Cupcake Race Game

We are always on the look out for new and fun games we can play as a family.  I especially love games that, once the girls learn them, they can play as a group by themselves without any adult assistance. We have just found such a game and it has immediately become an instant hit.  As soon as I saw that it had to do with colorful cupcakes and "baking" I knew we must have it. Introducing: The Cupcake Race by Endless Games.

A cupcake board game - how fun!

With a houseful of mini bakers I knew they would love this as much as I would.  Cupcakes, frosting, sprinkles - we love these things in real life and now we can play the game version.  The goal of this game is to travel around the board collecting cupcake wrappers, cake, frosting toppers and colorful tiny sprinkles.  The first person to the party in the middle gets to top their cupcake with a bright red cherry and is declared the winner.  The nice thing is, once the first person crosses the finish line, the others can keep playing until they receive their cherry too.  A win win.  Here's a shot of the very colorful board.

Cupcake Race game is for 2-4 players.  Each person picks a party hat as their game piece.

When you open the box it comes with all of your "baking" supplies:  Brightly colored cupcake wrappers (they are plastic not paper), four flavors of cake, four flavors of frosting, and four bright red cherry toppers.

My girls LOVE to mix and match flavors

It also comes with a bag of 48 mini plastic sprinkles.

These are very tiny - so this game is for preschool aged (4+ and up)

Now all you have to do is gather some willing game players

This was our very first time to play.  Look at those smiles!

To set up the board, you just want to put all of the supplies in each corner.  As you travel around the board you will stop in each corner and pick up the pieces you need.  You actually can collect sprinkles along the way if you land on a +1 or +2.  There are a few lose a turn and move back spaces as well, so try and avoid those.

The girls love setting up all the supplies almost as much as playing the game

To make the first move, the youngest player goes first.  The spinner is attached in the actual game board, so I love the extra bonus that there is not a chance of it getting lost somewhere or being separated from the game.  Not only do you use the number to count out your spaces, you also used the colors to help pick the color of your chosen sprinkles.  When you land on a +2 for example, you get to spin the spinner twice.  Whatever color it lands on is the sprinkle colors you get.

Love that this is attached within the board itself

So we played a very rousing first game.  My middle child things that it's even better if your mini ponies watch while you play

Luckily the ponies have color coordinated with the game board

We had a blast trying to get to the finish line.  Here's a shot of our completed cupcakes:

So fun and colorful.

How cute.  The most fun I'd say is when you are at the final stopping point trying to collect all your sprinkles so you can move on to the party.  You must stay on that spot and spin until you have all 12 sprinkles.  In the instructions there is a way to make it "harder" for older kids by having them get one sprinkle of each color before they can move on.  Or the younger kids can just put whatever random sprinkles they earn and then move on.  My girls loved placing the sprinkles where they wanted them to complete their "design".

I guess the best sign that it is a good game, is when the girls start teaching it to friends, family, and neighbors. Yesterday they took it outside and taught our neighbor kids how to play. They also took it over to Grandma's house last weekend. 

They almost look good enough to eat!

By the way, we are not getting paid or anything to review this game, we just loved The Cupcake Race so much I wanted to blog about it.  I found it online at toys-r-us (It's usually around $16.99), but it was out of stock in the local stores.  We went on a quest after that to find it.  It was not at Walmart, or Target, but we eventually found it at Fred Meyer.  It was perfect because Fred Meyer was having a 20% off board games sale, so i go the whole thing for around $15 including tax.  

Also I now have major props for this company, want to know why?

Well I knew that with those tiny little sprinkles it was only going to be a matter of time before one of them got lost.  Since you need exactly 12 sprinkles and it comes with exactly 48, a lost sprinkle could make the game not work.  Sure enough two weeks in (and we were being extra careful too) we couldn't find a sprinkle.  I looked on the website and couldn't find a replacement parts order form, so I called the main phone number and the super nice lady at the other end immediately took down my address and sent out a whole bag of sprinkles.  Free.  Free shipping.  Just sent it to me.  I thought that was fabulous.  Now I have an extra set tucked away and can replace a sprinkle here or there as needed.

