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Ninjago Party for 6 Year Old

Blue had his choice between

A. Go to Orlando and stay in a hotel (something the boys LOVE) and see Madagascar and Shrek characters in ICE. (We've been to an ICE show before when it was Snoopy stuff so he knew what this was.)

B. Do a Winter Wonderland party. (I was thinking about renting a snow machine or at least do some bubble snow and rounding up as many trees as possible. And... I didn't have time to really think it beyond that because this got shot down fast. Boys.)

C. Do an Angry Birds Party

He went with a write-in vote.

D. Ninjago

I seriously didn't see that coming. Blue doesn't play with legos and he's never seen Ninjago. Ninjago has only entered our house via library books Kaden has read. I guess those books made some impression!

He got his wish, and here's how it all went down:

Decorations:

Pretty much, I wrapped a lot of stuff in those plastic party table clothes, added Ninjago eyes (black eyes drawn with sharpie on yellow duct tape) to a bunch of stuff in my house :-)

In the entry:

This guy was a wrapped up Santa/front porch decoration.

Straight in front of the entry:

The Happy Birthday banner was made with printables from here. All I did was print on cardstock and tape to curling ribbon. The balloon wreath was the same one I made for Toby's party with a simple sign update. The boxes were taken (with permission!) from Target and Walmart. (I had four boxes in all and used them during the party to hold legos during the building competition.) The bags were for the kids to put their pinata loot. I attached colored circles to them to make them look like lego bricks.

I did eventually iron the cloth napkins. Unfortunately this pic was taken before I did that!

And the album is Blue's special album that I update only for big milestones (like birthdays) in case anyone wanted to look through.

At the food table I had a streamer wall behind the table and Ninjago eyes and 6s stuck to the table cloth.

In the living room I had ninjas!

Next to each member of the Ninjago team was their name, their element, and a quote. Yes, the wrapped paintings counted as Jay and Kai. :-) (I only have patience for so much drawing!)

Food:
This was a 2pm party so just heavy snacks: cupakes, fruit plate, veggie plate, and a plate with veggie spring rolls and krab rangoons from the closest Chinese takeout place. For the fruit plate I bought star fruit thinking I might use them to make some sort of Chinese star pattern. Didn't happen, but that's ok.

My icing was a little droopy. (Note to self - almond milk not an ok substitute in your icing recipe.) The yellow strips are edible decorate icing stuff, store-bought.

Then I had a villians themed table. Ninjago villians are snakes and skeletons so...

There was skull mold (frozen lemonade) in my cranberry juice/gingerale punch and then the "Pythor Punch" was just green Hawaiian Punch. Also on this table were sugar cookies with skeleton faces and "Kruncha Krunchies" (popcorn with white chocolate covered pretzles mixed in).

And for the best part... Activities! 

When guests arrived they were given a long piece of ribbon to decorate as they pleased and wear as their ninja headband. I made Toby's before-hand as an example:

Of course, Toby didn't actually wear his headband at the party but it was still on the table as an example!

This little girl and another girl probably spent the most time on their headbands. They also were two of the few who kept it on their head the whole time. Girls love accessories!

The next activity was a lego competition. Each team was given a bunch of legos (I bought a lot of 500 legos off ebay just for this), a lego base board, and a Nijago booster pack (in which is a Ninjago character and lots of weapon accesories).

They were told to make a fort or hideout for their guy. They were super into this!  The final results:

We had a very untechnical and totally arbitrary voting system and Blue's group won. :-) The prize was an arm band that looked like lego bricks  bought at our party store for each team member.

The final activity was two-part. First the kids had to accept a Quest! They had to find the lost weapons (a sword and some nunchucks) so they could use them on the skeleton bad guy that had stolen their candy (yup, a pinata). They were given one clue and sent off to find the weapons which were hidden in the boys bedroom. Then... pinata time. I didn't want to spend the money on a Ninjago pinata so I made my own:

(Because if my pinata can be shaped just like a balloon - then I am up for that!)

