Teenage Scavenger Hunt birthday party game

 

 

Now that I have a teenager, birthday parties are a bit easier. Just get them all together and provide pizza. What more do you need? Well, you need *something*... 

Enter the Teenage Scavenger Hunt. It gives some of that craved independence (I let them go out on their own in teams), puts those ubiquitous smartphones to good use (seriously, the endless scrolling?!), and adds some fun (the laughs and smiles were proof of that). I scoured the internet for ideas. A compilation of the best I found, plus my own ideas, resulted in what's provided here. (Plus some minor improvements based on our experience!) Feel free to use as-is, or use as a springboard for your own hunt.

 

As the judge, my favorite definitely was the bonus "Gertrude the Llama" video challenge. So hilarious. This was one stolen from somebody who stole it from somebody else who was labeled as "Source Unknown." So, thank you Source Unknown. It was brilliant. I'd link to you. Buuuut, you know.

In coming up with your own scavenger hunt, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Know your neighborhood. Tailor some hunting to what you know is in the area. For example, we live near a park, so having all team members go down a slide was one challenge.
• Create a map. Set clear boundaries for the hunt. Ours was a seven-by-three block area to include two nearby parks, and to exclude crossing any major roadways.
• Definitely have rules. Have a debrief with the teams before they leave to stress safety and respect. It's teenagers. So, quiz them before they go!
• Have a dedicated team member whose phone number you have and who has yours. Along with being available for their questions or concerns, I could text them much-needed 15-minute and 5-minute warnings!
  

Other things to think about?

Timing. I did this between pizza and dessert. They could eat their dessert while I judged the results.

Stick to your guns. The rules are your friend. Think about them, then stick to them. Teens can be surprisingly competitive, and having rules to point to helps when you have to disappoint one who's facing a loss.

Prizes. Gotta be honest. I did not know what to do here. I can tell you that stickers and bookmarks aren't all that desirable. But, for some reason, neither was the mini Sasquatch (?!). Your comments on good teenage prizes (that don't break the bank) are welcome for the next time I do this...

Team spirit. I drew names at random to mix teens up and try to break up cliques. Different colored bandanas served as team identifiers. Next time, I also would have them come up with team names.

So there you go. Teenagers are simple. So is this game. Winner!

silly = sane Teenage Scavenger Hunt free PDF

silly = sane Teenage Scavenger Hunt free DOC

"C-O-O-K-I-E-S" (video!) and The Best Cookie Ever (recipe!)

Hello again...

My kids are older, but the need to be silly in order to stay sane remains strong. That's true even as my oldest has now entered the teenage years with genetic-level sarcasm. And that's true especially during a pandemic (no need to explain that one if your calendar reads 2020).

Amid coronavirus-related shutdowns, all my work has come to a standstill. My writing fingers are positively twitching. So once again I find myself turning to this on-again, off-again blog.

The "C-O-O-K-I-E-S" song featured in this post has been knocking around my brain for over five years. I was pretty proud of myself when I came up with it, gotta say. I always thought I'd post it here, much like the hand-washing song (which, come to think of it, is sorta timely, even if it's more inspirational than instructional). Then the blog went on hiatus as life ebbed and flowed in other directions, and somehow making a video with a song that puts a kiddie spin on Todd Snider's "Beer Run" just didn't make the top priority slot. Go figure. But the song remained in the back of my head all that time like a true earworm, and I continued to nurture the half-baked dream of making a ridiculous video. Because, why the swearword not?

And, especially, why the swearword not now? I don't know about you, but I've been needing some epic-level stupid-silliness to outweigh the uncertainty and grief of these recent months.

Pandemic.

Protests.

Kids growing up.

Even my favorite family music artist, Caspar Babypants, announcing that he's done making albums. (In my silly daydreams, I always imagined him singing this song. And, let's be honest, when you observe the video, you will wish it was Chris Ballew singing the song too.)

I've been teaching my kids about covering coughs, washing hands, and observing physical distance rules.

