The Birthday Fairy

I just realized (HOW is this possible??) that I’ve never written in great detail about this very special tradition we have in our family that started when Maeven was 2  (in 2002). The Birthday Fairy!

Shortly before Maeven’s 2nd birthday I learned about the Birthday Fairy. I explained to Maeven (as best as I could to a toddler) that Mommy just learned about this fairy that comes to children’s homes  (only children! No grownups, sadly) on their birthday, if you invite her to come. Since we didn’t know about her the year before, she hadn’t come for her first birthday…and most people don’t know about about the Birthday Fairy so most kids don’t get to have her come. But since we learned and invited her, she began coming to our family in 2002.

The Birthday Fairy helps make a child’s birthday extra special. She decorates the doorway of the child’s bedroom (in our case, our family bedroom…at least until the child moves to her/his own room) with streamers and sometimes balloons…and also decorates all down the hallway leading to the kitchen, where she decorates the doorway to the kitchen with more streamers (and sometimes balloons) and the area over the kitchen table and especially the birthday child’s chair. She also leaves a small present and a birthday message.

Here’s some examples of the fairy’s decorations over the years:

The Birthday Fairy Decorations! VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Something we discovered pretty early on is that The Birthday Fairy was really good at knowing what our theme for the year’s party would be, and would find our already purchased decorations (sometimes we deliberately left them out…but often we’d forget and she’d still find them!) and she’d decorate with appropriate colors and decorations. Example in the album above was the construction party for Tyren’s 3rd birthday. Notice all the yellow and black décor and construction vehicle and caution tape! Brilliant! This is a great help since usually the party is just days after the actual birthday, so the fairy does much of the decorating for us! Thanks Birthday Fairy!!

Over the years, I’ve capture many of these festivities…but apparently I haven’t captured them all, since I just went looking and was alarmed to not have pics of The Birthday Fairy’s visit every year! Oh well, I am sure its all on video…I just am not always good at taking pics when I’m not yet fully awake.

Here’s some memories from over the years…

The first year, Maeven received a special birthday crown and cape from the fairy, which she proudly wore all day long!

This was also the first year of her discovering fairy dust ALL OVER THE HOUSE!! Yes, wherever the fairy flies and decorates, there are little sparkles left sprinkled! At 2, Maeven was just enthralled by this, and I have some adorable video footage of her discovering it and hearing my explanation. I believe I have similar footage of Tyren around the same age, with Maeven explaining the dust to him. I’ll have to dig it up at some point.

 

 

For Tyren’s first birthday the fairy brought him this darling 1st birthday cap.

 

 

 

Sometimes the fairy just brings random items she knows the child would like…like the year she brought Maeven a blanket sleeper, felt crown, and fairy wand.

 

 

 

 

And sometimes the fairy brings gifts that go great with the theme of the birthday party…Like the year of Tyren’s construction birthday party, the fairy brought him a cool homemade toolbelt , hard hat with his name on it and goggles (which all went great with the tool set and tool bench he got from Mommy and Daddy!)

 

 

The year of Tyren’s animal party (age 4) , the fairy brought a lion family and a cool birthday book full of animals!

 

I don’t have great pics of every year’s fairy gifts, unfortunately, and many of the specifics have been forgotten…but the gifts are always well thought out and perfect for the child the year they are given.

Here’s a darling pic of a letter to the fairy that Maeven put in the kitchen window, in anticipation of her arrival (a few days prior to her 6 or 7th birthday, can’t remember which):

 

Sometime before Maeven’s 10th birthday she stopped believing in the Birthday Fairy (and the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny, and *gasp* Santa.) So, as happens when children stop believing, the fairy no longer comes for Maeven. And she’s ok with that. She enjoyed the fairy while she believed, and she now enjoys sharing in the joy with her brother when she continues to visit him.

Our whole family has really enjoyed, and continues to enjoy, this special birthday tradition of The Birthday Fairy…Now that you know about her, maybe you can invite her to your house too!