The kids lined up and got one whack - either with a "spinjitzu" punch or kick or with a weapon. Then, once it was busted and knocked to the ground, my husband gave the contents a big toss in the air. Oh the scramble!

I kept out a bunch of candy to add to the loot of the kids who didn't manage to get their fair share on their own so it all worked out in the end, even for the younger and/or slower kiddos. Oh and mixed in with the candy were a dozen little plastic ninjas from the party store. They were too cute to pass up!

Then we sang to the birthday boy and that was it!  We don't open presents at our parties. Instead we ask guests to skip presents or, if they want to honor the birthday boy to donate to the charity he chose. This time around it was a walkathon we're doing next year. Blue raised $165! Inevitably, people ask if they can bring gifts anyway and I always say sure, but also let them know they'll be opened after the party.

Another birthday party down.

Another birthday boy pleased!

Blue's Birthday, Giving Tuesday, and Toby the Potty Training Rock Star

Yes, it all ties together.

Blue:


Blue will be six on Saturday. Four was Blue's worst year (defiant peeing). Five has been Blue's best. That kid has had like three weeks in a row with smiley faces every day in his school agenda, and he is becoming a little reading maniac which I so love.

He still drives me crazy oh, 92% of the time, but that's down so far from 100% of the time just a year ago! I'm a little nervous about a birthday coming up when 5 has been so good to us. What if his deviant behaviors are saved for the even years? Now that I think about it 2 was worse than 3. Oh no...

But we'll be celebrating. And we're excited. The rest of the world may be putting up their trees and other holiday decor but that is not going to happen until AFTER all the little ninjas with their spinjitzu moves have moved on from the party at my house this Saturday.

Blue chose a Ninjago theme. (Ninjago = ninjas meet legos.)

Blue had never even seen an episode of Ninjago. He's never put together a Ninjago lego kit.  But he knows that Kaden reads Ninjago books, books that are still too hard for Blue to read so therefor it's in the realm of the unknown and absolutely the coolest thing ever.

Which is great because I can do whatever I want for this party and Blue won't know if it has anything to do with Ninjago or not! 

Except, no. Instead I'm becoming the Ninjago expert, totally wearing out its wiki page as I finalize details. Yup. I'm a dork.

Meanwhile... items in the house are being transformed.

The seahorse on the right quickly become a red ninja after the picture was taken. The huge, colorful palm tree painting you see when you walk into our house - it's now a black ninja. That's only the beginning, people. 

And this relates to giving Tuesday because... we don't do presents at our birthday parties. Instead we pick a charity and this year Blue chose raising money for the 5k and Family Fun Walk we'll be doing with Families for Fragile X in Miami on March 2nd. Our whole family is already registered. We'll have Kaden and I running the 5k and Kevin, Blue, Toby, and hopefully my dad walking. To register everyone it cost us almost $100... so that's our contribution, but we'd love to raise more! 

So, on this "giving Tuesday" would you give Blue a birthday present? Would you sponsor him in his first walkathon, a walkathon that will raise money for Fragile X research and awareness?  Just go here! I'd love to show Blue, on his birthday, a happily little scrolling list of all those who heeded his request to sponsor him.

Yes?

Please?

Toby being a potty training rock star doesn't really fit in, except that he is. ZERO accidents all day today. And that should be celebrated. So, go sponsor Blue AND Toby who will be walking that walk IN UNDERWEAR. 

Splash Party!

We hosted a splash party play date this morning.

Even though it's just a play date and these are my good friends who don't give a rip, and I could just as easily throw a bag of potato chips out and call that the snacks I promised... that's not what I do.

Because what is the point of pinning an octopus made out of a pepper or mandarin orange sailboats sailing on a blue jello sea unless I eventually make such things? Pinterest has SO raised the bar.

So yes, it was a sea-themed snack table.

Those are goldfish in the small bowl and a fruit platter in a starfish shaped tray. In the middle of that was a yummy fruit dip.

