Saturday, January 25, 2014

Little Mermaid Movie Night

We had our second Disney family movie night yesterday. This time we chose to watch The Little Mermaid. HD received it for Christmas and we haven't gotten around to watching it yet. So it seemed the perfect reason to make it our feature presentation.
We started our crafts in the morning before HD went to school. We made Ariel's starfish necklaces out of salt dough. I got this idea from spoonful.com. The dough has to cook for two hours and I still wanted to allow time to paint the starfish and let them dry so HD could wear her necklace during the movie.
HD helped me roll out the dough before cutting out different size stars using our cookie cutters.
Then we poked holes in the tops of the starfish with a toothpick before putting them into the oven for two hours. In hindsight, I would have made the holes bigger.
While they cooked I painted some old fashioned clothespins and cut out mermaid tails from craft foam. These were going to become mermaid dolls later. This idea also came from spoonful.com as well.
After lunch I let the kids paint and decorate the starfish. Little Man loved it!
I gave HD several color options and then let her sprinkle glitter on some of them while the paint was still wet.
Then we laid them out to dry for a couple of hours.
While they were drying I put Little Man down for a nap and let HD play Disneyland on the xbox while I spent some time decorating. $2 worth of crepe paper became ocean waves and sea weed so that we could dine 'under the sea.' I got this cute idea from Delia Creates.
Then I filled our sensory bin with some play sand ($3 for a 50 lb bag from Lowes. I didn't really feel like trekking through the snow to get some out of our sand box.) In the sand I placed Ariel and numerous ocean life figures I have for sensory bins.
This became our Sebastian's sand search game.
For dessert I made oyster cookies.
For dinner we had Ariel's cheesy Sea Shells topped with an Ursula octopus, Sebastian crab rolls, Flounder's seaweed and green sea kelp smoothies. I found the idea for the rolls on Pretty Lucky Mama. She used martini olives on hers which do look better. However I knew my kids wouldn't eat them so I figured it was pointless to buy a jar of them.
HD was so excited when she saw her plate.
All ready for dinner!
HD is really loving our movie nights so far and thanked me the entire day!
I used our menus again because I think they are a fun way to pull it all together.
I googled and found a cute poster for the Little Mermaid. I downloaded the font Amazonica and then put our names at the bottom to personalize it.
I liked the way our Cinderella menus looked so decided I'd use the same format with the silhouettes. I found several I liked and then changed them all to a reddish color.
Here is the side announcing the menu for the evening.
The other side has the crafts and games we were going to do before ending the night watching the movie.
Then I put another poster image for the back cover.
Little Man loved all the frosting in the cookies!
After dinner the kids spent some time digging through the sand to find all the hidden items.
Then HD painted a mermaid sun catcher I'd found at Michael's.
This was very messy but swept up easy enough.
HD also chose which starfish she wanted for her necklace and Mr. put some thread through it. Then HD decorated it with some beads to finish it off. I tried to let Little Man make one as well but he stuffed five beads in his mouth thinking they were candy. After fishing them out he went back to play in the sand. 
Then we glued the mermaid tails onto the painted clothespins, added hair, and drew on a seashell top and a face.
All finished.
 
We'd meant to play a game of "What would Scuttle Say" but never got around to it. Since Scuttle has funny names for everything (dingle hopper anyone) I thought it would be a hoot to pick up different items and try to come up with what he would have called it. I found this suggestion on pinterest but can't seem to find it now. We had a great night and HD can't wait until our next family movie night.  
 
For all the blogs and websites I got inspiration from please check out my Little Mermaid Movie Night board on Pinterest.

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Cinderella Movie Night

I decided to start doing themed family movie nights this year. And since we got Disneyland annual passes for Christmas, I figured we'd start with Disney movies. I chose Cinderella for our first movie night.
I pulled out some old restaurant style menus I'd forgotten about. And yes, I seriously had them laying around. Once upon a time I bought, and used them, when Mr. and I were first married or when we had guests over for dinner. It was a fun and cheesy touch to an ordinary meal. They worked perfectly for our themed movie night too! I downloaded some Cinderella fonts to use on my menus. Then I searched for Cinderella posters and made one of them my menu cover. To personalize the cover I used the AL Cinderella font to add our name.
Inside our menu I listed the crafts and activities I had planned for the evening. I searched for Cinderella silhouettes and used them to decorate the inside pages of the menu. I changed them to a blue color and then used Edwardian Script font for the main writing.  For dinner we had Cinderella's carriage wheel alfredo pasta with chicken and portabella mushrooms. HD loves alfredo and it was a big hit! I've never used carriage wheel pasta and found it difficult to find which surprised me. I went to three stores before finding it. We also had Major's steamed carrots (I'll admit that I had no idea what the horses name was. Thank goodness for Google!), Fairy Godmother's starry night garlic toast and strawberry mice. For dessert we had Magic pumpkin orange sherbet ice cream. I got a lot of inspiration from this blog post I found on pinterest.
For our crafts we made Fairy Godmother wands and colored pictures. We then played a few games such as finding Gus under coffee mugs, stacking corn and balancing a tray on our heads.
Here is what the inside of the menu looks like with the pages side by side.
I used another Cinderella poster for the image on the back of the menu.
I took one of the silhouettes I'd used in the menu and changed the color to black with a blue border and sized them to fit on our little glass cups. Then I added some blue and white striped paper straws I had in the house. Such a simple way to make water fun.
I put HD's tea set on the table next to Gus who I printed from the Spoonful website. He was the perfect size to hide under a coffee mug. Sadly, my strawberry mice looked more like foxes. I sent Mr. to the store to grab some sliced almonds and accidently told him to grab slivered almonds. He grabbed what I'd asked for, and since he didn't know what they were for, he didn't realized I'd made a mistake. Oops...they still tasted yummy.  
I printed out a move ticket for each of us. I found these darling ones at Momma's Playground. She tells you what fonts she uses so that you can add your own name to the ticket. Cute!  
The carriage wheel pasts was delicious!
I cut the garlic bread into stars using a cookie cutter before cooking it.
Then we sat down to enjoy our meal together!
After dinner we had Magic pumpkin orange sherbet ice cream. I found the idea on Spoonful.com. I used mint cookies for the "dirt" and then used a tootsie roll for the stem. The spoonful website had a piece of mint attached to the top for a leaf. It looked really cute but I knew my kids wouldn't eat it so I didn't bother buying any.  I made the mistake of telling HD that the cookies were "dirt" and she was careful to eat only the ice cream after that. I couldn't convince here they there were just yummy cookie crumbs.
Then we put Gus under a coffee mug and I mixed three of them up and had HD try to guess which cup he was under. It was a lot of fun and HD got really good at watching the cup with Gus under it while I was mixing them up. We also laughed during the movie when Lucifer was looking for Gus under the tea cups since we'd just played our own version up in the kitchen.  
We also made Fairy Godmother wands. I got this fun idea from Spoonful.com.
Then I pulled out some of the dry corn I have for sensory bins and we tried to see how high we could stack it. We weren't very good at this but it was still fun.
Then we tried to balance a tea set on our head like Cinderella does in the movie.
HD didn't want to let go.
Then we watched the movie because it was getting late and we wanted to finish it before bedtime.
The next morning HD colored the Cinderella pictures.
 
This was such a fun night and I can't wait for the next one! For all blogs and posts that I received inspiration from please visit my Cinderella Movie Night board on pinterest.