Make your own chocolate sauce. Like a boss.

Chocolate sauce recipe = cocoa, sugar, salt, water, oil. 

Concoct away! Add ingredients to get the right consistency and flavor for you, but start small...otherwise you might have gallons. Mine tasted just like brownie batter...mmm...

Animal Party for kids

I am a bargain shopper, repurposer, make-do-with-what-you-have-er, lighten up daily activities with life and creativity sort of mom (most of the time).  Here's how I did a summer animal party for my 6 year old on the CHEAP.

Free + Cheap items + creativity + getting your kids involved = little kid party fun

First, we scoured Oriental Trading for slightly less than perfect or clearance items.  Found this Vacation Bible School Arch FOR 9 DOLLARS.  Came in a week or less and took less than 1 hour to assemble. What am I crazy?  A sane person could not say no to this deal.  Repurposing it in my 1st grade classroom in the fall.  How will I make it fit in?  I'll keep you posted :)  

Ami (Grandma) bought this for Anastasia (which, by the way, is a great way to make out of town relatives and friends feel a part of your celebration...each year grandma sends something for the party even if she doesn't come).

We shed some of the obvious VBS parts of the arch, but for 9 bucks I was not going to pass this puppy up.  Soooo many uses for this and can always be disassembled and donated to a school, church or civic group.  Was so easy to put together my 6 year old got in on the action.

The kids set up their own table (coffee table with dollar store table cloth, hats, napkins).  Not glamorous, but it made them feel like they had ownership of the party and got them excited and brainstorming about things they would do with their friends.  I highly recommend this.

Dollar store stuff + Fast food drink holder = all the table supplies you can handle (napkins, utensils, etc)

Ok, I am a crafty person, you got me.  I know this one's not as simple as it looks, but it's going in my classroom in the Fall (two-fer) so I spent mucho extra time on it.  The concept?  Take apart a box (yep), tape the floppy parts together (see my black duck tape?...they also have fun designs) cut some face holes, and paint.  I used cheap acrylics I bought for another project that were saturated with color and a deal so delicious I couldn't pass it up...$1 a tube from Tuesday Morning.  Great decorations to add color and something fun to do and share.  Snap a pic and it can go in a Thank you card (I didn't make it this far, but I'm going to make kid name plates for my students this year)

Side 1

Side 2

Every year I make my daughter's pinata.  Usually it's a sticky mess of liquid starch, newspaper and balloons which must dry before you can paint it.  Cheap, but time-consuming.  This, friends, is a USPS box.

Step one...make generous holes in one side (bottom) and attach long strings (monkey is sitting on them) that the kids will pull instead of pummeling pinata blindfoldedly with a bat (eep!)  If you can, take the time to ease the process by cutting a section away, then loosely taping it back together.  A false "door" might have helped us (the box was too strong for my 5-6 year old minions to loosen)...I had to resort to gentle dismembering...

Next, fill box with candy and tape up.

Decorate at will with tissue paper and a hot glue gun.  I got fancy, but it didn't take much time.  Kids are just as happy with an empty box (you know this) and this could easily be covered with a thin layer of tissue in a pretty color as it already has ribbons hanging from the bottom to pull.

This tissue paper came in one pack.  For one dollar.  Bing!

We created a bunch of fun water games to play outside:

Ping pong toss

Water Balloon Hot Potato (poke a hole in a giant water balloon and let them go to town)

Squirt guns+tiny ducks=duck derby race...each kid uses their gun to squirt their duck to victory

Cup on the head fill up with water cannon double dare type game

So many options.  So many uses for dollar store items.

A little bit of decoration can go a long way.

Close-up of the arch pieces.  They came in one nice Fed Ex box, flat and scored for easy folding.