So there you have it.  It's a game about pretend cupcakes, teaches colors and numbers, and my girls just love it.  Thought I would pass it along.

How Does Your Shadow Grow?

Just a quick post, as we are making the most of a gorgeous sunny day here in Washington.  We did a little science experiment with our shadows.  The girls love playing with sidewalk chalk.  Many a rainbow, flower, stick figure and hopscotch game have lovingly been scrolled on our driveway.  My hubby even gets into the act sometimes and will write strange little sayings that I'm sure totally confuse the heck out of our neighbors. I bet one of them might even have a blog reporting on his zany antics.  If they don't, they should.  Last week he wrote "No Squatch Zone" (as is Sasquatch).  Another time he wrote "No Plane Landing Zone", which my 6 year old wrote underneath "Yes Planes Land Here".  I just shake my head and pray they are not reading too closely.  Anyway, back to the shadows!  My girls had the sidewalk chalk out in full force and we decided to trace their shadows.

We love our dumpy little shadows.  They were shorter than our real selves.

We did this at lunch time and their shadows were a bit on the short and squat side. (I didn't take many pics at high noon due to squinty eyes, so we waited until they were in the shade) Our neighbor came out later and said he thought these were "airplanes with heads" lol. 

My youngest modeling her pink airplane, with head.

Then we had a great idea.  What if we came back later in the day, how would our shadows change?  Well around dinner time our shadows were now long and lean!

Very long and lean.  (A big thanks to our neighbor girl Elisa for assisting in the tracing action)  She noticed before she could draw them while sitting in one place.  Now she had to scoot along the ground to finish.

Not only were they long and lean, but they were turned 90º. How sciency!  Even our heads were tall and skinny.  They thought that was hilarious. Elisa was the tallest of all.  She went all the way across the road.

Here is little us sitting next to really tall us.  They also got a big kick out of the occasional car that passed by.  "They just ran over my face!" says my littlest.

And, be it noted:  If you have a giant 6 foot shadow of yourself on the ground, you are obligated to decorate it.

My oldest thought her person needed a white dress with matching gloves and shoes

Our finished really really tall selves.  

I guess we can "chalk" this up to another fun afternoon of learning and playing...

Make Your Own Sprinkler - Kid Craft

We love getting our Family Fun magazine in the mail.  It always comes loaded with fun crafts and snacks to make.  My eldest daughter and I like to read it together and I let her pick out which craft she wanted to try and make. She picked the homemade sprinkler, which looked like a lot of fun.
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Homemade sprinkler out of a 2-liter bottle - how fun!

You only need a few things.  A push pin, a bamboo skewer, a clean empty 2-liter soda bottle, and a quick trip to the hardware store to get what they call a 3/4 inch female x 3/4 female swivel hose adapter.  We got ours at the Home Depot in the plumbing section (thank you nice man in the orange vest that seemed amused at a mom and three little girls looking for a random part and led us right to them)... Oh and the package looks like this:

We also got some extra hose washers (above) to help seal up the leaks.  So the first thing you want to do is to rinse the empty 2-liter bottle and take off the label. Put one of the red washers inside one side of the adapter (the side that is going to fit over the bottle) and twist it on and secure tightly to the 2-liter bottle.  By the way, the swivel adapter does come with a black washer already in it, we added the second red one as suggested in the magazine directions.

Next get a push pin and poke 8 holes along one side of the bottle only (the top)

Eight holes in all

Next take a bamboo skewer and widen each of the holes a bit

Now the holes are a bit bigger.  My guess is if you just did push pins sized holes, it might be more of a mister/sprayer effect (great for gardens) but we only had one 2-liter bottle to work with so I will experiment with different sized holes the next time I have a chance.

