Natalie’s Tangled Party

Natalie celebrated her 6th birthday on Saturday. We went with a tangled theme. Nothing I did was revolutionary, but I thought I’d blog about it, and if anybody in the area wants to borrow my décor or games you’re welcome to it.  I decorated with purple pom poms, yellow streamers, a sun flag banner and vellum lanterns ( vellum painted with the star, wrapped around mason or spaghetti jars).

We started off with drawing on the walls like Rapunzel in the movie. (Dollar store wrapping paper)

 

We took some pics in the photo booth. I made a huge wig of blonde hair for the girls to pose with. Some loved it, some were scared of it. I’m still untangling it.

We tossed some apple bean bags to Maximus, tangled each other up in streamers (Girls favorite game by far)

We panned Flynn Rider with blindfolds on (oops no pics!), And danced with streamers to the Tangled songs.

We made scores of lanterns from vellum and purple construction paper.

The girls ate cinnamon roll and cheesy Italian bread braids. Natalie loved the donut tower.

The girls went home with satchels, chameleon party blowers and some felt and silky flower clips. Plus their lanterns and dance streamers.

All in all, it was a great party, and I was proud of myself for doing it in less than 2 weeks. Hooray for Tangled!

Art Party!

Sophia is all about the ART- she’s always spent a lot of time drawing, but lately she draws for stories, she is able to draw “what I see in my head” and has been able to paint and absolutely LOVES all the extra credit art projects she can do each week at school.

So the theme of her 7th birthday party was a no-brainer: ART PARTY!

We printed out letter envelope sized invitations that the girls and I painted a few weeks before the party.

Then we got started on the décor. I bought two packs of rainbow bold colored cardstock at Michael’s, and cut it into 1 inch by 8 inch strips- which I used to make the loop banner seen below hanging

I just kept stapling and stapling, and ended up with a few long strips- enough to go around my living room and kitchen and the above entryway.

I also used those strips to make hanging strip mobiles ala Oh Happy Day’s instructions.

 

I also bought some popsicle sticks at the dollar store, and made 2 dozen popsicle stick easels. So cute. I found pictures of famous paintings I love to put on the easels, to display on the table. I came up with the black and white frame idea while looking for scrolly frame clipart. Having found nothing that made me happy, I saw a simple frame and thought- I could do that easy. I drew it with lines on MS publisher and carried that theme of white and black frame/colored art to the rest of the party.

 

I used some packing newsprint to draw up this entryway sign. I freehanded the font based on a font from the computer, but my printer doesn’t print over 11 inches, so I did my best. I colored it in with colored pencils. (Love me a new pack of colored pencils all lined up like the rainbow!)

We hung balloons from string over the table, and I found a valentine heart tablecloth in my dish cupboard, I bought it last year on Target clearance after valentine’s day, it worked great for the table cloth- so colorful, and looks like something Sophia would draw.

I also found coloring pages for famous paintings online. I thought about printing one for each kid, then remembered my friend who has a large scale printer for her carpet business. A phone call and a few emails later, and we had huge paintings to color.

Food:

For the food I made Jello Popcorn in every color but red, then did Red Hot Cinnamon Popcorn for the red kernels. The popcorn cups are from the Boxes, Bags, Tags, and More cartridge for Cricut.

Each color of popcorn makes 8 cups. So I spent a few hours making this popcorn in the separate colors, then mixed in a freshly washed and dried rubbermaid bin.

We ate only about 1/3 of the popcorn, so I’m using the rest for a Young Women’s event at my church next week.

Chocolate covered pretzels, posing as paintbrushes…

M&M cookies (I made these for me more than anyone else!). And tie dye cupcakes- I’d recommend the gel colors or thinned out icing in piping bags to create the stripes and circles. I was using a spoon and it was not working so well. Luckily the kids could care less.

We made blending punch- the kids could pick two of the primary colors of kool-aid to drop in their lemon lime soda to see what colors it made. It ended up really really sour. If I do this again I’ll make up 3 pitchers of kool-aid and have them mix in their glass with normal amounts, rather than little sprinkles of kool-aid.