I've been teaching my kids about justice, mercy, and love.

I've been teaching myself to loosen my grip on my kids, slowly but surely, to allow them to grow into their own.

But I'm also still teaching my kids, and myself, to smile -- every day, to find reason to smile.

Video time

So without further ado, I give you the world premiere of "C-O-O-K-I-E-S" in all its musical and technical glory. (I'm of the era of dancing hamsters and peanut butter jelly-loving bananas, so I'm feeling marginally OK about this product.)

Cookie time

Now that you're good and hungry, here are recipes for some of our favorite cookies:

Frosted Rhubarb Cookies from Taste of Home

Salted Oatmeal Cookies from The Washington Post's Leigh Lambert

Annnnnnd, the one our family has made more times than we can count, and thus what we now dub...

The Best Cookie Ever

from my Mom

Cream:

1/2 c butter

1/2 c creamy Skippy peanut butter

1/2 c sugar

3/4 c brown sugar

Beat in:

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla

Add:

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1 c flour

1/2 c oats

Fold in:

1 c chocolate chips

Bake at 350 degrees F for about 10 minutes or just starting to lightly brown at edges. Cool on wire racks.

Do you have a favorite cookie recipe? Feel free to comment and share below. We can work off quarantine weight with family dance parties, hikes, gardening, and "vigorous housework."

perfect activity for "Perfect Square"

by Melissa

a good lesson for the future mathematician and artist -- and perhaps a skill-building antidote for a trending perfectionist -- comes through Michael Hall's "Perfect Square," a picture book about a square whose life takes many unexpected turns.

It was a perfect square.

It had four matching corners

and four equal sides.

And it was perfectly happy.

But on Monday,

the square was cut into pieces

and poked full of holes.

It wasn’t perfectly square anymore.

this is sort of like Lego blocks. the girls get these amazing sets, build them according to the directions, and then play with them in their storytelling adventures -- great, great, great (or should I say awesome?). but just as great: them tearing it all apart and creating whatever wacky invention they can think up.

my youngest and i used the "Perfect Square" for some literal hands-on lessons. i took square sheets of paper, cut them up into random shapes, then challenged her to see what she could create out of them.

 her favorite was a rocket ship.

she also created a mountain scene.

and then she convinced me that we didn't need a background page at all and constructed a paper sculpture of a river. (now that's thinking outside the box!)

it was a fun activity. and now that i think of it, i might just add it to our Summer Cups list of indoor fun. or save a large box and make it an outdoor patio activity. maybe even use a different shape...

i'm starting to think like my kiddo rather than a rule-following adult. how perfectly awesome...

whiskey tango... from adult stocking stuffer to travel story toy

by Melissa

my husband appreciates a good whiskey, and happened to mention it once. so inevitably at Christmas time an in-law gets him a bottle or two. last year, a trio of The Glenlivet came to his "stocking" in a gift box. being a good Pacific Northwestern'r, i endeavored to take the box apart for the big green bin, but the cool magnetic closure didn't seem very recycle-friendly. meanwhile, i also had noticed how much our girls loved playing with a fold-up storytelling box picked up at a garage sale. but there was only one, for two girls... hmm...

so, to spark your own DIY imaginings, here's the transformation from container-for-tasty-adult-beverage to travel-ready-storytelling-toy, the perfect size for small princess characters, super heroes, mini ponies, or green army men.

Step 1 - Acquire Box

remove contents, drink, and enjoy (responsibly).

Step 2 - Detoxify

in this case, i had a can of gold spray paint ready to redeem the exterior of this box so no nosy nannies might wonder about my fitness for parenthood. you could also Modge Podge with some cool paper.

Step 3 - Set the Scene

i cut out nature scenes from magazines, traced the shapes, and cut and pasted them to fit inside. if i were to do it again, i would also mount several additional scenes on cardstock to fit snugly over top so that the girls can switch out scenes.

