Family Movie Night: A New Tradition

Sorry for the blog hiatus, peeps. In all honesty, the reason I haven't been posting is that my phone has been malfunctioning when I try to retrieve pictures off of it, and that's where I take most of my blog pics because it's so much more convenient. So I have several picture-less posts written and waiting. I'll post them as soon as my technologically-savvy hubby can fix my phone and retrieve the pics for me.

In the meantime, I used my point-and-shoot camera to document a new tradition we are implementing in the McPreachy household: Family Movie Night!!!

As most of you know, I LOVE traditions... almost to a fault. I can definitely go overboard when it comes to traditions, but I can't help myself. I LOVE THEM!

Recently, this post and this post inspired me to get a more regular tradition going in our house (not just during holidays, but year round). To be honest, weekly traditions are hard for us... as a pastor's family, our schedule really varies from week to week, especially in the evenings. So I fear a "pizza every Friday" tradition would get skipped so much that it wouldn't be a tradition anymore.

So instead, I decided to do a themed family movie night on the first Thursday of every month. This idea for this tradition came from Bennett. He is ALWAYS asking me:

"Mama, can we have special fam-iwy time on the couch with popcorn and hot chocolate and watch a show?"

Not much makes Bennett happier that when we sit down and enjoy a movie with him.

The thing I really like about this tradition is that it will grow so well with the kids. For now it's Curious George and Monsters vs. Aliens, but as the kids grow up, it can be Star Wars, ET, Goonies and Swiss Family Robinson.

The plan for our movie night tradition is to get creative and theme the entire meal/evening around the movie we are watching.

Tonight's movie was Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. So for dinner, we naturally had spaghetti and meatballs! Here's the PW recipe.

Here's Mallie Gal enjoying her speecy-spicey meatball.

And here's Bennett playing with his spaghetti. He was cracking himself up sucking up the long noodles...

So of course, we had to reenact the famous scene from Lady and the Tramp.

For dessert, Bennett and I made these fab spaghetti and meatball cupcakes. SO cute and tasty. I used this recipe for the cupcake batter and this one for the frosting.

Aren't they darling?! And they look just like the real thing...

Cue cheesy comparison shot.

And the best thing about movie night... Bennett was SO excited. Just look at his little face.

He was practically beside himself with glee when it was time to watch the movie. And today he keeps asking to watch "Meatballs with a Chance."

Finally, before I go, a random note about cupcakes:

The cupcake recipe is for 36 cupcakes. I don't know about you, but there is no way my family can eat that many cupcakes before they get all gross and mushy. I usually make the mistake of baking them all, and then I end up wasting a bunch of cupcakes.


But not this time. No, not this time.


Instead, I baked only one dozen cupcakes. Look at poor, little gimpy on the bottom left.


Then I froze the rest of the batter in two labeled ziplocks. I just learned that you can freeze batter. Whoda thunk?

Now the next time the cupcake mood strikes us (meaning me), we (I) can just pop one of these bad boys out of the freezer, defrost and bake. Voila!