My youngest turned 4 last week and we had a little birthday party to celebrate. He is very heavily into two things at the moment: cheetahs and bananas. Deciding between a cheetah party and a banana party was difficult, but bananas won out in the end. There aren’t a whole lot of banana themed party goods out there, so we had to make up our own.

For a craft, we made a bunch of banana phones–you know the banana phone song don’t you? They are just tin can phones that we made with yellow cups and string. I thought they would be a little tricky for 4 year olds to make, so I made one for everyone ahead of time. We put them out with markers and stickers, and the kids decorated their own phones. I have to admit I was surprised they worked–and so well!

For favors we gave out bunches of bananas! What else?! I scratched the message on with a toothpick. I’m kicking myself for not writing “thanks a bunch!” How did I miss such a perfect pun? Oh well.

I was going to write banana jokes on the bananas too, but ended up putting them on the bags for the pinata candy. Here are a few more, because I know you need some bad banana jokes today:

• Q: What kind of  key opens a banana? A: a monkey!
• Q: Why are bananas never lonely? A: Because they hang around in bunches.
• Q: How do monkeys get down the stairs? A: They slide down the banana-ster!
• Q: What did the banana say to the monkey? A: Nothing, bananas can’t talk!

The candy bags were for a banana pinata, of course! And really, the pinata stole the show. The kids helped me make it. It might look super involved, but pinatas are actually super easy and super fun to make. Oh Happy Day has a ton of tutorials on pinatas if you are curious how to make them.

Mine is just cardboard and masking tape. Next time I will double the amount of masking tape because the pinata broke before everyone got a whack at it. The kids are getting bigger and stronger. They were too busy frantically gathering candy to be upset, though.

The birthday boy got a few good hits in and that’s all that matters.

The party was in the afternoon, so we just put out a few snacks. They were all yellow: yellow peppers, yellow watermelon (which the kids were afraid of, but was actually totally delicious), yellow tomatoes, banana chips, and lemonade.

Instead of a birthday cake for dessert we had banana splits! There were bananas (of course), three kinds of ice cream, whipped cream, and real cherries for the top. The birthday boy was in heaven!

And here is the banana birthday party aftermath:

It was a banana blast!

Pinterest made me do it. Seems popcorn cereal is an old timey, pioneer treat. It’s also a dead easy breakfast if you have some leftover popcorn from movie night. Sadly only one of my kids liked it, but he liked it so much he ate everyone else’s!

I bought these little chairs 5 years ago. And wow, they have been through a lot. They were in pretty rough shape…

…as you can see

Recovering them had been on my list for a very long time. I bought the oil cloth ages ago and then it just sat there, staring at me. Finally I just pulled out my staple gun and went for it!

And it was so much easier and faster than I ever imagined. Took me an hour or two tops!

Any projects you are finally crossing off your list this summer?

the title says it all: today is the last day to buy the alphabet collection! The collection includes four patterns, for both girls and boys, for 20 bucks. Not bad! You can see everything I made from the collection here and some of my favorites from the tour are pictured below.

1. by petit a petit & family 2. by melissa esplin 3. by kojo designs 4. by shwin & shwin 5. by crafiness is not optional 6. by petit a petit & family 7. by sew a straight line 8. by elegances & elephants

See all the amazing things you can make with just a few patterns! What are you waiting for? Oh wait, you can’t wait–today is the last day to buy the alphabet collection!!

Pick up a packet of plastic cups at the store and your kids will play happily all afternoon. At least that’s what happened to me. This is just a small sampling of what my kids did with a stack of cups.

–building pyramids

–making bombs out of cups to throw at the cup pyramid

–jumping cups!

The idea for the jumping cups came from this awesome project from All For the Boys. We were too lazy to make a minion (I need my own minions to do that) and our cups were little so we could just wrap the rubber band around the whole cup, but it’s the same idea. This is an awesome little trick to file away for a rainy day.

–jumping cup variations

There were 3, 4, 5 cups jumping at one time. And my son even hooked up two passengers to jump with a cup!

–play money

My daughter cut up a few cups, while we were flinging them all over the living room, and made play money. The coins are the bottoms of the cups and the bill is the rest of the cup.

–bracelets

She didn’t get my “By the power of Isis” joke, but they are still cool bracelets.