Tyren's Robot Birthday Party--Pt. 1

Holy cow, Tyren's robot birthday party went REALLY well! Funny because I think I felt the least prepared for this one than any of them. Typically I start planning months in advance and even order a bunch of stuff online...which I wish I had because I couldn't find ANYTHING robot in the stores here locally. (I'll post to some things I found online in another post for those that might want to actually plan ahead.)

I'm going to write up everything we did here so that others can possibly use the ideas for their own robot parties...since I gathered most of the ideas from other sites for US! I couldn't have done this party without all the great ideas on the web...I was really at a loss for my own ideas for this theme, which I know nothing about! So a great big THANK YOU for all the sites out there that put out their own ideas to share...and I'll link to the pages I got the ideas from so that they will get the credit (and the traffic), and hope that others will do the same for ideas they got from me! :)  Also will be uploading the graphics we used for our labels as soon as Adam gives them to me because I was able to come up with some of these things from other people's files that THEY put on their blogs, so I want to share the files with others, of course! :) (My husband made all our personalized ones with photoshop, he's a whiz with that thing!)


Of course, things went badly with the prep for pics/video...we were so hard working on the party that we never ended up getting the camera and video camera ready to go and couldn't find them through most of the party! Ended up finding the video camera halfway through and handed it to Adam and then it was a tape that was FULL! He finally did get a tape and got some footage but by then it was already getting dark. I'll dig that up and post that soon as I figure out how to do it.


For photos, thank god my brother brought his camera! Hopefully he got a lot of great pics because I didn't ever end up finding our camera. I'll add the pics to this post once I have them. Today I finally found our still camera and was able to take pics of some of the things from the party.


SOOOO, without further ado... here's what we did...

Outside the party we set the mood by putting up a sign, which my brother made for us:

Also a bunch of hanging silver stars that I got in a package of silver decor from a party store. Guests had to walk under a big archway robot made out of silver spray painted cardboard box robot (pics of that to come...I know my brother Tim took pics of that magnificent thing because he put HOURS of work into it, outside in the hottest part of the day, in direct sunlight!! He's a trouper!) And Adam put up caution tape in long strips in the sliding glass doorway (don't have a picture of that, as it was torn down this morning when I finally found the camera...but I'm hoping Tim got a pic of the entrance). 


 Inside, we put out toys that Tyren got for his birthday:
Fisher Price Imaginext Robot police sets (pictured to the left...they are AWESOME!!), so those were out to play with (although I don't know if anyone ended up using them). And the toy area of our new "big room" was all set up and inviting to play. Put a sign on the wall above the legos that said "Robot Parts" (right).




The main activity of the party was robot making with recyclables...I had a ton of recyclables I'd been collecting, that we had for The Learning Village that I snagged to use for the party...all of them will go back to TLV now that the party's over. So I put out these big roll-y cart things we have:

labeled "robot parts", which were full of: toilet paper tubes, egg cartons, oatmeal boxes, cartons, foam meat trays, paper towel tubes, etc.

I also grabbed a bunch of the art supplies from TLV (since I had purchased nearly all of them myself and donated)...so for the "Robot Assembly" table (big sign above it that said those words that Maeven made, with pics of robots on the letters.) I put out what I had: colored pipe cleaners, straws, googly eyes, sequins, beads, wooden and foam shapes, colored popsicle sticks, buttons, etc...And I purchased a bunch of large nuts/bolts/wingnuts/washers in various sizes to add to it as well as silver pipe cleaners, rubber bands, paper clips, aluminum foil, and these tiny chinese food container type things that I got at Dollar Tree. Actually a lot of what I bought I got at Dollar Tree. I put out small bottles of white glue, scotch tape, staplers, scissors, hole punches, and hot glue guns.

So the kids arrived and were shown the Robot Assembly area and spent pretty much the entire party working on their robots. And WOW there were some incredibly creative ones made! All ages seemed to REALLY get into this activity! (12 kids came to the party! We invited a bunch of our neighbors because for the first time we are actually getting to know them lately!) Hopefully my brother got pictures of the conveyor belt with all the finished robots, because the kids took them all home and I didn't get pics of them. :(  All I got were pics of what was left this morning...including the awesome robot Maeven made (below).


