How to Host a Family Olympics in 3 Easy Steps... Kinda.

I've wanted to have a family olympics for a long time, for no reason other than it looks fun. My family sportingly let themselves be subjected to my plans this year at Thanksgiving. I gathered a lot of knowledge which I will gladly pass along.

STEP 1: GATHER FAMILY
The most important part of a family olympics is FAMILY. Shocker, I know. And in this day and age, most families are pretty spread out. Getting everyone together isn't always easy. If your family already has a reunion, perfect, but if not, make one. Our family doesn't have a reunion and I hadn't seen some of my cousins in over ten years. (Isn't that sad?) A large group of our family gathers for Thanksgiving every year, so it seemed a logical time for the olympics. I basically emailed the rest of the family threatening to beg if they didn't agree to come. Luckily it didn't take much convincing and before long I had our entire family planning to attend Thanksgiving and therefore attending the family olympics. Step One complete. :)
Since this deserves a picture, here's part of my family, including the cousins that I hadn't seen in a decade and their children I'd never met:

That is one good looking family. (I'm still trying to figure out how to steal the littlest one in there. He's just so precious.)

STEP TWO: ORGANIZE GAMES
An Olympics requires games, obviously, but the games should be chosen after some serious thought. Know your competitors. For example, I know my family isn't very athletic, so a race would be out of the question. I know I planned on having the olympics immediately following Thanksgiving dinner, so that game where you spin around a bat and then try to hit a ball would only result in a projectile vomiting competition.
I chose 5 games for 5 rounds of competition.
A Puzzle Building Round

A Pumpkin Support Building Round

A Nail Hammering Round (to keep the dads involved)

A Pumpkin Bocce Round (which sadly there are no decent picture of...)
And A Candy Corn Dropping Round

I researched on the internet for weeks to find the perfect games. There were dozens out there to choose from, so it would be easy to tailor the games to your crowd.

STEP 3: HAVE FUN!
My mom knows how much effort I put into the Olympics and was so concerned that I'd be upset of it didn't go EXACTLY as I'd planned, but I just keep reassuring her that my goal was for everyone to have fun with it.
Since our Olympics followed Thanksgiving dinner, I designed the games around a Thanksgiving theme. All the team colors were fall colors, the games involved pumpkins and candy corns, and even the trophy was a oversized acorn on a pedestal. Building the even around the Thanksgiving theme helped to give me a direction while planning it and I believe helped the family get excited. Everyone had a really great time and it stopped us all from gorging on turkey and sleeping all afternoon.

Every olympics needs a scoreboard and our family's would have been incomplete without glitter. Before the games started, I made each team create their own nametag. I gave them their team colors and decorations, but they had to come up with a team name and decorate their nametag.
Each team also got their own bandanas in team colors. What's a team without a uniform?

My family, the Autobots, won. No bias whatsoever. I promise. My brother is so proud of the trophy.

The green team, the Plymouth Rockers, got second place.

The Martinators came in third, but not for a lack of team spirit or intimidation.

The last place team, the Proud Mamas, put up a good fight, but unfortunately the wee one from that team needed to rest, so the team ended up disbanding before team pictures were taken. But we still love them.

My little cousins helped keep score and they're still learning to write their numbers, the little dears.

And if all that olympic fun wasn't enough, here's a beautiful picture I took on a walk the day before Thanksgiving with my mom:

If you ever host your own family olympics, I'd love to hear about it. :)

I hope you all had a wonderful Thankgiving and a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!

My Kind of Christmas Wreath

A few years back when Starbucks displayed their yarn ball wreaths at Christmas, I fell in love.

Christmas and yarn? My perfect combination.
So this year, I decided to make my own.

Luckily, I had a ton of reds, greens and creams in my yarn stash that were just waiting for this project. I bought a bunch of little styrofoam balls in 1 1/2", 2" and 2 1/2". I've read you could also just ball up tin foil or paper towels or something similar.

I used a needle to poke the yarn down into the ball to hold it in place.

And then I wrapped the ball until the styrofoam was completely covered.

Each ball took less than 5 minutes. So fast and easy.

I made a ton of balls in every shade of red and green I had.

I chose a 12" wreath form... It just seemed like a good size.

I did a couple of practice layouts before I started attaching the balls to the wreath.

I tied the largest balls to the wreath frame with more yarn, but the smaller ones I hot-glued so I could get them exactly where I wanted and hold everything in place. (Wearing my pink pajamas helps the creative process... I swear.)

I hung it over my television and added a big knitted bow. I'm so ready for Christmas now. :)