Words with Friends: Game App? Or Dating App?

When did Words with Friends become a dating app? I used to play a long time ago and recently decided to start playing again.  A few days in I started getting messages from players with profile pictures of older men.  Each one tried to get me to tell them my location.  Every time I said I do not give out my location.  Some were persistent and asked why not.  Others just blocked me or resigned from the game.  One guy said "I hope you don't mind if we get to know each other better".  Another said "I am just a friend" when I said I don't give out my location to strangers.  I ended up changing my profile picture from a photo of my face to a photo of a caterpillar.  That seemed to deter the unwanted messages for awhile.  Yesterday a new person sent me an invitation for a game and I accepted.  Again, it was a picture of an older man.  He ended up sending a message asking for my location and when I refused to tell him he resigned from the game.  I have always been a little wary of giving out information to strangers (probably all of the true crime shows that I watch) but the sad thing is that there are people out there who are naïve.  There are people who probably don't know any better that will give out personal information.  I would like to know what the end game is here.  Identify theft? Trafficking? Or are these guys hoping that someone will "sext" with them? After the first person messaged me I kind of just laughed it off but then I was getting at least one message a day.  Anyone else have this problem with game apps?

Lake George in NY: Awesome Family Vacation

One of my favorite places to visit is Lake George in NY.  My family used to go frequently when I was younger and this year I got to take my son for a short vacation.  This year we stayed at O'Connor's Cottages.  It was the first time that we stayed at this particular spot but it was very nice!  The cabins were clean and cozy.  The cabin that we stayed in had two bedrooms, a bathroom, living room and small kitchen with a stovetop, refrigerator and microwave.  The property was kept in very good shape.  There were a lot of activities right on the property such as bocce ball, mini golf, kayaking, paddleboats, rowboats, a playground and a small beach with a floating dock.  The resort did not charge rental fees for any of the boats which was really awesome.  Certain nights of the week the resort had a fire in their fire pit down by the beach where you could toast marshmallows. 

When we went out on the rowboat we caught a lot of fish! 

 

 

Every day we saw ducks walking around the beach. 

 

This is the view from our cabin.  Our cabin was up a hill a little from the lake but they do have cabins closer to the lake.  Our view was still beautiful and the walk down to the lake wasn't a bad walk at all.

 

 

This is the front view of our cabin.  The cabin has a picnic table with umbrella on the porch and a small gas grill.  There were also charcoal grills down near the beach area. 

 

 

The view is really gorgeous and we spent a lot of time at the resort because there were so many things to do right at the resort! 

 

There are also tons of things to do outside of the resort area.  Some of my favorites are;

 

Horseback riding/pony rides at Saddle Up Stables (this link will take you to the visitlakegeorge.com website which has the address and phone number for the stables).

 

Downtown Lake George area also had a lot to do; arcades, a House of Frankenstein wax museum (This is one of my personal favorites but I would not recommend it for small children), shopping, Lake George Steamboat Company and Fort William Henry Museum.

 

In the opposite direction is Bolton's Landing which has more shopping including a grocery store (we chose to bring our food in coolers because it was more cost effective).  We also got our fishing licenses from the hardware store in Bolton's Landing.

 

A few of my other  favorite places to go are Natural Stone Bridge and Caves, Gore Mountain, and Ausable Chasm.  Ausable Chasm is approximately an hour from O'Connors Cottages but it is a really great place to visit and they have rafting, rock climbing and hiking just to name a few activities. 

 

I hope you liked this post and my links give you some great vacation ideas! Have you every visited Lake George? If you have any questions please post in the comment section and I will do my best to answer them!

 

DIY Harry Potter Inspired Wands

This year my son asked for a Harry Potter birthday party.  So right away I started Googling different DIY Harry Potter birthday ideas.  One DIY that I found is homemade wands.  I actually thought it would be pretty cool to make homemade wands but I am not an expert in wood crafts so I was unsure of how to go about this.  I ended up finding a very easy and inexpensive way to make the wands.  I got the idea from  Boxy Colonial.  Click the link to see her instructions. 

I made the wands using chopsticks (Amazon), hot glue, paint and some clear coat spray to protect the paint.  The chopsticks are already tapered on one end so the shape was right for the wands. 

Step one is to use the hot glue to make handles on the chopsticks.  Take a hot glue gun and use it to decorate the thicker end of the chopsticks.  Unfortunately I forgot to get a good photo of the chopsticks before we painted.  The photo below is of my son starting to paint the wand so it will give you an idea of what it looks like unpainted.

 

 

The glue process is very easy but I tried to make each wand look as different as possible which was a little difficult.  At one point I tried to make little glue dots to give the handle a polka dotted look but it did not work well with the hot glue.  I actually found that the wands that I just swirled the glue around on looked pretty cool after being painted.

Step Two is to paint the wands.  I stuck to browns and greys.  I actually did not end up having brown paint in my supply so I just mixed other colors until I got a shade that I liked.  I mixed green and red to get a dark brown.  After I painted a few wands using that color I added white or yellow to lighten the brown. 