To set the mood in this area, I put a plastic silver table cloth I got from a party store, on the main table, and on this long/low dresser thing I have in there. Also put a long strip of black burlap that my husband had scraps of from another project. This was our "conveyor belt":

There were also a bunch of small, sectioned lunch trays on the assembly table and a sign above it that said "Fill your tray with robot parts, then move to the conveyor belt." I also had a small round table from outside that I set up in the corner covered in aluminum foil (the top was pretty dirty from being outside) with aluminum foil, and that was the glue gun table, separate from the rest.

In this art/robot assembly area we also have 2 doors (since this is the area of the room w/linoleum that is by the back door and laundry room, which is our designated "art area" in the room.) that are painted in chalkboard paint, so I had my kids draw robots and messages on the doors, and Adam put caution tape across them so no one would open them.

In the kitchen, which opens to the "big room", I had silver plastic table cloths set up on kitchen table and our portable dishwasher. The dishwasher was the drink area, with a label saying "cyber juice" (an idea I got from here.) for the main drink container of lemonade, and I put silver colored cups (which had a texture on them that looked sorta robot-like to me) and silver napkins on there with a bunch of clear colored juices from Trader Joe's out there too (we have new carpet in the "big room" and wanted to avoid stains from colored punch), with an ice chest of ice. I also used my label maker to put the message "please label your cup" (since I had put out a permanent marker) on the table cloth in front of the cups, and "Ice in ice chest below" with an arrow pointing towards the chest.

For the snack table, I asked my brother to make a sign to say "Robot Refueling Station". Look what he came up with!:

And here's what the table looked like:

I'll post the images for the labels when Adam gives them to me. The ideas for these snacks and labels came from here.

Most of the party was just the robot making and playing with toys and eating snacks...We also had a way cool robot cake that my mother-in-law made which I will post pictures of once I get...and of course ice cream and gift opening.

Oh almost forgot...I made a cd that was a mix of robot music I got from itunes and birthday songs I've had for years that I downloaded off the net years ago (plus some I bought). I alternated robot song with birthday song in the middle of the cd, This was playing outside on a boombox for the whole party, and Adam set up his new office (which is inside the "big room") to play another cd of robot-y music that my brother put together for us (THANKS FOR EVERYTHING, TIM!!! YOU ROCK!!!) and a short video Adam had edited of clips of robot movies/shows/etc that he found all over the net, playing on his multiple computer screens at his edit station.

Here's my itunes playlist that I burned to a cd:

1. Robot Love by Dave Palmer
2. Robot by Sven Vath
3. Clean up Time by John Van Tongeren
4. Wall-E's Dance by Marco Marinangeli
5. Wall-E and Eve by John Van Tongeren
6. Birthday (You Say its your Birthday) by The Beatles
7. Robot #1 by Hi-5
8. Happy Birthday to You by The Hit Crew
9. Music Robot by Disco and Co
10. Happy, Happy Birthday to You by Various Artists (Splashdance album)
11. Robot Music by Simple and Completo
12. Happy, Happy Birthday from the Bear and the Big Blue House
13. Uphill City by I am Robot and Proud
14. Today is Your Birthday by Solomon Burke
15. Music (Reset Robo Remix) by Dave Spoon
16. Blue's Clues Birthday Song
17. Robby the Robot by Audiomagic Music Studios
18. The Circuit Bent by Dave Palmer

Somehow all that equaled exactly 1 hour in music! I deliberately put some of the more mellow robot songs in a clump at the beginning (to play as guests were arriving) and then in the middle alternated with more up-beat robot songs and upbeat birthday songs, then a couple robot songs at the end.


Also, the entire big room was decorated with tons of helium filled silver balloons and silver decorations I got in a pack from a party store. Hanging stars and curtains of silver fringe and such. Very cute stuff! We were trying to make it feel like a robot factory but at the same time have that birthday party feel still. I think we succeeded pretty well! :)

The party was at 7pm because its stinkin hot here in the summer until after that time, and lasted til after 9pm. We had borrowed some chairs from family and set up a big circle of chairs outside in the front driveway in front of the house, outside the entrance to the big room. So most of the people ended up hanging out there, as it cooled off (it was hot still at 7pm, til the sun finally went below our neighbor's house)...and we had borrowed 2 robot toys from The Learning Village lending library, a robot dog:

and a robot dinosaur:

I didn't plan at all for these things...we went to TLV to pick up all the art supplies and Tyr wanted to check something out from the lending library and asked for one of them and I was like YES!! OMG YES! Those will be GREAT for the party! So the kids took turns using the remotes for these things (I had to buy new batteries, but it was so worth it!) and they were walking and dancing all throughout the middle of the big circle of people through the whole party. VERY VERY COOL! These are the sort of toys I would never actually buy...but checking them out for free as a member of TLV...PRICELESS!!

