Grad Party Games

When planning your favorite Grad's party, don't forget the games.  If the thought of having to think about what high school seniors would enjoy at your party makes your head swim, no worries, we have a few ideas!

Our party started with a photo shoot.  Shocked?! Ha!  If this thought makes you stressed, call your favorite photographer and see if they are available for a fun cap and gown mini session for your graduate and their friends.  While we were taking pictures, the grands were finishing up party preparations.

And then my parents put together an awesome Car Rally.  Car Rally's are such a blast!  It's a scavenger hunt but in 3-D.  Teams have to drive the speed limit, follow directions for a route, and pick up things by figuring out clues along the way.  They are super fun and we had many giggles watching our soon-to-be graduates try to figure out how to win.

And they did! Our Hannah and her team totally won...and it wasn't rigged! 

We had hamburgers will all of the fixings, chips, dip, soft drinks, and my favorite part~smore's!

We found the large s'more roasting skewers from amazon here and they were perfect!

If a Car Rally isn't your things, there are many more fun game ideas on my Pinterest board pinned just for you here. 

Grad Party Decorations

"We're gonna party like it's 1999...." Oh, sorry!  I keep singing that song in my head.  This time last year was crazy town with a capital C.  Our baby was getting ready to graduate and while my heart seemed torn in a million pieces at the thought that she was really old enough to graduate from high school (wasn't kindergarten just yesterday?), we had parties to plan.  Yes, you read that correctly...she had a few parties.  And we had a blast planning and preparing for them.

My thoughts are with all of you moms and grands planning parties for your favorite graduates this year.  I'll be sharing a few Grad Party Ideas this week just for you in hopes that it helps you give the best graduation party ever! 

Let's begin with decorations, shall we?  Every party needs a theme and a theme is always a fabulous place to begin planning a party!

Party City has all of these decorations and so much more!

Amy at Living Locurto always has the best ideas.  The above party diy party favors are so cute!

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The one party decoration that I wanted to do and didn't is this last one!  Blueberrysprinkles has made it so easy for you....all you have to do is add your pictures.  And we know you have the pictures because you have had to pull your favorite five or six for their Graduation Slideshow at school.  My tears are ready to spill over remembering how wonderfully difficult it was to only choose five or six.  So many memories that happened much too quickly.

You must order this.  No, I'm not getting a commission, but I love this idea.  I'm so thankful that my friend, Teri Fode shared it.  It's a MUST have for your graduation party!

There are a million more ideas but hopefully this will help you get started.  Enjoy!

Our Cindy Lou Who and her Grinch

Our Cindy Lou Who and her Grinch...he's actually a pretty sweet guy but it matched Hannah's outfit.  Ha!  They actually had planned to go as a huntress and her trophy buck. But, the buck trophy costume didn't arrive on time.  In fact, it has yet to arrive at all.  Weird! So in a feat of last minuteness, I remembered Uncle Tony's Santa Costume and grabbed one of my old Christmas sweaters and the frenzy began.  Nathan picked up green face paint and Hannah's fabulous eyelashes at a local costume shop and we started on Hannah's hair.

We used a solo cup for the main part and pipe cleaners braided in to her hair for the cindy lou braided loops.  It was so fun!!!  And they looked fabulous.  And Hannah won best costume.  Yay!  Our last minute idea worked out well.  Ha!  And now I'm ready to watch the movie and, play Christmas carols, and decorate my house for Christmas.  My high school students might freak out if I played Christmas carols in the classroom this early.  Have you started decorating yet?

It's Pumpkin Carving Time

Both of our girls were home for the weekend.  Delight!  So, in between leading the band Friday night (Hannah), taking pictures on the sidelines (me), and the ACT (Hannah), we decided to have a little pumpkin carving contest.  Yes!  We are all a bit competitive in our family...just a bit.  Ha! The hardest part was finding pumpkins. Seriously?!  We tried four different grocery stores.  Ugh!  The pumpkins we planted in our garden aren't quite finished yet...meaning we have beautiful flowers but no pumpkins yet.  Hopefully someday soon.  Finally, we found our pumpkins and headed home for dinner and a little pumpkin carving competition.

Gone are the days when our girls had to use plastic knives but sites like those above made me want to break out the plastic kit knives. Scary!