With the slightly larger bamboo-enhanced  hole size, we are now ready to test our experiment. It only took as a few minutes to put this whole thing together (well, minus time it took to drive to Home Depot).  We then took it outside and excitedly attached it to our garden hose.  We started with the water pressure on low and watched the 2-liter bottle fill up and then the water suddenly squirted out of the top.  Hooray it works! 

Then we decided to crank up the pressure and see what would happen:

Boom goes the Dynamite

Rock on.  That works pretty great!  As a bonus, the girls liked how the water in the bottle acted like a "magnifying glass" on the grass below.

Shortly after they they were clamoring to get on their suits and try it out for themselves.

Success!!

This by the way turned out to have more than one use.  Because you can choose the strength of the spray (water pressure), the size of the holes (small for mist, larger for kid sprinkler), and angle the direction of the spray (straight up, to the side), the sprinkler also made a nice way to water our garden lightly.  We also have used it this year to help wet down our slip and slide, when the store-bought slide sprayed the wrong way.  My girls were so very proud of themselves for making their own sprinkler and want to make more this year so they can run through more than one at a time, obstacle course style.  Let me know if you end up making this and what you use it for!

Treasure Maps - X Marks the Spot!

It's midway through summer vacation and I love when my girls can spend the day lost in imagination play. If we build a fort out of chairs and blankets, soon there will be puppet shows, camping adventures, stuffed animal petting zoos, and flashlight tea parties.  I had almost forgotten about something I made them last year on a whim, but here they are, one year later, still playing with it today.  Everyone seems to be on a pirate/treasure kick lately, with Jake and the Neverland Pirates from Disney, Pirates of the Caribbean, Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure... and seriously, who doesn't love to go on a good ol' treasure hunt adventure?  

A bamboo treasure map - perfect for imagination play

I wanted to make my girls some roll up maps.  At first I was going to use construction paper, but I did not think that would hold up well with all the rolling and unrolling and stuffing in backpacks.  I was wandering around the Target $1/clearance section when I found a 4-pack of bamboo placemats for $2.50.  They had both plain and bright colors.  I thought four different colored maps would be extra fun, depending on which "treasure" you were searching for.

multi-colored bamboo placemats make great treasure maps! 

I did say 4-pack and well we did have a yellow one, but I think Captain Hook might have stolen it...hmm, that sneaky scalawag...  After that all you really need is a black, thick sharpy and a bit of imagination.  Older kids can draw their own maps, but as mine were still little at the time I asked each girl where she wanted her map to go.  Now, I'm no artist, and bumpy bamboo is not the easiest medium to sketch on, but I made a starting point and made a dotted path through different areas to an "X" marks the spot at the end.  Wander by the water fall and through the double crossed palm trees...

Be sure to be extra quiet when you tippy toe past whatever is sleeping in the large cave (my girls like to change what's sleeping in there, is is a bear?  A dragon? A giant?) and pass the turtle farm...

And when you reach the mermaid lagoon you know the treasure is close by!

Each map was different.  My littlest wanted a map to grandma's house

My middle child wanted a volcano, a pirate ship, a dolphin cove, and a picture of the treasure chest.  She also wanted to gussy this one up with her own colors, which is why it is extra colorful.

The great things about these placemat treasure maps is that it would work for BOTH boys and girls.  You can draw random fun things like us, or have it actually lead to some kind of "real" treasure, like at a birthday party.  They are sturdy enough that you can roll and unroll them many times, stuff them in backpacks, and the girls just love them.  I just heard my middle child say, "let's go to the volcano next, but look out for hot lava" to her little sister. You can really let your imagination soar with these maps.  They have literally kept my girls busy for large chunks of the afternoon.  By the way, since the Target clearance/$1 section does not always have the same stuff each season, you could also look for cheap placemats at party stores in the luau section, or even the dollar tree has "straw" placemats for $1 each. Good luck and happy treasure hunting!