Here's a video of the dinosaur robot I made this morning with Maeven:

That's all I can think of or have time for now...More pics to come, as I get them.

nearly there

in just a few days i'll be done with the madness of the past month. first TDC's event, then halloween, then maeven's birthday then her party...october/november are really crazy around here and i'm feelin it. will be glad to be done with it for another year so i can breathe and start gearing up for xmas. (ack, its not much longer til that crazy season, bleh).

anyhoo. i am determined to get this house shipshape. went to several stores yesterday just to buy the supplies needed. got tons of cleaning supplies (we were out of so many), and am attacking with vigor tomorrow.

still much to do on the party front but i'm trying to narrow it down to the easiest and cheapest ideas. it doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be wow, just fun. i have to keep telling myself that. and i'm getting maeven as involved as i possibly can. she's really a great help these days, and finds party planning almost as fun as i do.

going to have to figure out what to do with our large cardboard boxes we have collected...maeven wants a tea house with a roof, but i suspect that might be too much to do by sunday. well, its not a really difficult thing to make, but my biggest question is what are we going to use to paint it? i need to price paint and if i can find something affordable, we'll see...but we will need pretty much every color of the rainbow and then some. i'd just use tempera if TLV wasn't already so short on it. (and out of many of the colors entirely). i am thinking house paint would work best but i don't know how much it would cost for that many colors, even for the smallest of buckets. there's no way i'm going to be able to spend $50 or more on paint, no way. not feasible. i'll have to see what other sorts of paint might be available...i just doubt that tempera would cover the cardboard properly...it never really did before...hmmm...wait! i may have an idea...i think we have white house paint...and my dad might have some too...methinks i could paint it all white with what we already have and then see about getting more tempera to paint over it. it doesn't have to last...its going to be recycled after the party, most likely...but i just want the paint to pop.

hmmm...this could possibly work. it will be a lot cheaper to run and buy the tempera we are out of than to have to buy house paint in bright colors, methinks. i know i do have some colors, so i wouldn't need a ton. and i have plenty of brushes in all sizes. this could actually be quite fun! :)

and maeven's the resident artist so of course i'd put her to work on the main painting anyway. :) i'll just get the house assembled and we can all have fun putting the white base coat on and then see how it goes from there. tada! solution found. now i just have to go print up those house making directions again (i made one for maeve before, using our cardboard rivets.) and hunt down some white other neutral color'd house paint. voila!

Today is my dh (darling husband's) 39th birthday

So here's some pics in his honor. The many faces of Adam. :)

From recent goofy pics:


Tyren took these pics. I love how you can really see Adam's blue eyes in them:

One of my favorite pics ever of him:

(taken last year in front of our house)

To very old pics, of our wedding day in 1999 (were we really that much younger?)



Crazy to say, but he still makes my heart go pitter-pat when I look at these pics of him.

Yes, even after 12 years together, 10 years married and 3 children & much stress, heartache and joys later...

Lately we've had a LOT of stress, what with all the financial woes. But we are hangin in there and despite it all, Adam still cracks jokes and manages to get us all to laugh. Cuz that's just the kind of guy he is.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY! I LOVE YOU TO PIECES!!

tyren's animal party (aka "so much for simplification")

well it was a huge success! and i'm pooped!! but i learned my lesson from maeven's last bday party--so i better get this up before i forget to do it entirely! :)

first of all, i had tried (key word-tried) to plan this event as one that once it was set up, i could sit back and actually enjoy the party. don't know what i was thinking because that is so not how it happened. there's always a ton of stuff i forget to do and i end of running around like a madwoman getting them done during the party as people ask for them. (like plastic utensils, doh!) oh well. i just am not as organized as i like to think i am, apparently.