To make the dip, let's call it, Sweet Almond Dip, here's what you do: In a mixing bowl beat softened cream cheese (8oz package), 1/2 cup brown sugar, a splash of vanilla extract, 1/4 cup powdered sugar, and about 2 oz of almond slices. I used a honey roasted almond slice package found in the produce section called "Almond Accents." It was a 3.5 oz bag and I used about half. 

This is good with strawberries but especially yummy with tart apples (Granny Smith) because I like the sweet and the tart together.

But a splash party isn't really about the food is it?

We just  have a kiddie pool, but I also bought a plastic snake thing that you hook up to a hose and it sprays water. But Kaden was at camp and this was just a party for the pre-school set (technically they still are - Kindergarten hasn't started yet!) so it was enough to keep them entertained.

Oh, and we kept the water balloons coming.


Here they are waiting for me to say, "Ready, set, GO!" so they can attack a new batch of balloons.

At one point I cheated and broke out a can of silly string as my ammo.

Aside from a moment when Toby threw up on me, it was all good fun. (The boy thinks he can go around and finish off everyone's juice boxes, drinking and drinking and drinking, but... he can't.)

A few more shots of the fun:

I so love summer.

Seuss Party - 3 Year Old

I love the whimsy, colors and silly rhymes of a Seuss story. The kids are right there with me. Blue would have us read Hop on Pop every day if we'd agree to it. All have loved Mr. Brown Can Moo Can You? And The Grinch (as played by JIm Carrey) is a hero in our house.

But I've never done a Seuss party. 

It was time. 

(How can this be? Our youngest thing will be three?!)

A person's a person no matter how small.

(This is a small hay wreath, plastic left on, with about 1,000 mini water balloons (or so it seemed!) pushed in with greening pins - about 8 balloons per pin. I used two boxes and a few pins from a third box but I still didn't get to the outer edges. The sign is card stock, took the Cat in the Hat pic off the internet, ran ribbon through the top and then  I pinned it into the wreath - I figure I'll just change out the sign and use for different events as needed.)

The most fun aspect of a Seuss party is the decor!

From there to here,
from here to there,
funny things are everywhere!

Grinch in the entryway! And The Foot Book is there because I had six blue foot prints taped to the floor with words: Left Foot. Right Foot. Feet! Feet! Feet! How many different feet you meet!

Just past the entryway, this "welcome" table:

The "runner" is just wrapping paper. The basket was for donations. It was nicely full by the end of the party! And on the other side we had Seuss's Happy Birthday To You as a guest book.


The message on the sign reads, "Wait, Mate! Stop, Pop! Here is the place for you to drop a birthday message or simple, "Hi," for our very special birthday guy! Write on any of the pages something Toby can treasure for ages! Just grab a pen or maybe ten (if you think you'll need a lot of ink) Then get to signing this guest book, Friend!" The pen holder is just a tin can covered with paper with ribbon around it.

Our dining room is to the left of this and there sat the dessert table!

On this table: Red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and blue cotton candy, mini chocolate cupcakes with frosting and red life savers, jello parfaits, strawberry and marshmallow kabobs, and Oreo Hat in the Cat cookies.

Runner is more wrapping paper. Stuffed Cat in the Hat was so on sale at Target I couldn't resist. Spoon holder is another tin can covered in paper and ribbon. Kabobs are also in paper-covered tin cans, the skewers are stuck into flower foam covered in tissue paper.

I couldn't get my Thing Three circles (internet image I put at 12 to a page and miraculously printed at the exactly right size for my circle punch) to stick to the cupcake paper so they just got tossed about. Oh, and the cotton candy starts to dissolve after awhile so it has to be put on at the last minute.

The red layers are just strawberry jello. The white is panna cotta as explained in this recipe. I made these throughout the day on Friday and gave each layer many hours to set. I meant to add a dollop of whipped cream to the top, but I always make this fresh and just ran out of time. Once guests start arriving I'm done. (Otherwise I could tinker and add... oh to infinity.)

Enter the kitchen. On the counter sat drinks. Just soda and well, this:

(pink lemonade and citrus seltzer)

Also on the counter was this:


Maybe the live prop idea wasn't such a good one. This poor 'lil guy didn't end up living long enough to be named. Sigh. I kinda wanted to have a gold fish too, but then Kevin told me how often the pet shop guy said we'd have to clean the bowl and just like that I'm over it.

