Theastmas

Theastmas is Saturday! We are so excited to see everyone!

We are trying a new park this year for our venue. It looks like it will have plenty of space for cornhole, volleyball, the Theastmas egg hunt, and hanging out.

We have a few fun things planned, including the Theastmas Best Dressed Contest. Come in your best Thanksgiving, Easter, and/or Christmas costumes for a chance to win this year’s trophy.

Are you gathering your Theastmas supplies for 2022?

2021 allowed us to gather friends and family together for an in-person event. We rented a shelter at a local park that had plenty of picnic tables, a large area for the kids to play badminton and cornhole, and a playground.

We had an Easter egg hunt, a holiday themed costume contest, and a snow cone truck that came for an hour. For dinner, we had a lovely feast of Thanksgiving themed sandwiches and sides.

It was amazing to see everyone after our year on the road.

We can’t wait to see everyone this summer!

As we explored the USA in our travel trailer, I became inspired to spread some Christmas Joy! But not just any Christmas joy. Specifically, the under served niche of Campground Christmas joy. Thus, ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas Campground Edition was born.

This new timeless tale sees Santa and his team visiting a travel trailer to create Christmas magic.

Right now it is available as an Amazon ebook. The print version is being formatted, but is having some technical difficulties.

I hope you enjoy reading this book with your family as much as I enjoyed making it with mine.

Warm holiday wishes and safe travels y’all!

I hope everyone can find ways to enjoy Theastmas this year, even with COVID!

We’re setting up a Zoom meeting with some of our regular guests for tonight, so we get a chance to connect.

We are on the road right now, so getting supplies has been a little challenging. We did manage to find a pumpkin pie, a carrot cake, jelly beans, and candy corn.

Why are we on the road at Theastmas, you may ask. We are taking an adventure this next year, traveling the USA in a RV. You can keep us with us on www.TepeTravels.com.

We wish you all a Merry Theastmas and hope you and yours have a wonderful day!

Merry (almost) Theastmas! I hope everyone has an amazing time tomorrow!

As we prepare for another gathering of our friends and family, I wanted to get in a post of last year’s Theastmas celebration.

The inside of the house was decorated with snowflakes hanging from the ceiling, the paper lantern turkey I had made, Easter baskets filled with eggs, small Christmas trees, and a Merry Theastmas banner. I placed the snowman in the backyard and strung Christmas lights on the back porch.

The snack trays were once again laden with holiday themed candies. We had Reese’s eggs, bunny shaped chocolate covered Peeps, jelly beans, Peeps Oreos, candy pumpkins, pumpkin spiced Oreos, pumpkin pie M&M’s, Hershey’s Caramel Apple chocolates, candy canes, and Christmas lights suckers. We also had popcorn, pretzels, and a veggie tray.

For the main meal, we had turkey sandwiches, cranberry, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and salad. We found a nice precooked turkey breast at Costco and sliced it into thick slices for the sandwiches. I love this turkey; it is similar to eating a Thanksgiving turkey but without all the work! We had a tray filled with a few different kinds of sandwich bread, lettuce, cranberry jelly slices, and condiments. A big veggie filled salad seems to be a main staple of all our parties, but the Theastmas salad has to have dyed egg slices!

After filling our bellies, it was time to have some fun! We once again had a piñata. At this point, I think the kids would revolt if we didn’t have one. We try to change the piñata each year to rotate through the seasons. Originally, we were going to have a snowman piñata, but after three tries of smashed piñatas arriving in the mail, we decided to go with an Easter piñata. Of course then I couldn’t find an egg piñata, but we ended up finding an oval shaped piñata and made our own Easter egg. You would think that by now, I would realize that I have to buy this stuff at the end of season sales. I do great with the candy, but haven’t gotten there yet on the piñata. Luckily, it was pretty easy to retrofit an oval shaped piñata into an egg!

Because July tends to be rather warm where we live, we didn’t put any chocolate in the piñata or the eggs for the Easter egg hunt. We had a few chewy items like Air Heads and Cow Tails, but we left the piñata and the eggs inside the house until it was time for the events. We also had a lot of non-candy items for both events. We try to get a variety so everyone can find/trade for something they like. This time we had toy airplanes and cars, sticky snap hands, punch balloons, bracelets (both plastic and candy), mini slinkies, some small animal figures, parachute guys, bouncy balls, bubble gum, Pez dispensers, and pencil toppers to name a few.

We took a break after the piñata to chow down on some sweets. For dessert, I made sugar cookies in the shape of turkeys, Easter eggs, and candy canes. To go with the cookies, we had peppermint chocolate chunk ice cream. After everyone had eaten their fill, we moved on to the egg hunt. While the egg hunt still included everyone, both adults and kids, this time we added some eggs just for the adults. We bought jumbo sized plastic Easter eggs and filled them with mini alcohol bottles. We tried to get a pretty good variety so there was something for everyone. They ended up being a big hit and I think we will continue doing that for future celebrations. The kids also got a few new items in the egg hunt. I found these cute tin ornaments in the shapes of snowmen and Santa that contained Sweetarts and Nerds.

As it became darker, the adults settled around the fire pit to relax, and the kids ran off some energy playing tag. Towards the end of the evening, we brought the traditional Peep s’mores table out to the fire pit for one last dessert.

All in all, I think everyone had a great time. I’m looking forward to spending time with everyone again this year.

I hope you all have a very Merry Theastmas tomorrow! – Sarah

There have been several times over the years that I have not been able to find the type of piñata I am looking for. Although I’ve made a few piñatas from scratch, it is much easier to retrofit a piñata. All you really need is an existing piñata, some tissue paper, glue, and maybe some additional ribbons. I like using glue sticks instead of liquid glue because it is less messy and dries quickly. You can cover the whole piñata with tissue paper and then glue an image on, or you can create an image or design with the tissue paper.

For last year’s Theastmas, the snowman piñata I ordered kept arriving broken on the bottom. I finally decided to go with an Easter egg, but had a hard time finding one. While walking through the party store, I saw an oval princess piñata on sale. The sides were covered in a purple tissue paper, so I thought it would be pretty easy to change into an egg.

After buying some pastel tissue paper, a few new glue sticks, and some ribbon to match the existing pull strings, I brought the piñata home and got started on the design. To make sure the princess picture didn’t show through, I spray painted over the image. Looking back, I’m not sure that I needed to do that step.

With the kids’ help, we created a pile of 2 inch wide strips of tissue paper. We folded each strip in half and then cut notches into the open end of the strips (not the folded edge). I left the strips long and just trimmed and adjusted the length as needed.

Starting at the bottom, I ran a line of glue across the space and laid down the strip of tissue paper. Overlapping a little, I ran another line of glue and added the next strip of tissue paper. I continued this way until the front was finished and then moved onto the back side. Once the back was finished, I added a few more false pull strings to the bottom by hiding and gluing them under the tissue paper. It took me maybe a couple of hours to finish, but we finally had a piñata for Theastmas!