Step 4 - Pack Up & Go

stash your chosen characters inside the box, close 'er up and hit the road. perfect for hotel rooms and plane rides. if you do lose it, hey, you're not out too much, right?

this post contains affiliate links.

Dinovember 2015

the dinosaurs come alive every November. it's a mystery... we never know what they're going to get into. follow along with this year's Dinovember adventures on our silly = sane Facebook page.

cardboard forts are recyclable, remake-able, remarkable FUN!

in a certain sense, we are still on a fort hunt. that is, there's no permanent fort happening at the not-so-new house like there was at the old house (which, these days, is only a playhouse for mildewing leaves and creeping morning glory).

i take that back. if you count the hard plastic house variety, we do have a permanent fort. my fellow blogging mommy gave us their cast-off "log" house (score!). Sweet One has dubbed it her and sister's Little House in the Big City since we've been reading through the Little House books. 

it also has been a fine Blueberry Cafe Drive-Thru, and a trial area for their decorating aesthetics that lean heavily toward floral accents.

but what i've discovered is that my girls' imaginations, for whatever reason, come most alive with indoor forts. and in that arena, our greatest success has been in the temporary fort.

we still occasionally do bedsheet forts in entire rooms.

a pop-up tunnel and square addition often make for handy escape routes and secret passageways for the sneaky Strawberry Pirates.

a large dining table and huge quilts make for quite an excellent cave (especially since we never seem to actually eat in the dining room anyway). LED candles help provide a "fire" for the giggly cave-dwellers.

there's a little nook under my computer station beside a metal filing cabinet that's perfect for magnet play.

but our most fun efforts so far have been with that Toy Hall of Fame fave: the cardboard box.

we turned a large safe box into a cardboard house, complete with sloping roof, door, and mail slot.

(i sent them a welcoming note.)

and then there was my mommy genius moment -- cardboard bed forts. 

we recently bought a new modular couch set. we figured we'd let the girls play with the giant boxes before collapsing them down for recycling. but they were gigantic and taking up way too much space. after eyeing them for a bit, a light bulb went off. they were exactly the width of a twin mattress. 

and the bed fort was born.

i slipped the mattress into the box to hold it in place. Small One wanted to be able to close the "door" flap on hers. for Sweet One, we taped the box so it would stay open, but dangled a sheet over that she could use to close herself up. they decorated and re-decorated with markers and glow-in-the dark stars. it made bed time something to look forward to! Small One named her bed fort her "AlonE SlEEPy" place.

then they got tired and bored one day and proceeded to rip them apart. 

but, hey, that's ok... the recycling bin is where the boxes were destined to go anyway. free fun, and no hard feelings when the toy finally "broke"... well, ok, maybe i felt a twinge of sadness for seeing my awesome idea finally meet its end.

now i'm wondering when we'll see another big cardboard box, and what fort idea it may bring next time...

beyond the fun and pre-engineering skills it brings, i am liking the temporary fort approach for purely mommy reasons too. namely, being content with the simple in the midst of a very busy time in life. 

i love giving my girls imaginative play spaces. when we were looking at buying our current house, part of what drew me were the grand visions in my head of turning the garage attic into a kids' wonderland with twisting tube slide exit... or turning the house attic into a giant playroom with cozy book nook overlooking the Cascade Mountains... clearly, that hasn't happened, and isn't likely too. my imagination often outpaces reality and logistics. ... and they were far-off places. is it really that surprising that my girls' favorite fort places are usually under my feet or only the next room over? i'll miss that desire for nearness when they inevitably hit puberty and seek to make themselves scarce.

those grand attic ideas are still in my head. but the girls are growing up fast. and sometimes dreams are just that -- and that's ok. even as an adult. a cardboard box is a castle, you know.

our not-so-frozen "Frozen" birthday party, with a gelatin ice castle recipe!

by Melissa

after going through several theme ideas since the conclusion of her last birthday (kites, rainbows, princesses), Sweet One at the last moment settled on a "Frozen" theme based on the hit Disney movie. i am sure all mothers of young girls out there are shocked, shocked i say. here is where we ended up with our "Frozen" birthday party...