In the breakfast nook sat the food table with red and white streamers behind and Foo-Foo the Snoo (from I Can Read with My Eyes Shut) looking on. 

Foo-Foo closer up:

The pic above her has pages from Oh the Thinks You Can Think covering what's usually there. I had an extra copy of this book so pages of it were used over other pictures in a few places in the house.

Along with Foo-Foo and food, we had a Yottle in a bottle?!

(from There's a Wocket in My Pocket.)

Menu was this orzo salad (recipe doubled), gold fish, green eggs (no ham for our veggie family), and some puff pastry spinach things from Sam's.

Streamers are the best.

Moving into the living room...

And over the tv I had some quotes, but that was it for this room because it was needed for the Kindermusik class we had. I told the instructor about the Seuss theme so she brought Seuss's ABC Book and read that too. Toby loves My Gym circle time, so I knew he would be into the Kindermusik hour we planned.

I was right.

I know he isn't smiling in these pics, but he was very intent on doing what the teacher was doing and even though it was an HOUR, I'd say, he was the one who stuck with it the best!

Blue loved it too.

So did my Mom. 

(She's holding my niece and singing, "Move on back," from Wheels on the Bus.)

Meanwhile Kaden was outside with another little boy his age.

So... onto outside fun.

It's opener out there
in the wide open air. 

We had a Splash Zone, Lorax Garden around our sand box, and a table on which I drew cats for kids to color and add hats. Oh and juice boxes and ice pops. 

(The balloons, filled with water and frozen, served as ice. On the other end of that ribbon I tied on scissors to cut the ice pops.)

Lorax Garden:

I drew The Lorax and one barbaloot.I had four bags of colored sand sprinkled around and filling three flower pots that had big, fake polka dotted gerbera daisies in them. I bought new kids gardening tools for the sand box and made six Truffula trees.  Four were made out of PVC, spray painted and held up by re-bar and two were drawn on paper and taped to the fence. All the tree top tufts were made out of tissue paper.

My nephew digging in. (This photo cred goes to his mommy!)

In the "Splash Zone" we just had a kiddie pool, water balloons and those splash-bomb water balls, bubbles, and a target made out of cardboard and spray paint mounted on the fence as a possible place to aim balloons and balls.

Toby and his cousin, Chloe. (Colton's twin sis)

And the coloring table:

I loved my little bud vases (caper jars spray painted white with red tape rings) but having water on a paper table covering wasn't the best idea because the wind blew them over.

See the spillage :-( For these cats, since I needed them mass produced, I printed up a pic, drew over it to make it darker and then traced. (All other Seuss creatures were free-hand.) Even with some wet spots, there were plenty left for coloring.

And a few final touches:

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose! 

We had come paper hats from the teacher supply store:

And even places that didn't look as I would have liked, I made it work...

(The week of the party Kevin cut these big, beautiful bushes down to nothing but sticks and then, as soon as he was done, thought, Faydra is going to kill me.... Faydra considered it, but came up with a different solution.)

I made a playlist consisting of birthday songs, music from Seussical the Musical, music from The Lorax (my kids cannot get Let it Grow out of their heads), a few Jim Carrey Grinch monologues, and rounded it out with some of our general kids music favorites. I also found, when searching for "Seuss Music," a song called Dr. Seuss by Trever Hall that I really like.

Today you are are you, that is truer than true.
There is no one alive who is youer than you!

It was a perfect Toby party. Lots of food and friends and fun, but he never really clued into the fact that all the hubbub was about him. We didn't do a candle blowing out time or have any moment where he was on the spot. We did sing "Happy Birthday" but it was at the end of the Kindermusik class, so it was just another song to him.

(another Marissa photo cred for this one)

Great day.

It Begins...

Shopping/Planning/Crafting for Toby's Seusstastic 3rd birthday party is officially under way.