 

As of this post I still have to spray the wands with clear coat (Step Three).  The photos below are after painting but before clear coat.  I am pretty happy with the way they turned out!   The plan is to let each wand choose a wizard or witch (child) at the party.  I am not sure how I want to set that up yet but I read some other blogs to get some ideas. One idea was to blindfold each child and let them choose a wand without looking.  Another idea was to have each child pick up a wand to see if that wand would choose them.  While the child is holding the wand use a sound effects button to make a sound like breaking glass (if you remember in the first movie Harry accidentally shatters a vase in the wand shop while choosing his wand).  After the child has tried two to three wands push a button that has some kind of music (something from the movie if possible!).  I have not looked into the sound effects yet.  Let me know if you have any creative ideas for letting a wand choose a wizard!

Lots of wands for the kids!

I really liked the way the swirled handles came out

 

I really can't believe that this project was so easy to do and I hope this post inspired you to make your own wands!  The best part was hearing my son yell "expecto patronum!" the other night while I was doing the dishes.  I love creating, especially when it makes my son so happy :)

Fun Kids Farm Party!!

Farm Party for Kids

So last year my son said he wanted a farm party for his third birthday.  The awesome thing about this theme was there was no expensive licensed merchandise to buy.  A couple months before his birthday I started searching online for different farm party ideas.  I generally try to have food with clever names related to the theme of the party; like "Veggie Patch" for a vegetable tray or "Hay Bales" for rice krispie treats.  I do my best to make the majority of the decorations and invitations myself and provide some activities for the kids.

For the farm party we had activities like an egg hunt, pig bean bag toss, and "lasso the horse" game.  For the lasso the horse game we built a horse out of some extra lumber that was laying around.  After building the main part of the horse, I made a mane out of yarn and ears out of some fabric that I had.  It was actually very simple to make the horse.  I will say that I had my father's help with building the body so that made the process quicker.  Also, we figured that some of the kids might try to sit on the horse so you can see in the photo below we added some extra support between the "legs" of the horse.  For the lasso I took an old hula hoop and wrapped some brown twine around it.  This process took awhile and was tedious.  Wrap some twine, secure it with hot glue, wrap some more twine, glue it and so on until the hoop was completely covered.  Then I used some poster board and wooden skewers to make a sign for the game.

For the egg hunt I found some plain white plastic eggs on Amazon.  Then I made a little chicken coop out of a cardboard box and some brown paint.  I added some hay and a stuffed chicken that I also found on Amazon.  Then I hid the eggs around the yard for the kids to find.  Unfortunately, it was a little warm that day so some of the goodies in the eggs started to melt.  The last game was a pig bean bag toss.  A woman that I know was actually getting ready to toss out a stand up cardboard pig game that she had made so she kindly gifted it to me but I believe it would be very simply to make as well.  She used the plastic play fruits and vegetables from her own home for her pig toss but I opted to make my own beans bags using some extra fabric that I had laying around my house.  Once the bean bags were sewn I used fabric paint to paint vegetables on them.  This is more time consuming of course but I did not actually have any plastic vegetables at my house so this was less expensive for me personally. 

 

I ended up printing out large black and white pictures of farm animals on plain white paper and then painting the animals with the colors that I wanted.  You can see my rooster and chicken above in the egg hunt picture.  The animals were the main part of the decorations.  I was able to find inexpensive farm party plates and napkins on Michael's website.  One of my absolute favorites from this party was the farm market (or party favors!).  I found cow print paper bags with handles online.  I added some farm animal temporary tattoos and farm scenes with stickers.  Then the rest of the goodies I sent up on the table like a market.  We had pink gummy pigs, chalk eggs, Cow Tales candy, farm animal cookies (with cute "tiny petting zoo" tags) and ears of corn (popcorn in clear goodie bags wrapped in green tissue paper for the husks). 

 

I really like to try to come up with create names (and place cards) for the different types of party food.  For this party we had hay bales (rice krispie treats), veggie patch (vegetable tray), pigs in a blanket (that one didn't need a name change).  I tried to stick with the BBQ type food by serving baked beans, fruit salad, and fresh cucumbers from the garden. 

My sister made the cake (she is the baker of the family!)

 

 

 

I can't see to find a picture of the invitations that I made but I used plain white cards, cut out red barns from cardstock.  I printed out little piles of hay (from clipart) and glued them in the barn doorway.   Then I added some farm animal stickers.

 

I started making invitations and decorations about a month ahead of the party because the previous year (dino theme!) I waited too long and because I was stubborn about getting certain things done, I ended up staying up extremely late the night before the party painting cardboard dinos. 

 

I hope that this post gives you some fun farm party ideas!  Thanks for reading.

PS this is my first real blog post so I am figuring out the formatting. :)

 

 

Hello!

Hey everyone!
 
I am Kristen!  I am a wife and mother.  I really like to be creative and I created this blog to share ideas.  One of my favorite things that I like to do is create themed parties for my son's birthday each year.  I am always searching online for ideas.  I would like to use this blog to share ideas I have found online and also ideas that I have come up with myself.  I also plan to blog about some of my other interests; nature, gardening, books, movies, kids' activities, travel etc.  I hope that some of my posts will help spark some creative ideas for you as well! Thanks for reading!