anyway, so tyren picked "animals" as his theme. pretty broad, i know, but i figured it could be pretty simple because there's tons of animal stuff out there, right? well, strangely i had a harder time finding things for his party than i have for previous parties. dollar stores usually abound with items which work well to fit with my kids' party themes. and while i did find a good amount of stuff at them, i didn't find at all what i was expecting. oh well.

anyway, so we decorated with an animals theme. maeven drew animals and we hung them under the canopy that i borrowed from the discovery center.

i also copied all these animals with my color copier/scanner/printer doodad, and she cut them out and glued them around the bottom of a dollar tree plastic table cloth.

she also made a sign for the door.

and the day of the party, maeven, her friend brooke, tyren and i worked on the driveway...they drew chalk animals and we wrote messages to set the mood for the party.

maeven also used window markers that tyren got from the birthday fairy to draw animals on the front sliding glass door as well as the back one.

we decorated all over with streamers in blue and green. and i put up xmas lights in the canopy and the trees because the party was starting at 6:30pm so i knew we'd still be going at it as it got dark. just turned them on as i put them up and left them on so i didn't have to think "oh, its getting dark, i should turn the lights on." they were already on. :) especially needed since we don't have any backyard lights currently. (they died and we've yet to replace them).

so for the party, we did animal costumes. i bought plain plastic headbands from dollar tree along with sheets of craft foam to make ears. they cut out their ears and i hot-glued them to the head band (works fast, although i did burn myself quite a few times, argh.) for tails, they had an assortment of belts/scarves to choose from. they had a bunch of fabric belts and braided belts at dollar tree that i thought were really cool and we cut them up and safety pinned them to the animal's butts. (safety pins also purchased at the dollar tree...200 for a buck, how can you go wrong with that? i got enough for YEARS to come now!)

then i had my dad help me move maeven's dresser mirror outside and we put it against the fence and kids used stick face paint to create their own faces. (some with help).

i also had themed music playing...i bought the hampsterdance cd from the 99 cent store, and the jungle animal themed party cd from the fancy party store. kept playing those over and over.

by this point we had wild animals running amuck. and some really fabulous creations!

i also spent the good part of a week gathering up large appliance boxes (something do every year...free entertainment!) no easy task, i tell ya, since they don't hold them for you at the big stores unless you call in the wee hours of the morning when the deliveries are getting ready to go out! i had to do a couple days of setting my alarm for 6 and 7am, just to strike out a couple times, but i did get a fair amount too. and there's also clovis appliance, the only local small business that sells large appliances that just puts their boxes outside. snapped up within minutes of being put out there normally but i struck gold and made it when there were THREE outside! WOOHOO! so we had a good assortment of large boxes and every year i have adam put together a fun fort. this year it was tunnels/caves for the wild animals to play in.

oh i should mention that we use cardboard rivets, which work MARVELOUS!!! i can't recommend these enough!! these can be found at mr mcgroovy's and they are cheap and really worth it!! they make cardboard fort making FUN!! seriously! and some amazing creations!

so next i put out plain tshirts and fabric markers for them to make tshirts to enhance their costumes or for whatever they wanted to make.

then, as if they didn't already have plenty to do...i brought out the fixings to make ice-cream-in-a-bag. (what was i thinking? but it WAS a hit!) i set up moms around the small round table i had set up for snacks originally (but it kept morphing into other uses--note to self--BORROW more tables for next party! i simply don't have enough, and none are big enough.) each moms had an ingredient...so they were in charge of getting that one ingredient to the child and giving them the bags at the appropriate times, and sealing them, etc. we got quite a system going...would have been better if we had had a long table for moms on one side and kids on the other, though, but that's all i had, unfortunately. oh i could have brought out my larger round table but it didn't occur to me at the time. oh well.

the homemade ice cream was a hit, though!! and then i brought out cake and there was some storebought icecream as well.