And thank you, Michael's for having those ridiculous flowers on sale. They birthed the idea for me to create a Lorax Garden in our sandbox. (Four bags of colored sand, not pictured)

Now I'll just be needing everyone to save their wrapping paper tubes for me. I'm gonna need 'em for my Truffula trees.

8 Year Old Birthday Bowling Party

Kaden turns eight on Wednesday and he had his party last night. Gone are the days of silly safaris (3) and Blues Clues clue following (4) or even Super Hero Training Camp (5). It's all big boy stuff now and this year it came down to bowling vs baseball. He picked bowling.

The invites:

I found a fun bowling pin font online for the top, printed it on white cardstock and then cut into the shape of a bowling pin. I made it to the fit the long white envelopes that come with photo cards. For some reason we always have tons of those in our office.

The back explained our usual "in lieu of presents" charity this year.

The place:
Our bowling alley is a Superplay and they have a pretty inclusive party package: 2 hours unlimited bowling, food and drinks, all set up and broken down for you, extra paper goods for cake, tokens for every kid for the arcade, and a party hostess who did the set up and clean up, fetched all our food including our cake which we ordered from the ice cream shop at the other end of the building, got the kids their shoes, etc. etc.

Also, I ordered an extra lane and an extra pizza for the adults that wanted to stay. I'm all about everyone having a place to hang.

We went with cheese pizza for the food and lemonade and water for drinks because we roll vegetarian these days and don't believe in giving kids soda. I asked Kaden if he wanted anything other than pizza and cake and he said Twizzlers. Totally random, but ok, easily done. Also, this mama can't handle there not being a single healthy food option in sight so I had bowls of strawberries (gobbled up fast) on each table plus carrots and celery (pretty much ignored).

The set up:

I used baby food jars for the twizzlers and veggies and decorated by mod podging on scrap book paper, had the 8s cut on my friend's cricut (I want one!). I also had a bag at every seat labeled with each kid's name. This was because...

Making Things Silly:
Every time a kid rolled an 8 in a frame (as in 7 the first throw and 1 the next, or 8 and then leaving the frame open... etc.) they got to pull a prize from my big prize bag. I had gum, stuff from the $1 bins at Target, Hot Wheels, stickers, etc. Winner of the game also got a prize.  At the end we made sure everyone had at least gotten one grab (they had) and then they had bags to keep their prize and tokens/tickets etc when they went to the arcade after bowling.

The kids loved this. I got 4 and 4! I bowled 8 and didn't get a spare! Not much of a math excercise for the big kids but it was for Blue and another little brother his age.

Another silly thing we tried was that during the 8th frame the birthday boy got to pick a "silly bowling walk" for his friends. Our particular birthday boy isn't the most creative so he went with Mom's example for everyone - walk up to the line, spin around, hop and then bowl. 

Checking out scores.

Some quick tips from Dad.

Ah man! Got nuthin'

The whole crew minus Toby and one other friend.*

Cake time! 

Blow!

Oh Blue...

Once our two hours were up, we told the kids to leave their shoes on their seats, grab their bags and line up for tokens. Then it was off to the arcade.

Tickets! From Skee Ball!

Yes, the sight of Blue casually sucking on a lollipop while holding a gigantic gun kinda freaks me out too.

The invitations said that we had the lanes till 8pm but would then go to the arcade and asked parents to find us there by 8:30.

All kids were eventually claimed.  

As he waited in line for tokens Kaden looked over at me and said, "This is the greatest night ever."

Yup, we'll call that a good party.

Also! We raised $69.55 for World Vision.

For this year's charity I presented World Vision as an option or collecting new books for his school library. Kaden went with World Vision. In February our kids ministry at church started taking up offering for the first time since we've been there. They will raise throughout the year and then put all the funds collected toward farm animals from World Vision. Kaden is excited to add his birthday donations to the fund.

* The asterisk under the group shot is because of Fragile X (Toby) and Aspergers (Guest).

