Summer + Beach + Cabin = No School

So that means that my posts are not really shall we say "academic" for a while.

I had a lovely Fourth of July filled with plenty of sun, beveraging, kids, bug bites, bonfires, food and fireworks.

I wanted to quick share a craft that I made for the weekend; a piñata.
We (J and I) went to his father's cabin on Big Blake Lake in Wisconsin.  His Dad, Stepmom, and two little brothers were going to be there, along wiht his Aunt and Uncle and thier two children. (plus other various aunts uncles and grammar with no children. ) So we had 4 kids under the age of 11.  We were trying to come up with ideas for them to do I came up with Tie Dying red and blue t-shirts (to wear next year even) and a pinata.  Aunti K came up with a bunch of ideas invovling water guns, buckets of water and other relay type ideas.
ON Sunday night I went onto partycity.com, and saw that they had two styles of piñatas   So promptly on Monday morning I went to Party City to get said Fourth of July Piñata. Turns out.  They do not carry them in the store.  Not a single Papier-mâché (French for "chewed paper" incidentally) flag, star, hot dog, firework, or head of a patriot anywhere.  I was dumb founded.  SURELY I am not the only person that thinks (two days before the holiday) we should blind fold kids, spin them around, let them loose with a bat at a box with crepe paper on it for the Fourth of July.  Am I?  I mean it is our Nations Birthday! I guess I am. 
Well I started thinking, well everyone in this family likes StarWars, I will just get a Vader Head from the SW section of Party City and be done.  It was tiny.  Tiny like 3 packs of Skittles, 2 glow sticks and 4 Squeenkies are gunna fit in that helmet and nothing more.  Then I decided, well kids turn 4 all the time, perhaps there is a piñata in the shape of a number 4.  But no.  All I could find was 1, 3, 21,50.  Show me the 1 year old that can break a piñata and I will give you $100.  Besides they looked like this:

Not super patriotic. 
I kept searching.  There had to be a way to make a piñata not be lame.  Then I found this:

On sale for, wait for it, $10.99.  SCORE!  Ok I thought about it...How was I going to make this record cool.  I purchased 1 roll of red streamer crepe paper, and 1 roll of white.  And 5 blue shiny stars.  THe sides were already blue and white (the picture above lies...it was blue with a white stripe.) so I figured I could just cover the top and bottom with stripes of red and white, then slap some blue stars on it, add some ribbon and be done!!!!!

This is what came out of my crafty time:

It turned out to be a hit.  No pun intended. (I do not know how to make the video rotate.  I will work on that for the next one.)  

Anyway.  I also got a killer tan, drank a few beverages, and got to relax.  Although J likes to argue that I have been relaxing for three weeks.  I said yes, and remember how crazy I was in November, and May.... It makes up for that. :)

Hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July!!!!!!!

Cheers,

J.