it grew dark and the clear xmas lights hung up everywhere were lovely! i decided it was time for the goody bags because there were light sticks in them. (plus the bags were being used for putting the pinata booty in...so they needed them ahead of time). also in the goody bags were animal stickers and animal band aids (how unique is that? i thought that was too cool to pass up at the dollar store--wild animal bandaids, LOL!) i didn't get much for the bags because of all the other stuff they were bringing home. oh i forgot to mention the plastic animal plates i got also at dollar tree (2 for $!) which i gave the kids to put snacks on and then they could take home. another party favor.

then there was the pinata. have i mentioned how much i HATE pinatas? i really do. not only are they very ordinary (everyone does them at their parties...i hate ordinary, LOL. i'm just funny that way.) but they are just far too crazy and chaotic for my liking. and if it were my choice, i would have quickly nixed the pinata. but tyren decided he wanted one and daddy decided tyren REALLY wanted one, and encouraged it, so who am i to argue with what a newly 4yr old wants for his birthday when he has daddy backing him? so we did the pinata for the first time ever (and the last, i tell ya)...i bought small plastic animals to put in it (actually i kept hoping the pinata idea would be forgotten and i could hide the animals in the sandbox as i had originally planned)...and adam got the pinata and candy to fill in the rest.

we did the pinata, had a child howling because the chaos was overwhelming and she didn't get to get in and get anything...which is EXACTLY why i hate doing pinatas!! its just madness and someone often gets hurt or feelings hurt. but the kiddos shared generously with her and crying abated. (poor little thing, i really felt her pain, it was very crazy!) tyren got next to nothing since he doesn't quite get that you're supposed to go nuts and grab everything in sight...but he didn't seem to care. he had plenty of stuff...he got all the animals off the cake! so he didn't need anymore.

last was gifts and by now it was LATE. we finished off around 9:30 or so...guests departing and family sticking around later to chat. kids weren't asleep til after 11!! it was a long, exhausting, albeit successful, evening.

i do have a ton of pics, but i'm waiting on my husband to empty the card for the camera so i can get pics of the things i missed last night (the driveway, maeven's table cloth, the tunnels, etc...)

pics to come!

a simplifying of birthdays has happened

just wanted to make sure to make note for all of those friends of our family that haven't been invited to tyren's birthday party. its not anything personal. i've just gotten to a point where i'm trying to simplify things and so i've narrowed down party lists greatly lately.

for one, we cannot afford party favors for 11-million kids anymore. for 2, i cannot fit 11-million kids and their families in my house anymore now that i have no big room to work out of (still under construction and there's no end in sight.) true, we are doing things outside for tyr's party but trust me when i say that adam's family alone is a LOT of people, and we also add mine, and the birthday child's closest friends...its quite a big event.

so i have been trying to limit the guest list (the children part) to a maximum of 10 children, including maeven and tyren. so that really means 8 guests that i plan activities and party favors for. this is totally doable to me.

but my kids know a lot of kids.

so i limit it to the children that have the most recent and/or strongest connection to my children.

this is a different group for each of my kids. there are always plenty of maeven's friends at tyren's parties because tyren spends just as much time with them and they all seem to love the tag-along brother (although maeven often does not.) but tyr has gotten a couple more friends lately, through classes he's been taking, so his repertoire is slowly growing.

anyway, there ya have it.

so its nothing against you or your family if you weren't invited. i just don't have enough room.

its such a sticky situation, parties. who to invite, who not to invite. just didn't want anyone to feel left out or feelings hurt. :)

maeven's long ago mermaid party

i was just reading this post about a mermaid birthday party and realized that i never did post about what i did for maeven's party last year! i like to document them all.

so let's see what i can still remember (it was last november!)

we did it at our friend's property, margaret hudson's barn, for those of you that are local and know what that is...because we didn't have a space that would house everyone indoors in case it rained (which it didn't, but it was in november, so there was that possibility).

ahead of time...
maeven made a picture of a mermaid:

and i scanned it and made a bunch of copies because she wanted to make her own invitations this year (usually we just do evites). then we figured out the info for the inside and made a word file for it and printed it all up and i bought blue cards at a dollar store and had maeven cut all the pieces of the cards and glue them onto the dollar cards with her info.

