Happy Chinese New Year! or "Gong Hei Fat Choi!" unless you are a smarty-pants five year old "Gong Xi Fa Cai!"
We decided to have a Chinese New Year party again this year. However, we wanted to make a few changes. In the past, we invited a lot of people (I guess we were thinking the more the merrier!) but we just didn't feel like WE had a good time. We felt like we didn't get to talk with anyone at the party because we were too busy running around. So this year we decided to keep it simple. We also reined in the menu a bit and changed the time of the party. It's a work in progress for sure. I'm thinking that by the time Hannah is in college, we'll get the knack of it. :-)
So now I am going to quickly walk you through our home(at least part of our humble abode) to show off some Chinese decorations and details. For those of you who have been to our home already, you can just scroll down to Hannah - I take no offense.
FYI - I am really hoping that the foil banners we hang by our front door every year mean nice things like "Welcome!" and "Good to see you!". Otherwise, there is someone who works at Oriental Trading that is truly evil.
Since this year on the Chinese zodiac is the year of the rabbit, my Mom thought it would be cute to put the bunnies by the welcome sign. I love the idea, although I'm not sure if we can stay current with every zodiac animal. Concrete dragon anyone?
Tangerines or oranges are given as gifts in China since their Chinese names sound similar to the words "gold" and "wealth". Here is the front entry complete with a bowl full of oranges... er clementines. Do you think it makes a difference that I used clementines instead of oranges. Hmmmm.
Here is the craft area. Every year we pick a different craft to keep the kids busy. This year we chose bunny visors, and although we put some of the pieces together ahead of time, the glue took way too long to dry for anyone to enjoy them. Anyone want a bunny visor?
Red umbrellas going up the stairs... just cuze.
Here is the table before all of the food came. Red Velvet cupcakes, yum!
This is the first year I tried making dessert sushi. I know, I know, sushi is Japanese but I could not resist. The "sushi" is gummy worms surrounded rice crispy treats wrapped with fruit roll ups. In other words sugar surrounded by sugar wrapped in sugar. I was afraid that the sushi was going to make the kids really hyper, but they must have built up a resistance.
To burn off some of the "sushi" sugar we played a game. It's called "Lame Hen" and the kids did really well. They were surpisingly adept at hopping on one leg very quickly. Ahhh, youth.
Here are all of the girls lined up on the stairs. Ours is the one with the stuffed panda on her head. I almost forgot to mention - each girl in this photo represents their age from age four up to age nine. Isn't that cool?
We were really happy with the turnout and everyone seemed to have a good time. We got to talk about our various adoption experiences - it was nice to talk to a group of people that know exactly where you are coming from. We hope to get this group together again soon.
Happy Chinese New Year!
:-)