Toby didn't make it into the group photo because Toby wasn't having it and went home early with Oma. Well, Toby was all about the bowling party so long as he was on Mommy's hip.  Um. The kid will be three in May. I can't be carrying him for two hours.  He bowled with me three times which is to say that I held his hand and the ball. We walked up to the line and I tried to get him to help me to "push the ball away" and then we stood there and watched the ball and he said, "Bye bye, ball. Bye-byyyyeeeee!"

This is great except this was Kaden's party and in spite of our hostess, I still viewed myself as the hostess and wanted to do the prize bag, take pictures, refill drinks etc. Not possible with the Toby attachment. In fact, the one time in the beginning when I did take a few pics of Kaden and Blue bowling their first frame, Toby followed me, walked onto the lane and promptly had his feet slip up in the air landing with a good thud. He was not happy.

There were three grandparents and a daddy also available for Toby-watching but in that new environment only Mom would do. So, he went home. We tried. Didn't work, but we did take one family picture.

Only because Mom was holding him. When we tried a brothers picture where Dad was the photographer while Mom was busy setting some stuff up, he was not having it.

See? Our brothers picture is missing a brother.

Unless you count this one:

Which... I do not.

As for the one guest not in our group shot... He's a friend from church who has Aspergers. It was important to me that we include him. He bounced around and pretty much did his own thing but seemed to be having a great time. He wouldn't do the group picture and I knew better then to push him. I asked him. He said no. We took it without him, but then not ten minutes later he came up and told me he was ready for the picture. I wasn't going to do that to the rest of the kids, so I asked him if it would be ok if he just took it with Kaden, the birthday boy. He agreed. We got the two together and T promptly closed his eyes tight. Again, I know better than to comment so I just said smile and clicked the pic.

Too cute. I then asked if a hug were possible. (Thinking side hug for a more together picture.) And T said, "Not possible," and walked away. So that was that! T's mom and I had a laugh.

And now for turning 8 Kaden gets to be on Spring Break! The first few days of which he will be in Tampa with Gran and Papa and then it will be over to Poppy's in Lehigh Acres for a night. No doubt he will be celebrated each leg of the trip. 

I think he's up for it.

Kung Fu Panda Party - 5 Year Old

Here's our party crew with the Po (a.k.a. Kung Fu Panda) I drew for just such a photo op.

Blue's been into Kung Fu Panda since we moved into this house (May 2010) got a free HBO trial, and DVRed the first movie. He's seen the 2nd movie in the theater but he's never watched the Nick show. Blue asks to watch the first movie about once a week, but I pick and choose when I'm up for the boys to watch it, because afterwards there is always their attempt at much... uh, Kung Fu.

In November Blue started an after-school program at his preschool where, once a week, he has karate, so you could say he's been preparing for this party for awhile. :-)

My plan was to have it at a Martial Arts Studio and when Blue joined karate I went with the studio who sends their instructor to Blue's school. Because I didn't want to go with their usual pizza plan and wanted to supply all my own stuff, they charged me half what they usually do per kid!  

Decorations:
By having it a dojang, the decor was what it was, but I did draw my Po. (Just white paper from a teacher supply store. I drew him out in pencil, did his shorts in crayon and the black with paint.) 

And then I decorated the tables in their party room:

Those are crispy noodles from Panda Express in the bowl. The containers are just things I had at the house, but covered in black/red. The marker holder is a peanut container covered in black cardstock. The crispy noodle holder is a round Christmas container covered in tissue paper. It's all just stuff I had. Even the red ribbon sat in the mix of a big container of ribbon I keep in my craft area of my laundry room. The 5 is left over from when I was making the invitations. At each seat was a panda picture I bought from Oriental Trading Co for the kids to color.

And here you can see the balloons. 

Because what's a party without balloons?

They had a black shelf along the wall that I used as the buffet. If I'd been really annual I would have draped something down so you couldn't see the contents of the shelf. I didn't bother.

Food:
2pm party so the goal was ample snacks, not a meal. We had veggie spring rolls, cream cheese rangoons, and chow mein noodles (The noodles were a must for a Kung Fu Panda party) from Panda Express. I also had black, red and white candy, cookie cake, cupcakes. Drinks were the small water bottles, small soda cans, and then a pitcher with punch (gingerale, cranberry juice, and a can of frozen lemonaid).