i also got a cd of mermaid and ocean themed music together by spending HOURS on itunes searching for good music. (can you say obsessed? shyah!) sadly, we didn't even listen to all of it at the party...but if she ever wants another mermaid party, i'm set!

then for decorations we got a bunch of streamers (my favorite decoration since its CHEAP and you can use it for all sorts of stuff!) in shades of blues and greens. all bought at dollar stores...and also curling ribbon in greens for seaweed. the day of the party i had the kids help decorate by hanging streamers all over the place to give the illusion of being underwater. so we hung them all hanging in strips, and curled and hung the ribbon as well.

i also printed a bajillion coloring pages of underwater animals and plants and lots and lots of mermaids! these were so much fun to find (and there was a ton to find)...brought colored pencils to the party and had parents and kids help color them and hang them up. we cut around the shapes of the things so we had them looking like they were in the water and floating around and such.

we also did white and blue balloons...blew them up and hung them around for bubbles and a bunch of them on the ground.

maeven made her own mermaid play to perform at the party...but was too shy to read it or participate so i got her friends and some family members to act it out. it was very cute!

we found water balls (rubber squishy balls filled with water) that were shaped like octopus and puffer fish at dollar tree, and use that to do a fun name game (well, i THOUGHT it would be fun, but it was too hard to catch the balls, so oh well, they got to keep the balls).

we also did a version of musical chairs, but used pillows from the couch in the room to be "mermaid rocks" and i played a fun version of mahna mahna from the cd "for the kids"...and had them all sit down or stand up for each mahna mahna...and took out pillows every so often...and they had to squish on the pillows together as there were less pillows (no outs). it was very giggly.

we got a bunch of clear and blue and green glass rocks (the kind you put in flower arrangements that are flat on the bottom) and called them "mermaid jewels" and hid them around the yard for the kids to find in a treasure hunt. the jewels were in different shapes: squares, stars, circles...and we got them in bags at dollar tree.

food: i bought all kinds of sea themed food. fish sticks, shrimp, and made tuna fish sandwiches. i also made octopus from hot dogs that we sliced to have legs (they curl up when you cook them). also fishy and whale crackers, ocean (blue) jello cups w/gummy fish in them, blue koolaid...

and the cake was a chocolate cake we got at a grocery store predecorated and then redecorated. i used a butter knife dipped in hot water to turn the flowers into rocks, and added a bunch of blue frosting and brown sugar to make sand and to cover the "rocks" and used our playmobil mermaids to top it. oh and sugar fish and starfish and seaweed to decorate the top and around the edge. used blue frosting to make waves around the sides of the cake.
wish i had pictures, but our camera died right after the party started. :(

maeven wore her mermaid halloween costume (we always do this, as her birthday is 4 days after halloween, so whatever she picks for one is for the other as well).

we also did some parachute games with balloons...like keep the bubble on the parachute and such. kids loved the parachute the best, i think!

i had a bunch of other games planned, but we didn't do them. i plum forgot some and others just didn't feel right to do at the time...the kids were already having fun. :)

i need to find the page in the notebook that i wrote all my notes down in to document this more...but that's all maeven and i can remember for now.

it wasn't entirely what i had wanted, since we skipped some stuff i thought would be really fun (but i always over-plan...never enough time). but it was a big success anyway! :)

from now on i have to make sure to blog as soon as the party's over, despite how tired i am, because trying to remember it all 8months later is hard! LOL!

maeven's mermaid party and vomiting

great title, eh?

i spent the last week or so busting my butt to plan maeven's mermaid party because i procrastinated, as usual. it all turned out great, though! i'll post about that later.

but as soon as maeven got home from the party (we had it at a friend's property, in their "big barn", which is a big building that they have for events and such) she started vomiting.

tyren had this vomiting bug thursday and friday and now apparently maeven has it too. one gets well just as the other gets better. now we're just hoping that neither adam nor i get it.

oh what a fun night i have ahead of me! and my poor baby too. i suspect there will be no sleep tonight...and last night i was lacking in the sleep dept (stayed up to plan the last minute stuff for the party)...so this should be extra fun! NOT!

