Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Monday, August 8, 2011
Decorating for a Diego Party and How to Assemble a Fun Goody Bag on the Cheap
Series two in the Trent's birthday installments; Decorations! Green streamers, green balloons, homemade posters and streamers. Trent and I spent a week decorating the house, upstairs and down. When we found out how hot it was supposed to be on the day of the party, I had to make the executive decision of an indoor party. It was almost two parties, the grown-up one upstairs and the kids one downstairs, making it so we had to decorate two levels of the house. Monday, a full five days before, we started putting up the decorations.
I had originally wanted to make these very neat vines that I would have made out of brown paper bags, but then I found something better. A lot more festive, I stumbled upon these very cool home made streamers on Oh Happy Day. They were ridiculously easy to make and definitely gave the basement that party feel that I just don't think we would have gotten with the paper vines and poster board leaves that had been the initial thought. Add to that about twenty six green balloons, inflated by myself and Garrick, and it really felt like a party down there!
That wasn't all though! A few weeks before the party I checked to see if anyone on freecycle had anything. Someone responded to my wanted ad with three beautiful home made posters; Diego, Dora and Boots. The Boots poster was also a game of pin the boot on Boots. All I had to do was cut out a bunch of left boots for him. I was very excited about this because I had wanted to make posters, but I knew it would never happen. I just never would have gotten around to it and would have bought some stuff at Party City. It was bad enough that I ordered the helium balloons through them.
In addition to the above mentioned decorations, and before I found the article about the home made streamers, I went to the Dollar Tree. I was actually in search of little plastic toy animals that I could put on the cake and use for one of the games I had planned. I wasn't able to find any (nor anywhere else for a cheap price for that matter) but there were a lot of luau decorations that I realized would be perfect for the theme I had going. I grabbed bird posters and outdoor signs that you stick in the ground; flower banners; an inflatable ring for the pool; green streamers; and goodies for the kids.
I found these adorable animal hats for the kids that were absolutely perfect. I had planned on making each child an animal rescuer t-shirt, but when I saw the hats I realized the time and money I would save myself by getting them. I was also able to get Diego and Dora stickers and some fun drinking straws for the goody bags. I still had a lot of Chinese yo-yo's left over from Hunter's party and those also went into the bags.
What is a party favor bag without a special little yummy treat inside? While a birthday party is about sugar, cake and ice cream, there is no reason that you need to completely sugar up everyones kids. You have to deal with wound-up children excited from a birthday party, why add to the insanity from the standard sugared party fair. No, I did not put candy into their bags, but home made animal sugar cookies. I know, not much better, but I feel a very special and personal touch to add to those bags. There is probably less sugar in the cookies then would have been in the candy anyway.
One last note on the favor bags. I absolutely do not use those bags that a party store would have you buy. I use brown paper bags. Why? What's the fun in that? Well, no it's not fun, but I think it is what's inside those bags that count! Plus, you spend all this money on bags that people are going to just throw out anyway? No, I don't think so. I think I got twelve bags assembled for around twenty dollars. That includes the hats that I got for the kids.
One last note on decorations before I wrap this up. As the final touch to the wild animal feel we were going for, I went through every single one of the stuffed animals that we have in the house. The kids have accumulated stuffed animals and they have inherited the stuffed animals from my childhood and Garrick's. I hadn't realized how many we had. The animals tossed decoratively all over the basement gave it the perfect finishing touch.
I think I'm getting good at this kid party thing.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Trent's Fourth Birthday Cake
Well, this is the start of the birthday party pictures. When I started planning Hunter's Cars themed party, I asked Trent what theme he wanted for his birthday. He thought about it for a little while and settled on Diego. Since then the talk had been non-stop about his upcoming party. Needless to say, the expectations for his party in his mind were pretty high. I didn't want to disappoint.
After learning some lessons from Hunter's party, I decided that a cake AND cupcakes were the way to go. I like to do drop-in style parties for the kids. That way they get to see the max amount of friends! (No present required to attend one of our parties!) The downside to this is that people get to leave when they want or need to and end up missing the cake and the goodies that I include on the cake. With the main decorations on the actual cake, if people had to take off early, they could just grab a goodie bag and a cupcake and be on their merry way.
That said, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted the cake to look like. It didn't look exactly as I envisioned, but I think that the result was pretty outstanding. I started off about five days before the party by making some of the fondant decorations. I still had a lot of left over fondant from Hunter's birthday. I used the rest of the gray colored fondant (used for roads on H's cake) to make big rocks. I dyed some uncolored fondant blue and rolled it out flat. Using that and the boulders I constructed a waterfall and river.
I then tried to make some trees. I added cocoa powder to some of the fondant mixture to make brown. Never do that. Trust me. I just ended up with crumbly fondant. My tree trunks ended up looking more like turds and the leaves I constructed just did not stick to the cocoa fondant. By Friday night I came up with a new plan; make giant leaves! Dyed the fondant green, rolled it out flat, took a knife and made slits in some of them. Others I just made very long and thin. Laid them all out to dry, making sure that they were each bent in a certain way. By the next day they were hard enough to just stick into the frosting. They occasionally broke as I stuck them in, but I just put the broken pieces somewhere else on the cake. Turned out absolutely wonderful. I still had a lot of left over orange dyed fondant from Hunter's cake, too. I took that to make some big orange flowers for the sides of the cake. The only time I would ever put flowers on a boys cake, I assure you.
I made the cupcakes and cake on Friday morning and the buttercream frosting days before that. However, a horrendous thing happened! I ran out of green and blue food dye. I couldn't finish coloring the frosting the needed green of an Amazon forest! I would have had the entire cake frosted and decorated on Friday night had such a travesty not occurred. Instead I had to send out Garrick and my FIL the next morning (in not the most charming way, I might add) to acquire some. Upon their return, I re-whipped the frosting, added the needed food dye and decorated that cake like a boss. A BOSS!
In case you are wondering about the Diego and animal figures, no I did not construct them from fondant. After looking on-line for Diego figure and discovering that they were all $25, I went to the thrift store. I was able to purchase an entire bag of small toys that included a Diego that would be perfect for the cake, for $2.50. AW YEAH! Unfortunately I could not find little plastic animal figures for a cheap price anywhere and had to buy a few tubes at Toys R Us. It was worth it for the final product, though.
My Wardrobe
Before getting a gift certificate from a wonderful Redditor for the Arbitrary Day gift exchange and receiving a bunch of good stuff from freecycle, this is what my closet looked like. All the stuff on the left are things that I wasn't wearing because they were for cold weather or just a little too small. The small section on the right was my warm weather selection. Thank goodness for the internet.
Sitting in a Fire Truck
We went to a birthday party back in June and the family contacted their local fire department. They were able to arrange for a truck to be brought to the party. The boys got to sit in the truck and we loved the knick name for the animal.
Birthday Pancakes
Since the birthday was on a Wednesday, and the party was the following Saturday, AND his birthday present wasn't assembled yet, Trent got some birthday pancakes to start his day. Complete with candles!
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