The birthday boy's plate:

Activities:

The studio surprised me by having face painting. Here's Blue's scary face and Kaden's not-as-scary snake face:

Yup, totally awesome!

Then of course the main activities were the Martial Arts activities. First the kids learned high blocks:

And hopefully they were quick learners because Blue was then ready to whack them:

Next they had an obstacle course:

(Hey Blue, can you block while crawling? Toby's added an obtacle to your crawling obstacle!)

The course ended with having to do a kick that popped a balloon.

Towards the end the kids practiced how to break a board.

And moved on to breaking boards, which, if they did, they kept as souveniers.

The kids also had the panda coloring sheets if they wanted to go do this. Most did when we ate.

There was no opening present time because instead of presents for the birthday boy we had our friends bring presents for the animals of our local humane society. People did a great job with presents for our furry friends and also brought cards for Blue, which was great because we like to display birthday cards on the birthday boy's bedroom door for a few weeks around a kiddo's bday.

Oh and one other activity was cutting the birthday cake with a sword. This is why I made the cookie cake. My mind was made up on the panda cupcakes but it seemed silly to me to cut a cupcake with a sword.  I mean, could you cut this guy with a sword?

So here's Blue cutting his cookie cake with a sword:

Party Favors:

The party favors were a small black box like a mini version of a Chinese take-out box. Inside were a few Kung Fu Panda stickers and a fortune cookie with a Bible verse (from Oriental Trading Co.)

The tags read:

"There is a saying: yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the 'present.'" --Oogway

Thank you for being part of our "present" and sharing Blue's special day with us.


Fun times! Happy 5th Birthday to Blue.

Who, of course, has already starting an abundance of sentences with, "When I'm 6..."

Never ends, does it?

5 Year Old Kung Fu Panda Party

Invitations have gone out, so it's officially in the works...

One day this week while in the car Blue announced to me, "When I'm five, I'm going to behave."

Ha Ha Ha HA.

Not holding my breath on that one.

Even so, he's a boy worth celebrating. :-)

The invite reads, "We're going to have a kickin' time! Train with Master Blue to be the next Dragon Warrior."

Just white card stock and colored card stock on the front. I had a punch for the circle. I could have really used a cricut for those 5's but instead I cut 'em all out. That was nothing compared to one online party account I read where the mom baked giant fortune cookies and inserted the invitations and then delivered them in take out containers. Um. Not in this lifetime. 

We're holding the party at a Martial Arts Studio where they do a class and Martial Arts games with the guests. Because I wanted to do all my own food (need a noodle bowl for the theme, not pizza!) and set up they cut the price of the cost per child in half! So my house isn't getting messed up, I get their expertise, AND it's not costing much. 

My only party prep is that I want to draw a big Po (that's Kung Fu Panda's name) for the kids to pose with for pictures. And then of course the food... I'm a good baker but I'm not the best decorater. I think even I can manage these panda cupcakes (minus the bows, of course). Then some sort of udon noodle thing and maybe egg rolls. It's a 2pm party so just snacks. I'll make the desserts, (I'm also going to make a cookie cake because the birthday boy gets to cut his cake with a sword and I want something bigger than a cupcake for that.) but I'll probably order the food from a Chinese take-out place.

This is shaping up to be an easy party. And since it's smack in the midst of the holiday season, that's just perfect.

Birthday Party!

Blue went to his first birthday party of the school year yesterday.  It was on a horse farm so he wore cowboy boots and hat.

Ready to go:

The writing on those circles has five great things about the birthday girl (who turned five). 

And then off to the party for...

Pony rides!

(I have no idea why his helmet is like that.)

Bounce House!

Pinata! (No idea how to get a tilde over the n. Sorry)

Cupcakes!

Friends!

(Blue with the Birthday Princess)

And a lizard-eating cat!

