I haven’t blogged anything in a while. Life has been full and fun but maybe not
anything notable or inspiring to write about.
We did have a busy birthday season last month with my one year old,
followed by my Father-in-law’s 65th and then my 3 year old. It was a busy three weeks filled with
decorating, baking and celebrating. I
particularly loved my 3 year old’s birthday.
Considering she is child #3 and was turning 3 on October 3, I thought
she should get as special a party as possible (and I shouldn’t slack off just
cause I overdid it with the first one’s and now I’m feeling “done” with
elaborate birthdays).
I’ve always
thought birthdays are special and a time for each child to be in the
spotlight. Cate was on a Nemo kick for a
long time so I had been thinking about an under the sea party for a while. However, she recently changed allegiance to
Little Mermaid, but it was still along the lines I was planning. I chose to not over do the “Disney” aspect
and went with the “Under the Sea” theme.
My patient and wonderful husband put up the streamers the night before
while I finished the cake.
I tried
to keep it simple as the kids are only 3 (some still 2 ½). I opted to do a drop off party, even though
they are still young, I had enough adult helpers and it is easier to focus on
the kids if you aren’t trying to entertain the parents as well. Plus our house would be too full and it was
too chilly for an outside party.
We
started with a relatively simple craft, but since they are so young they
needed a lot of adult help. I thought
this was so fun, unique and could be done with many different materials.
Fish bowl art
Supplies:
Sandwich plastic bags
Pre-cut blue card stock
Pre-cut fish shape
Pre-cut fin shapes
Googly eyes
Bendaroos (waxy string) cut in half
Rice
Glue sticks (1 per 2 kids)
We handed out the supplies one at a time and let the kids assemble
them. You can see my 6 year old’s is
what it was supposed to look like. The
other is my 3 year olds creative flare coming through. They don’t care if it’s perfect, it’s just
something fun to do and take home.
Next we did cake. I kept
it pretty simple as kids don’t tend to eat a lot of cake and I have thrown out
a lot of cake in the past. The kids
each got a cupcake and the small cake was left over for the next day.
We played a few simple games:
my teacher husband put his creative juices into "Pin the Tentacle on the Jelly fish".
There was also, pass the tissue paper ball (wrap a candy in
a layer of tissue paper and add candy in different coloured paper until you
have a big ball with enough candy for each kid.) You pass it around the circle while the music
is playing and whoever is holding it when the music stops gets to rip off one
layer and eat a candy. Pretty simple but
still needed guidance at this age to keep it going.
I had a bit of a fishing station set up with dollar store
rods and magnetic creatures. And there was a bean bag toss.
For lunch it was fun and kid friendly. Octopus hot dogs (simply cut half into 6 and
boil, they curl up nicely).
Grapes on a
stick (cause anything on a stick is fun).
Fish in Jello cups (these didn’t look as good as I hoped, the gummy fish
got really slimy).
Rainbow fish
crackers. And juice (coloured blue with
food colouring). Kids don’t tend to eat
much at parties so be prepared to throw out leftovers.
We then had a bit of a gift opening. And then the party moved outside to whack the
piñata. I don’t always get a piñata but
my kids have learned to associate parties with piñatas and this was Cate’s
first one, she was so excited. The
little kids couldn’t break it and even the big kids didn’t do much damage. In the end we dumped out the candy and the piñata
hangs in her room intact.
This was one of the least stressed I felt about a party and
it went off without a hitch. I’m so glad
I could give my little girl the party of her dreams.
With a Bushell & a Peck of Party Time,
Stephanie
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