Trash (talk) - Card Game Walkthrough

My parents went away for a week with my brother and family.  Whilst they were away, my nephew taught them all a new card game.  It was called "Trash".  It was easy to learn, and the most important part here, it was fun for all ages.  It is especially easy for very young kids to play, while learning their numbers at the same time. 

My girls spent the night at Grandma and Papa's house shortly after and were taught how to play.  They came home and immediately taught us how to play.  Here is my four year old who is can count up to 30 but is still learning what the numbers actually look like.  She can play this game no problem.

playing "Trash" with daddy

I had a hard time finding a pictured walk through on line that explained it clearly, so I made you one because the easiest way to learn a card game is to see one round in action! The game is very simple as a whole and once you learn the concepts you will be off and playing a round with your family and friends very quickly. A detailed explanation with pictures can be found below:  

First, get 2 decks of cards and deal everyone 10 cards total, arranging them in two rows of 5 in front of you. 

The rest of the cards not dealt become the "Draw" pile.  On your turn you draw a card from the draw pile.  
Let's say it's a "2"

you place that face up in your "two" holder spot.  

The card that held your two spot (that was face down, underneath, now turn it over, let's say it's a 5) 

It can now be placed in the five holder spot.  

Now we can look at the card that was under the 5 card spot.  It is a ten

You can now place that ten in the 10 holder spot

Now let's look under the ten holder card to reveal another two card.  Because you have already filled up that #2 spot, now your turn is over (discard next to the draw pile) and the next player would draw a card.

But, what if that card had been a King, which is a wild card?

Well it's your lucky day, because you can place that in any numbered spot that has not been turned over yet.  I chose the "one" spot.  (Note: If you end up drawing, in this case, an Ace any time later in this same round, {Aces are ones in this game}, you can replace the wild king with the ace and place the King in a new unturned spot).  Kings rock in this game.  Many a victory has come from over turning one of these bad boys. Now our turn keeps going as we can now look under the 1 spot card

It is an 8.  You continue in the same manner placing it in the 8th spot

When you check the card underneath the 8 spot, it turns out it's a Queen.  A queen (and also a Jack) will stop your turn. Discard the queen and the next player goes.  By the way Aces are "ones" in this game.

The first person to turn over all their cards is the winner of the 1st round.  The other players must keep their unturned cards with them and be dealt the remaining cards to make 10.  However.  The winner is now dealt only 9 cards.  Each time you win you remove a card, so you will have one less than you had in the round before.  (New 6.5.16) I had someone just ask me a question that I thought I would add here.  She asked, what if you have won three rounds and are only dealt seven cards, what happens if you draw a 8, 9, or 10?  So, they cannot be played and are discarded like the queens and the jacks. You will only be able to play if you draw cards up through 7 for that round.  However many cards you are dealt, you can only go up to that number, anything above that is discarded.

This game can take a while with a bigger group. Options are for each player to take their turn quickly like the game "speed".  The other option is to start with only 8 cards.  The grand finale winner is the one who only starts with one down turned card and gets rid of it.  Ah, sweet victory over your family.  Take that!

By the way, my dad (aka Papa Randy) took the name of this game one step further, and renamed it Trash TALK.  So now it's perfectly okay if mild insults are thrown around to other players while you are playing.  The first time I played this my 4- year-old she was apparently copying Papa because she looked at me,  pointed with both fingers mock aggressively and said, "You are going down baby, down down DOWN", and she meant it.  Other mild insults were you slimy hotdog and, wait for it... STINKY CHEESE! 

My girls quickly got addicted to this game.  I made them some lunch today and then was making some juice by the sink.  When I turned around they had dealt out a round of trash to play during lunch!  No adult even needed.  Wow.

 
This would be a great game for family reunions, camp outs, retreats, road trip hotels, and summer gatherings when there are many different age groups present. Have fun out there, and don't forget to talk some mild trash while you are playing Trash.