No, the cat isn't eating a lizard here, but we did get to see him catch, play with, and then gulp down a lizard and this was the story Blue told Daddy first thing when we got home.

A good morning for me as I got to meet some of the moms of the kids in his class, fun for my mom who came along because she used to board horses at this stable and still knows the person who runs it, so then of course she got right to work helping out with the pony rides...

But especially fun for my 'lil cowboy:

4th of July Birthday Party

I like planning parties, so I was happy to be the main planner for my mother-in-law's 60th bash.  I had plenty of help. First of all, unlike the parties I plan for my kids, this party had a real budget and that is a big help!  My father-in-law took care of getting tables and chairs, tents, and a water slide. My sister-in-law arranged the caterer and photographer.  (See I told you this party had a budget.) And I took care of all the little details - all things decorative, all things related to the invites (I made them.), buying the plates/utensils/napkins/candles/etc., and all things dessert.

Because we had a photographer, I have pretty much zero pictures. But we'll make do with what I got.

The invites:

We made the decision to do the party only about 5 weeks ago, so in order to get the invites out right away I had no choice but to make them myself. I just printed them on my computer, stamped the blue stars on, and then put blue and red string zig-zagging on the top. Finally, I mounted it on red card stock. 

The birthday cake:

I designed it, but Publix created it. And since they had zero ideas/pictures of a Fourth of July cake when I came in, I sure hope they took a picture, because I'd say it turned out pretty nice!  The candles on top are sparkler candles. I'd never used sparkler candles before and didn't know how they worked. Now I know: you don't blow them out. They just have to burn out on their own.  Still super cute and perfect for a 4th of July birthday.

Next the fruit pizza:

Here's the recipe. You could obviously change up the fruit/color scheme to go with any holiday or party color scheme.  I could see doing a star out of a kiwi surrounded by blueberries of an Under-the-Sea party, call it a star fish.  I need to get a round stone (this one is my M-I-L's) because I want to make more fruit pizzas!

We kept the table all red, white, and blue.  The fork holders...

... were just tea tins I had with scrap book paper mod-podged onto them.

But over on another counter I had chess cake.

I made two batches and they all went! I also had an aunt bring cookies and then a guest brought a coconut cake that I guess is her signature dish, so it was quite a dessert buffet!

As for decorations...

With a 4th of July birthday, patriotic items are kinda my M-I-L's thing, so she's got red, white, and blue knickknacks all over making the inside done. I did have a table when you first came in set up for guests to sign in.  Instead of a guest book I had stars for people to sign.  Our main birthday gift to my M-I-L is that I will create a scrapbook of the party and the signed stars with go throughout the book.

Some pages were already done because I had family members create a page for my M-I-L and those will be in there too.  

Outside we had buffet set up - I just had white table clothes, star confetti and patriotic cutlery caddies on both ends.  

Then we had seven small round tables. For these I cut plastic blue table clothes in half and wrapped the table (taping underneath) in the center I had small globes with white daisies and carnations and a patriotic pin wheel.  Around the globes I had facts about 1951. I called these my fact bubbles. Unfortunately I didn't get any pics of the finished product, just one as I was going along...

Oh and every table had confetti.  My poor father-in-law is going to find stars in his grass forever.

In the front yard the main event was the water slide.

Uh, it was big. And scarier than I expected because those of us who actually weigh something got going fast and slammed hard at the bottom. We only wanted it for the party but the company that owns it wasn't open July 4th so they dropped it off Sunday afternoon and won't pick up till Tuesday.  All my slide pics are from Sunday.  We've gotten a lot of use out of this slide.

Between the pool and the slide the kids got pretty wore out.  Toby went down for a nap during the party and slept about three hours! (Toby didn't actually go on the slide on Monday. Kevin took him down a few times on Sunday but he never liked it.) Without picture taking duty or Toby duty, this mama had time to relax by the pool!

It was a lunch time party so fireworks weren't part of the plan.

Here's one last pic of Kevin and I with the birthday gal (taken Sunday after church):

A big happy birthday to Mom/Teresa/Gran! I'm pretty sure she had a great day.