Hannah's boyfriend had never carved pumpkins before.  We had a little fun with him. See the tiny pumpkin above?  We convinced him that he had to start small and work his way to the adult sized pumpkins.  Ha! We had a real pumpkin waiting for him in the pantry.  He was a good sport and carved the tiny pumpkin and the larger one.  By the look on his face, I think he was glad to have joined in our competition.

Here are our results left to right:  Rachel's Olaff pumpkin, mine (fairly simple compared to my Martha Stewart pumpkin from a few years ago that shocked the fire out of me), the boyfriends pumpkins, Mr. Incredible's pumpkin (he won!), and Hannah's mustache man pumpkin.  Her pumpkin reminds me of the Monopoly Man.

And here they are close up.  What a fun night!

My Gold Toms

My girls love to wear Toms shoes! And their love of Toms and the great mantra the company shares with the rest of the world made me love Toms too! I have four pair now. My favorite pair is my sparkly red ones. This Kansas-born-and-raised-girl (until the middle of my 8th grade year) simply had to have them! They remind me of Dorothy shoes and since the high school where I teach and where Hannah plays basketball is red and grey, they were simply meant to be! And I may or may not occasionally, when my high school students are being a bit rude or rowdy, click my heels together and think to myself, "There's no place like home!" :-)

The red sparkly ones are my favorite, but I also have a pair that I thought I liked when I first bought them but then realized they just needed something. With the blessed growth of my photography business and my responsibilities at home and at school, I don't have a lot of time to get my craft on.

But, with the upcoming Baylor game, I had my inspiration and a little extra time (extra meaning, I was finishing these babies up at 3:30 in the morning, right before we caught our 9:30 flight.

This is what I started with:

I carefully stuffed each shoe with newspaper and taped off the parts that I didn't want to paint with blue painters tape:

This is what I used to glitter-fy my Toms:

I poured the Mod Podge into a plastic bowl (which makes clean up easier) and added lots of gold glitter. Can you have too much glitter?!

And then I started painting the glitter and glue mixture all over my shoes. I would suggest starting with a thin coat, letting it dry for about 30 minutes, and then adding another coat.

It doesn't look awesome at this point, but it will. Be patient! (I hear you giggling Mom! I'm not a fan of the "P" word.)

To speed things up a bit, I decided to paint the glitter/glue mixture on and then microwave each shoe for 30 seconds. I don't recommend this step. It doesn't smell lovely and it makes the glue run.

Finally, after three coats, I decided to peel off the tape to reveal the design.  Looking good.  At around midnight, I decided it would be super awesome to tape off the gold and add green glitter to the plain part of the shoes.  Green and Gold, Sic 'em Baylor Bears!

Decisions at midnight when you are flying to Arizona in 9 and a half hours wasn't the best choice.  It looked ugly (now I'm singing that silly song in my head, U-G-L-Y, you ain't got no alibi, you ugly, hey, hey, you ugly)  Please, excuse me if I don't have the correct words to that song, as my family, I tend to make up my own all of the time.

This is totally off topic, but do you remember that song called, "Sad Eyes?"  If you are a child of the 70's or late 60's you do.  I would sing, "Satellite, turn the other way..."  I was convinced those were the words!  Just yesterday, our family was talking about the movie Pitch Perfect and that song, "No Diggity....or something like that" came on.  I thought it was, "No Dignity!"  At least I'm consistent!

Anyway, back to the shoes, after the ugly green glitter part dried and I carefully put them on my feet to see what they looked like, I decided to cover them up with more gold!

And this is where I should have a final picture, but I don't. The all gold shoes were pretty cool...a bit ghetto, but cool. I finished the shoes with a clear coat of spray sealer, quickly put them outside to dry for the next 4 hours, and finally went to bed.

Four hours later, the shoes were frozen solid! I packed them anyway in individual zip lock bags and off we went. When we arrived at our hotel in Arizona, our suitcase had a lovely varnish kind of smell. My shoes? Somehow they dried perfectly, they didn't crack, and I proudly wore them to the Baylor Pep Rally the night before the Fiesta Bowl. Whew!!!

And then Baylor lost the bowl game, end of story! Maybe they needed a little gold glitter on their shoes!