DIY Lanyard

For my son's minion birthday party, I made some super easy and cheap minion lanyards. I think I made about 16 of them in an hour. It took no time at all. And with just a little bit of effort, you can make them look way better than mine did.

Here's what you need:
needle and thread
minion ribbon
lobster clasp hooks

Step 1: Cut your ribbon. I was making these for kids in kindergarten and younger so I only cut about 28-inch pieces. However, it is best to measure what is going to work best for you. A lanyard should hit right above your tummy when standing.

Step 2: Put your ribbon through the hole in the clasp hooks and fold it up to the back.

Step 3: Sew the ribbon closed around the hook.

Step 4: Add your name tag and wear it!

See? Wasn't that easy? And the kids loved it! It was great!

6th Birthday Party at Miller Park Zoo

This year, my son's birthday was held at the zoo. They have 2 options for parties. One is outdoor at their covered area right after you enter the zoo ($125 for 20 people for 2 hours; $7/person extra up to 40 people). The second option (the one we chose) is in the large classroom ($175 for 20 people for 2 hours; $9/person extra up to 40 people). Both of these options include a treat bag for each child. You can purchase carousel rides for $1 per rider. You can also get an animal encounter for 20 minutes with 2 animals of your choice (in advance) for $75. We were going to choose to add both of these add-ons to make our party experience complete, but it was raining that day so we decided to just get the animal encounter.
Members of the Miller Park Zoological Society receive a 10% discount.

My son wanted a minion party. And I think it turned out pretty great! (But that's a post for another time.) We called 3 months in advance and both times on Saturday were already booked. However, Sunday was wide open. We chose the later time (1pm-3pm) because the early one on a Sunday just seemed too early (10am-12pm). Well, we ran into quite the issue about 2 days before the party. They had double booked the room and accidentally written ours on the schedule from 10am-12pm. This was very stressful and I still get sick whenever I think about it. They did not handle this in the correct way at all. The simple fact is that we booked first so we should have gotten to keep the room. But no! That's not how it worked out. We ended up with a much smaller room that was half way across the zoo. It turned out to not be a HUGE deal, but I can tell you that after the party was over, I was definitely thinking about how the party would have gone much smoother if we had been in the larger room. They did, however, wave the fee for the animal encounter.

Overall, it wasn't the party that I wanted and I'm very disappointed in it. I would say that I wouldn't recommend using the Miller Park Zoo as your party venue. However, one of the employees did say that they're surprised this doesn't happen more often which leads me to believe it's not a very common occurrence so I suppose you could give it a try.

The Coolest Cups Ever!

For my son's minion party, I thought it would be kind of cool to have some personalized (but not too personalized) cups to give as part of the favors. I found these cups on TotallyPromotional.com and I think they're amazing. So the cups are a frosted colored plastic cup that change to blue when you add cold liquid to it (they were blue when I got them because it was so cold outside!). I chose to use one of their clipart choices. It said Happy Birthday. I put that in yellow to go along with our yellow and blue minion theme. I then bought some lids and straws to go with these cups (little hands make easy spills). Everyone thought they were great! And like I said, they were personalized because they said Happy Birthday. But they weren't too personalized because like a lot of wedding favors, putting your name on things leads to favors that people aren't going to keep. Another way to use these cups outside of promoting your business is to commemorate a trip. We received a cup just like this when we went on a Disney Cruise when we participated in fish extenders. You could use them to commemorate a wedding (for the kids) or a family reunion or pretty much anything where you're hosting more than 20 people because that's the minimum order. I ordered 50 and am going to save the extras as birthday gifts for my students next year.

Recipe: My Favorite Slow Cooker Meal

My husband and I have been making this slow cooker meal for a while now. I've tried a couple different ways of making beef and potatoes and this is definitely the most delicious. Well, let's just get right to it:

Ingredients:
1 small bag of baby carrots
2.5 lb bag of Honey Gold Potatoes
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
1 packet of dry onion soup mix
1.5 lbs of stew beef

Directions:
Layer the baby carrots on bottom, then the potatoes, and then the meet. Now pour the onion soup mix on top of everything. Then pour the mushroom soup and one can of water over top. Cook on low for 7-8 hours.

I hope you enjoy your meal as much as we do!