New Year's Eve

My parents & I have had a tradition since before we were married, of staying up late and playing cards until 2-3 in the morning on New Years Eve. Three years ago, they informed me that they were feeling "too old" to stay up that late anymore, and asked if we minded coming over on New Years Day instead.

Mind? Of course not. But... what to do then, on New Years Eve?!?

That year, we purchased the Wii as a family gift. So we stayed up until 5am competing against each other at bowling, golfing, and all sorts of other games. And the kids loved it so much, that we've continued that tradition every year since.

This will mark our 4th annual New Year's Eve Wii-petition. And with a few more games in our collection, this looks to be one heck of a challenge this year if we see if anyone can finally beat the boy at bowling, the princess at Balance Bubble, or Mama at Rhythm parade.

 In keeping with last years' New Years Eve decorations, I gave myself a $20 budget - and this year, barely spent HALF that since I already had so many goodies on hand. And this time it was my SON who helped choose how & where we would decorate! No clue why as it's usually us two girls prettying up the place, but this time my guy helped me. And I LOVE what we came up with!

We combined our lantern-decoration from last year with the clocks, and added just a few more clocks from the thrift store.

On the tray with the pocket watches, instead of the glass beads we chose to use vintage buttons this year - and I really think it added just a bit more "oomph" to things.

In our kitchen niche, we did almost exactly the same thing as last year... simply adding the new year to the back of last years' paper "2012" to get one more years' use out of the pretty shiny brown cardstock.

The biggest change this year, was actually ALL my son's idea. Inspired by THIS number display, he suggested we hunt for items at the thrift store and within our house to create a display of "Things with twos, zeros, ones and threes."

We found a couple board books for $1.91, and a partial game of dominoes for $.65 and decided to raid our own game cabinet for the rest of our display. And I have to say - I LOVE how this turned out! It's a bit more whimsical (and brightly colored!) than I had originally imagined recreating that display, but I love how nearly everything there was already in our house - and that it came from the imagination of my son.

Happy New Year everyone!!! How are YOU spending this evening?!?