Last but not least, the favors:

Oil Pastels- I bought 2 packs of oil pastels at Michaels (love the 40 percent off coupons!). They’re usually only 5 dollars for 48 to begin with, so not expensive. I divided up the pastels into sets of 5, mixing up the colors to get one blue, one green, one citrus, one black or brown, etc. I cut out crayon boxes from the Boxes, Bags, Tags and More cartridge (had to play around with it to find the perfect size to fit them in). I assembled with scotch tape and glued on the labels I’d made in Publisher.

Sketch Books: One day the week before I spent an afternoon making boy and girl themed doodles on a white piece of paper. I then scanned it in and printed multiple copies on cardstock. I put a good amount of white paper in the book and bound it with my bind-it-all.

Front

Back

Last but not least, I made Art Portfolio labels to go on simple file folders. I put a 5 inch or so strip of tape on each side to make it into a pocket folder. The kids took home their artwork, sketchbook, pastels and halloween sized playdoh for their favors.

Now onto the party itself…

The guests arrived and we colored some paintings on the walls. At the beginning they were asking which color was “right” so I suggested they pick a color they think was right, and maybe do something silly…which is how Mona Lisa ended up green with a rainbow behind her.

Next they colored the front of their “Art Portfolio”- aka goody bag to take home artwork and supplies in.

Our only real game was Pictionary. I had a few ideas on paper, or they could come up with their own secret to draw. Because most of the kids are in the same class at school, it was hilarious to hear them speak in first grade terms- one girl drew a “Landscape” for everyone to guess. At another point in the party everyone was discussing “statements” vs. “questions” and “exclamations.” First graders are so sophisticated these days!

Next we drew with crayons and then painted over with watercolors. This was a backup activity after Sophia vetoed a game the morning of the party- but it ended up being the quietest and most popular. Guess there’s no substitute for painting!

I gave the kids straws too to blow on the watercolors for a cool effect- but nobody really caught on.

Next we sang to the birthday girl and had some food.

And had some balloon fights to get off some energy:

Then we went back to the table for sculpting.

We opened presents and had some more balloon fights- and then it was time to go!

Overall the party went swimmingly well, considering there were over a dozen kids and just me and John. The main things I learned from the party is to have some activities kids can do if they don’t like the one we’re focusing on. In this case, they were always welcome to go play with balloons, draw on the easel or color more on the walls. I’m thankful for all the fun kids that made Sophia’s day so great and most of all, thankful for my little Sophia sunshine and the love she has for creating.

HOORAY for ART!

Monkey Man had a birthday, shout Hooray!

First, let’s get the pesky party details out of the way, so we can focus on how cute Leo is.

We made a triple chocolate monkey cake. Recipe here at Best Bites. Then we decorated the cake with vanilla wafer ears and eyes, and Cocoa Krispies for texture.

The yellow plate monkey one is 6 inches, for Leo to smash! Or in his case, it was more like POKE! You’ll see in a minute.

 

I made a little birthday sign with my Cricut.

And made a felt crown (which is pretty much the easiest thing to sew- ever. And I whipped up some party hats.

Ok, so he’s only 1, so a cute hat and a cake, that’s all he gets. Tried to reign myself in here, keep it simple. We had a BBQ at the park with our cousins for a celebration.

But first I took some shots. I borrowed a friend’s 50mm lens, so I wanted to see what kind of dreamy artsy shots I could get.

A 50 mm is pretty good if you want your kid to look like a Claritin commercial. Especially if you are using automatic focus. Once I went to manual focus, I got some good shots

Well, good for a little baby who doesn’t sit still for long. Leo didn’t seem too excited to look at me, he was more interested in the soccer practice going on next to the pavilion.

Here’s a side by side of the same shot with 50 mm vs. zoom lens, 1.8 vs. 5.6 f stop. More exposure on the second- I like the first dreamy Evie better.

Ok, so enough camera talk. Here’s the Par-TAY!

I love these giggly girls, especially together. Their conversations are hilarious. Don’t they look like a commercial for summertime?

Superhero Ninjas Unite!

 

Here’s the cake pictures. Leo told us all about the cake, he ate more when we gave him a spoon, I think he was distracted by the cocoa krispies.

At home we opened presents. Well, the girls did, and baby boo-bah looked more like this- a deer in the headlights. Looking at this picture with his puppy dog eyes makes me miss him, and he’s only been asleep napping for an hour. I’m going to be a wreck when I look at this picture in 5 years. Or 18 years when he goes on a mission.  Man. I Love you Leo!

Happy Birthday!