Our family theme night

***As you all know I am using a very old (like 2006) old point and shoot camera so please excuse the horrible picture quality!***

This year in keeping with our big goals we are trying to make a deeper sense of tradition and intentional living.

So we decided that during general conference we would take special note of any talks that we thought would be great overall theme and guidance for our family.

The week after conference Mitchell and I read a few of the talks that had stood out to us together.  Mitchell prayerfully picked the quote and we made a few goals directly from the talk and that will be out family theme (and goals) for the next 6 months until the next general conference when we will do it again.

It was really special to put so much more preparation into general Conference then we had previously done. We fasted and wrote questions and discussed things before conference weekend. We really did have many wonderful answers to questions on different levels: personal, as a couple and as a family. 

I am so grateful for General Conference!

So the FHE 8 days after conference (so the next week basically) we had a VERY special family night planned.

we had a very small decorating budget so I made all of the hurricanes and candle holders with supplies from the dollar tree- an di got the napkins and napkin rings on clearance from Target. The candles are the all natural bees wax candles I made this week! (except the green pillar candle that's from target 2 years ago)

The cute glitter pumpkins are also upgraded dollar tree finds, 1 cheep pumpkin+ Elmer's glue+glitter= 1 really cute not-so-cheep looking pumpkin (and a really big mess in my kitchen)

I borrowed my mom’s folding table and turned the front sitting room into a formal dining room and decorated everything beautifully. I love decorating things beautifully! It’s so my favorite!

The kids helped me we made a leaf garland and made a huge banner with all our hand prints and we even covered pumpkins and clothes pins with glitter! The kids had so much fun just decorating it made the whole day feel like a special holiday!

I printed out a huge poster of the quote we had picked.

We made a very special dinner and I served it in courses, which was fun for me and it’s nice to teach the kids about more formal table manners. (I went through a phase when I was a teenager-and then again a few years ago- when I looked up alto of things to learn more about table manners and serving manners and such). So I served in courses and that we a great with the kids because normally they can only handle being at the table for 10 min total but the way I set it up had everyone eating together since I served only one thing at a time. (Also all the veggies got eaten)

Menu:

Cheese tray with figs and lentil crackers (served on my great grandmothers crystal dishes)

Clove infused pears in cream

Veggies- these ended up being peas and carrots since that what the kids voted for

Chicken Masala with penne

 Dessert- Apple crisp with toasted pecans

After the appetizers and before the main course we (Mitch and I) got up and talked with the kids about the family theme and about our goals, Then all the kids cheered -We are the cheering Hooray!-kind-of-family. 

Dinner went smoothly so nicely that I forgot to take pictures. And then after dinner we headed into the other room for some fun fall themed minuet to win it games.

We tried to stack apple and cups and we created a tower of cups and played a bowling game (the ball was a gold painted Styrofoam pumpkin). And we blew our cups with straws...

Then for a finale Mitchell put on a juggling show with apples and we all tried to juggle as well. So the apples got quite bruised which is why we planned on apple crisp. 

 Around bedtime i realized i had not gotten pictures so we sat down and took some!

 The whole day was just so much fun! we all enjoyed ourselves and felt in the end that we had just had the  first of many hill family holidays!

The design of the theme was just made by me playing on picmonkey!

(PS thank you mom for lending us your folding table-not only was it great for dinner but it was the best hiding spot for hide and go seek which we all played before bed!)