tyren's bday party

this year tyren's bday party theme was construction. i decided on yellow and black for the colors, and occasionally safety orange (didn't want to do too much orange cuz i worried that with the black it would look too halloweeny). i decided that solid colored plates/napkins/cups/etc would be fine...vs a construction picture that would cost significantly more (plus shipping...i found everything local this year to save on that!) so i got solid yellow and solid black plates, cups, napkins, balloons, streamers, etc....hence the decorations that you saw in the last post that the bday fairy used. this year maeven and i wised up and put out OUR decorations on the kitchen table for the bday fairy to use, so she would be going along with the theme. maeven thought this was a terrific idea! :) i also found caution tape for like $5 at home depot.

i also SCORED BIGTIME in a lot of my purchases for the party this year...i always try to buy as much as possible for parties at 99cent store and dollar tree...this year i got just about everything there! i found all the balloons, streamers, and paperware for the party. got a yellow plastic tablecloth and then found a construction themed plastic table cloth that had safety signs that had bday themed messages and safety cones on it!!

you can see that table cloth here (over the dishwasher, where i had all the beverages...):

and here, over the yellow tablecloth on the food table (this picture was taken after everyone left and i had cleaned up most of the food, so there's nothing left on the table...

but we "constructed" sandwiches for the party):

here's more pics of the party decorations (this was done in addition to the decorations the bday fairy had already put up...so the whole house was quite decorated!):

this is what the back sliding glass door looked like during the party (you can see friends outside socializing). :)

this is after the party, my parents and my kiddos hanging out in the living room...tyren is pointing a flashlight at bompa (NOT a pretend gun, even though my dad is acting like it is...we don't do guns in our family.) that's the sign from the birthday fairy on the wall, and you can see the streamers and hanging tonka decorations and stickers i found on clearance at party city (another SCORE...they discontinued their tonka party just about a month before our party and what was left was only 50cents each!! i got all kinds of party favors and some decor for next to nothing!)

this is the other side of the living room...my mom really did a great job with the streamers...she helped me decorate. :) she had them going down my big metal shelves...i don't know how well you can see that here, but they went down both sides. and there were "party zone" construction sticker things that she put up there too, on the corners of things.

this is my birthday boy (very cheesy smile), showing us the front door decorations (after the party, notice the dirty face...he had quite a fun time!)

i also found orange safety cones at 99cent store, and got chips and pretzels there too. (they actually have some decent food there too! although not all the food is good, so i am choosey when i pick food there.) oh and i found party favor bags with a construction theme at dollar tree!

and for the kiddos during the party, i found bob the builder yellow hard hats at 99cent store and pulled the bob stickers off and glitter glued all the kids names on them...so they each got a hard hat, as well as a black tool belt and set of toy tools, all 99cents each. (the tools came in little kits with like 4 or 5 tools in each set!) and then since there were 3 different types of sets of tools, i gave all the kids one to start with (the one that had the hammer in it), and then the other sets i bought extra of and buried them in our sandbox and they had fun hunting for them.

so when the kids arrived, i gave them each their hard hat and toolbelt and pack of tools to put in the toolbelt...then i sent them to the living room to use stickers to decorate their hard hats. then once most of the kids were there, we went outside and hunted for the tools in the sandbox. for some reason i don't have photos of any of that...guess i was too busy leading things. adam has video footage though, so i'll see if i can get him to give me a usable clip to put up later.

then after that, i dragged out all the cardboard boxes i'd been collecting for weeks before the party...i had like 4 fridge boxes (didn't use one of them though, we had plenty already) and a bunch of smaller pottery barn boxes that someone gave us. and adam and the kids put together an amazing house!!

here they are still working on it:

hamming it up

playing in the finished product

parents relaxing at the party (i put the pools out for a "foot soaking zone" because even though the party was 6-9ish in the evening, it was still pretty hot:

in this pic you can see that i put the gifts in our orange wheelbarrow. :)

birthday boy with his cake.
we got a cake at costco that had flowers all over it and a frosting grid...my mom took off the flowers and took a knife dipped in hot water and smoothed the grid out and then her and maeven covered with crushed chocolate graham crackers and put some brand new construction trucks on it and some embelishments. :) turned out really cute!!

more pics from the party: