One of the Rec Center's in my area opened a new spray park this Summer and it's free! I'm trying to bring the kids as often as I can. We usually go every Monday with our play group. These pics are from last week. I'm actually debating about whether I should even bring them next week since this week none of the kids even played in the water. They all just hung out with the Mom's and were climbing all over us while we trying to have conversations with each other.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
The Animal Fire Truck
Back in June we took the kids to a birthday party and the parents had arranged for the fire department to bring a truck. It was way cool and the boys got to sit in it. The really rad part was that this particular truck is called "The Animal."
Playing Veterinarian
A couple of months ago I took Icesis to the vet for a follow-up appointment. My vet's office has a little cart with a toy doctor kit and a stuffed dog for kids to "treat" while they wait for their real pets to be looked at. The boys insisted on bringing the cart into exam room and spent the entire time taking Icesis temperature and giving her shots. This was the only picture that came out.
Shape Cookies
Right after Trent's party, I had to use up a lot of buttercream frosting. I decided to make sugar cookies to accomplish that. I've been wanting to try out the Almost Unschoolers sugar cookie recipe for a little while now and thought that this was the perfect opportunity to do so! The dough was very easy to make and great for little hands to manipulate.
Since we haven't been doing much with shapes lately, I thought that would make a good cookie project. We got out all of our shapes cookie cutters and the boys had a blast rolling out the dough and using them on it. After the cookies came out of the oven, it was just as fun to frost the cookies themselves.
Party Food and Games
This is the last installment in the Trent's fourth birthday posts. Enjoy the birthday cake ritual pictures.
The food spread for Trent's party was exactly the same as what I did for Hunter's party. A veggie tray, a fruit tray, a fruit punch and some pretzels. Don't forget the pizza! Last time we bought pizza, but this time I decided to make it to cut down on the budget for the party. Unfortunately, I completely spaced out and forgot I was having someone to the party that is allergic to milk and all the dips I made had milk of some sort in them. I also had someone allergic to food dye. Just look at the pictures of the cake. LOOK AT THEM! Lesson learned. Next kids party I throw I will make sure that there are options for gluten, food dye, dairy, etc. allergic kids. I like to try and make sure that everyone can enjoy the food and no one feels left out. Luckily, the Mom of the child who has the milk allergy was kind enough to realize that people who have food allergy-free kids tend to forget about the fact that others do have allergy's. Thank you so much Princess!! You totally saved the day for me. With the exception of making sure that there are options for folks with allergy's, the food at future party's will be pretty much identical to what is listed above.
I also tried to make sure there were some fun animal rescuing party games. Unfortunately, while I was assembling the pizzas Garrick was handing me rum and coke's. I finished the first one rather quickly because I was thirsty and then I asked him for another one. By the time I got around to getting the kids together for the party games, I was thoroughly sloshed. I apologize to everyone that was there. I felt pretty badly about that. :/
The first game we did was pin the boot on Boots. One of the poster's that I got on freecycle was the Boot's game, all I had to do was cut out some boots from red construction paper. See the party decoration post to see the poster. The next game we did was very easy to assemble. I got a bunch of little plastic toy animals, put them in a cement mixing tub and covered them in sand. The kids job was to rescue the animals from the sand. They got to keep the animals that they rescued. The last game was to feed Tuga the turtle. I did have to make this poster. I had Garrick draw Tuga and my Mother-in-law was thankfully on hand to paint it for me. I don't know what I would have done if I had to do the job. I know I would have gotten angry and frustrated and spent way too much time working on the poster and not on other stuff. Thanks again Mary. After Mary finished painting and it was dry, I attached it to some cardboard, cut a hole in it and taped it to a laundry basket. The kids threw some balls into the hole to feed Tuga.
So that's it. I have to say it was a very successful party. I think I'm getting pretty good at putting together a kids party on a budget. I had almost everything written out this time like I did for Hunter's party, but I didn't have to rely too much on the written plan like I did last time. I think next year we might do a pool party for Trent's fifth. He's already talking about it!
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.
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