the cake


i think i can claim this one as my own. at least, i haven't seen it done yet. this is a gelatin "ice" castle cake, using a dollar store sand-castle pail as a mold, white grape juice as the liquid, and fancy sugar sprinkles for the additions that make it sparkle and give it that ethereal North Mountain feel (if not nearly the exact look... i'm not that crazy, and thankfully my daughter is not that literal). see the separate gelatin "ice" castle cake recipe post for the full how-to...

the rest of the menu


we followed a largely blue-and-white theme on the food front, including...

• yogurt frozen pops (vanilla yogurt with pureed blueberries, poured into Dixie cup molds with lollipop stick handles)
• carrot "snowman noses" with ranch dressing dip
• white chocolate-covered pretzels
• frozen blueberries
• popcorn
• marshmallow snowflakes, and "snowballs" made from the extras

my dear friend Krista introduced me to the wonders of homemade marshmallows on a gourmet camping trip (i provided the homemade graham crackers). and ever since i have found that i actually like marshmallows! i never was a fan of the store-bought ones. part of the allure is, of course, the ability to adjust the flavor as desired. i religiously use the Smitten Kitchen marshmallow recipe. for the birthday party, i used half vanilla and half almond extract for flavoring. yum, yum. some of them i coated in sugar that i had mixed with blue food coloring.

if i had to do it over, i would use the snowflake cookie cutter and make actual cut-out cookies. using the cookie cutter on the marshmallows wasn't very exact and they ended up looking more like stars than snowflakes.

the kids liked the blueberry-yogurt frozen pops the best. which was awesome, because it was the healthiest thing on the menu. ha! take that, sugar high! although, speaking of sugar high...

the activities

we joined a popular "Frozen" party activity by making marshmallow snowmen. we used homemade marshmallows, pretzel sticks, dark chocolate chips, and baby carrots cut down to size for noses. kids made their snowmen as they arrived or in between snacking.

full credit for our single party game goes to my creative friend Aryn and, more specifically, her epically brilliant young daughter, who is even more enamored with "Frozen" than my girls. little Rayne had the awesome idea of playing freeze tag. and to unfreeze a player? you have to give them a hug! oh, Olaf would be so proud... and, it is the perfect way to run off a sugar high! just let it go, girls. let it go...

the prizes


i put in my online order way too late. and even with going to a record-breaking eight stores in a single day trying to make up for such bad planning (two stores in a day is my usual emotional limit), i still didn't find
what i had planned for the treat bags. the key missing prizes were blue rock candy sticks and sparkly snowflake stickers. making your own rock candy takes two weeks, and i definitely didn't plan things that far in advance. the snowflake stickers at the "Frozen"-train-riding craft store were stupid expensive (keep in mind, we're still in the stick-the-stickers-into-one-amorphous-pile stage, here). so instead we ended up with some primo blue and white candy from our local sweets shop: birthday cake-flavor coated caramels, and blue raspberry burst gummies. some Disney "Frozen" brand stickers that were reasonably priced. and we topped it off with a great find from Sweet One at the dollar store: bubble wands in the shape of blue microphones! perfect for a "Let It Go" singalong... and i don't need to tell you that a singalong did ensue with little girls clutching these microphone bubbles, with no prompting whatsoever. i got a deal earlier on the soundtrack for our "entertainment," although as most of you can probably guess, the girls needed no help with the lyrics for their bubbly singalong...

the decorations

no big decorating here. just a couple six-point snowflakes cut from white and silver paper, then placed on a blue tablecloth. there are several instructions online for creating six-pointed snowflakes, such as here.

to highlight it all, though, i went for a giant sparkly 3-D snowflake made from a silver-foil gift bag using these instructions and suspended it from the light fixture, centered prettily above the cake.



below you'll find affiliate links to some of the products i recommend for Amazon shoppers looking to replicate our "Frozen" birthday party: