A Little House On The Pond Gold Rush Party Menu

**This post does contain some affiliate links which could possibly earn me a small commission if a purchase was made through them. These links help to support our blog and our family.

I know I did another post about our Gold Rush Party preparations but I thought it might be helpful to just post the basic menu that we used and decorations that did. This was a lot smaller scale than we had originally planned as I had some unexpected bills come up which made our food budget a little tighter this month.

Here was the menu that the kids came up with:

Gold Rush Party Menu

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Main Menu:

  1. Lemonade (The actually chose some ‘Tampico Island Punch’ instead… it was a golden/yellowish color so we went with it.)
  2. Gold Rush Chicken aka Alice Springs Chicken for the adults (I tried some of Alvi’s Incredible Seasoning in place of the Seasoned Salt and it was AMAZING!)
  3. Golden Nuggets aka chicken nuggets for the kids.
  4. Honey Mustard dipping sauce
  5. Gold Noodles aka Grandma’s Mac N Cheese
  6. Golden French Fries

Look at this HUGE bag I found at Sam’s Club:

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Desserts:

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  1. Goldfish crackers
  2. Butterscotch candies
  3. Pineapple chunks
  4. Pineapple upside down cake (I made a few individual cupcake size cakes and used fresh pineapple which made them extra delicious.)
  5. An assortment of gold wrapper candies like Mini Twix bars, Hershey’s Kisses, Rolos, and Mini Reese’s cups.
  6. Peanut Brittle Chunks mixed with Hersheys Gold bar pieces and yellow peanut M&Ms.
  7. Fiddle Faddle popcorn.
  8. Gold Coated Cookies (We used a store brand oreo cookie with some gold spray mist color. 1 can did approximately 12 cookies.)

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Decor:

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A lot of these were found at Dollar Tree and/or Walmart. Oriental Trading had some great decorations but I just didn’t have time to get them. Amazon also has a wide assortment of gold party supplies. 

  1. Gold Balloons
  2. Gold plates
  3. Gold buckets
  4. Gold Trays
  5. Party Hats (They couldn’t find any yellow or gold ones so they chose Minions, of course.)
  6. Glow sticks
  7. LED Party Favors (we had these left over from a product review I had done a while back.)

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They also used a lot of the different candies as decorations around the centerpiece and around the house. They also had to include a dinosaur… who knows maybe there have been some dinosaur fossils found while gold mining?

We had some gold flakes to show everyone as well as a few pieces of pyrite from their Gold Digging kit that they had done last week. This would have been a great activity for kids to do although it would be best for older kids as it was a bit difficult for the younger ones.

I printed out this Gold Rush Wordsearch for the kids to do as well. There are a ton of ideas for games that you could do. We just didn’t get around to playing any as the kids had too much fun with the LED toys and glow sticks. They were also busy helping out with the decorating and and putting their skills learned from Kids Cook Real Food  to help with the food prep.

The girls also gave a speech about the California Gold Rush and answered questions. Joey gave a simple speech as well off the top of his head. All in all everyone had some great fun and enjoyed themselves quite a bit.

We are looking forward to our next party when we finish up our Little House on the Prairie book.

Eureka! I Found My Belt And A Lot Of Gold!

**This post does contain some affiliate links which could possibly earn me a small commission if a purchase was made through them. These links help to support our blog and our family.

Oh my! What a day we have had. As you know from yesterday’s post I was feeling a bit overwhelmed before we even made it to our dance… I finally found that missing belt though and you’ll never guess where. If it had been a snake it would have bit me… it really would have.

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Remember the pile of clothes I had laid out on the bed? Can you guess where it is? Take a closer look…

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See it now? I have no idea how it got there even though I am quite sure I must’ve done it before I put away my crinoline. I’ve never done this before so I’m really quite puzzled as to why I did that but it is safe and sound where it belongs now.

Crazy thing is I didn’t really even need it last night as it wasn’t quite the right shade… sigh. Here’s a quick pic of my outfit… I was hoping to get a better pic last night but that never happened either.

img_5557-1 Continue reading “Eureka! I Found My Belt And A Lot Of Gold!”

Finding Peace Amongst The Dirty Socks, Grocery Lists, Stuffed Animals, And Buffalo

**This post may contain affiliate links to products and/or services that we use in our home.

How’s your day going? I hope you said it’s going well but if it didn’t you may be having a day like mine. I’ve been busy, too busy on too many things… you probably know how that goes when you try to multitask. Sometimes multitasking can be great and you can accomplish a lot but then there are those times that nothing seems to get done.

I’ve been working on our next unit study using  ‘The Little House On The Prairie‘ written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. We had so much fun with our last unit study Little House In The Big Woods Adventure that we decided to keep on going. This is A LOT of work though but I want my kids to have fun learning so it is well worth it. To be honest I’m having a blast doing this with them too.

This next unit study is going to be so much fun! I have found so many projects, crafts, and fun activities to go along with our studies. We will be studying about so many things like prairie animals including prairie dogs and buffalo. Then there are the Native American studies that we will be doing along with continuing our state studies. We will also be touching a little bit on stars and constellations as the kids have really been interested in this topic lately. One of the girls asked to do an herb study too so I am trying to work on that as well.

Of course I have a lot more than that included in the study and I still have to finish up our Life Skills section. This time I am hoping to do it a little differently but still plan to include some fun activities like baking some molasses cookies, sewing sun bonnets, and memorizing some bible verses. I think I will have some camping tips, information, or other activities in this study as well so we may see a Weenie Roast and S’mores in our future! I’m not sure what other fun activities I will find to go along with it as I haven’t really even started this section yet and I plan to start this unit next week! AHHHH!

You can check it out and use some of the activities to go along if you plan to read this series with your kids too. A good majority of the resources I link to are FREE because I really like FREE stuff. Some of the links are affiliate links to things we are or will be using.

I am slowly working my way through the books and coming up with lots of fun stuff to do. It has been such slow progress because of so many unexpected interruptions. The biggest being the impromptu trip to Pennsylvania due to the passing of my Mom-mom. I am still not quite over that as much as I felt I should have been by now but I know everything takes time.

Then on top of that I have a houseful of kiddos running around. There are so many chores, like the never ending laundry, and so much cleaning that I need to catch up on I get overwhelmed at times. Not to mention I have to feed these little monsters at least three times a day! No wonder I can’t get anything done. Another issue this week has been our internet… yes, again. It seems that no matter what I do I can’t get it to do like I feel it should. We don’t have a lot of choices so I’m kinds stuck with what I have for now but I do plan to research options… really I do when I get a free moment… lol.

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Continue reading “Finding Peace Amongst The Dirty Socks, Grocery Lists, Stuffed Animals, And Buffalo”

Maple Glazed Brussels Sprouts

**This post does contain affiliate links to products we use. These links help to support our blog and our family. Thank you!

So with our Little House On The Prairie  Academic Adventures, we’ve been studying about some of the uses of  Maple Syrup. We happened to see some that could be used in Brussels Sprouts.

They turned out quite well and I thought I’d share the recipe with everyone. Continue reading “Maple Glazed Brussels Sprouts”

Nanner Puddin’ Time

**This post does contain affiliate links to products we use. These links help to support our blog and our family. Thank you!

The boys have been begging to make something so I decided to let them have a try at banana pudding this past week. I must say that they did a great job and we all enjoyed their tasty dessert!

They had a lot of fun making it as well. We used our Easy Banana Pudding recipe.

They all took turns cutting the bananas with these cute little knives I found on Amazon. Continue reading “Nanner Puddin’ Time”