which of the 38 acts was your favorite?
A - I loved all of the things we did at the Dollar Store. The kids (and their mom) were so genuinely touched that we gave them balloons, it was fun to hide the dollar bills in different places, and the employees who worked there were so enthusiastic about what we were doing. Even though they were not the actual recipients of any of the acts, they were excited about our plans and they were fun people to share with.

It was such a fun day, and I thank Meg and Erin for coming all the way to Fort Wayne to help me out with it. You girls are the best!

Three!

October is a busy birthday month at our house. Samuel turned 7 last week, and Becca turned 3 this week! She brought cupcakes to preschool to share with her class (I found the idea for these on pinterest, of course):

Then we made a Hello Kitty cake for her at home:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, because those 2 things weren't sugar-filled enough, I took her to a special kids baking class at Country Kitchen SweetArt, a local cake and candy making place. The theme of the class that morning was "monster treats" so we made a monster cupcake, a lollipop that looked like a spiderweb, and decorated a giant marshmallow to look like Frankenstein. As you can see in the pictures below, Becca had a great time doing this (and especially taste testing the frosting and sprinkles!)






















































































Happy Birthday to my sweet girl!

Seven!

Samuel turned 7 last week. He is super into transformers these days, so he asked for a transformers birthday party.  His birthday parties the past few years have been very involved, so this year I decided to scale things back a little. We still did fun things, but nothing like making Buzz Lightyear costumes for every child in attendance (2010) or creating a cardboard version of Lightning McQueen that kids could fit in (2011) .

Here is the invitation:



I told him that since he was turning 7 he could have 7 kids (including him) so he picked 6 friends to invite.

The kids had a lot of fun painting robot banks:

















In order to find their cupcakes, I set up a simple treasure hunt. In the picture below our neighbor from down the street (who we hired to help us at the party) is reading the clues to the kids:




Here are the cupcakes (made by a friend) which were hidden in the dryer:

We had a pull-string pinata. Each child took a turn pulling a string. One of the strings opened the pinata. Becca actually pulled that string.



One neat thing the kids played with at the party were these water beads. You can get them all kinds of places - Michael's, Wal-Mart, amazon. They start off really tiny, like the size of round sprinkles. You place them in water and they grow (over 4-6 hours) to the size of marbles. They are squishy like gummy bears and they are a really neat sensory experience to run your hands through. I made ours extra cool by hydrating them in glow water (break open a highlighter and run water through the sponge until you get all of the color out.) Then if you use a black light, the water beads will glow in the dark.

 

And what would a birthday party be without presents? Samuel got all sorts of new transformers from his friends, along with art supplies, a nerf dart gun, and even some transformer pajamas. All in all, it was a great party. Happy Birthday, Samuel!

I ♥ Pinterest

I am probably the last person in the world to sign up for pinterest. Everyone I know has already been on there for months. However, just because I am late to the party does not mean that I, too, cannot lose hours of precious time by being sucked into the pinterest black hole! And what an amazing black hole it is! I had no idea all of the things you could find on there. Here are some things I have found and tried recently that I really like:

1. No bake granola bars



Here's the link for those. They are easy and good (although I'm not really sure how healthy they are, as the title of the recipe suggests).

2. Two-Ingredient Pumpkin Cake

















Here is the link for that.

3. Miracle cleaner using Dawn and hydrogen peroxide

I have used this for spots on laundry and on the carpet, and it works really well on both. Here is the link for the cleaner.

There are tons of great ideas on pinterest for making things that glow - glow water, glow ice cubes, glow bath time, etc... We are going to try those next, so look for a post soon about if our glow experiments are successful.

Wine and Canvas

Back in July I had the chance to do something really fun with some friends: a Wine and Canvas painting class. Basically there is one instructor at the front of a room, and then about 20 people who each get their own easel, brushes, and paints. The instructor walks everyone through how to recreate a painting. Sometimes they do famous paintings, but the night I was signed up for was just a yellow background with some flowers.

Although I love to do crafty things, I have never really tried painting before (except for art class a zillion years ago in school). It was really fun! And you don't need to know how to paint at all, since the instructor tells you things like "pick up the biggest brush in front of you, add a little green paint, and then make a line from here to here."

The classes are held in different restaurants in Fort Wayne. The wine part of their name comes in because you can order food or drinks from the restaurant and they are brought right to your painting station. Wine and Canvas is a franchise, so if there is one near you, I'd definitely recommend checking it out. It was tons of fun!

Here are some pictures from the class:

1st grade

School started here this Wednesday. Samuel is now in 1st grade, which is a little bit of an adjustment for him since it means he will be there all day (instead of just the morning like he was in Kindergarten). Here he is before getting on the bus that morning:




Boarding the bus:
















Checking out his locker (we took this picture last week during registration):

At back-to-school night this week, his teacher had hung up self portraits that the kids made. Here is Samuel's:

So far he seems to really like his teacher. I know it's only been 3 days, but things are off to a good start!

Mission Accomplished!

Check out what Samuel figured out how to do yesterday:

We have been working on this off and on for a long time, so we are all thrilled he figured it out!