Scavenger Hunt Party

On Saturday Briton finally (finally mom!) got to have his birthday party. Yes, I know, two weeks late. What I told Briton was that we delayed it so that we could make sure everyone was home from their various vacations. Which, really, was a good reason if you think about it. However, the real reason was that we were just really busy the week of his birthday and the whole party thing was too much to add to the mix.

The thought of a dozen seven and eight years old's at a party is kind of intimidating as well. I mean, what on earth do you do to keep them busy, especially when you have boys and girls at the party? Last year we (somewhat brilliantly I thought!) set up the tent trailer and invited just a few boys for a slumber party. They hung out playing playmobil all evening, barely tore themselves away to shovel down some cake and then spent the night giggling in the tent. But this year Briton had a much longer list of kids to invite. So something had to be done.

After some pondering (bowling? bouncy castles?) Will and I came up with the idea of a scavenger hunt downtown which turned out to be the perfect thing. They were kept on the move the whole 2 hours they were with us and having two competing teams kept them interested, because, of course, they all wanted to win. I took clues down on Friday to several business who had agreed to help (thank goodness we live in such a friendly town, everyone was so into it!) and pre-ordered cupcakes form our favorite bakery. Saturday morning we broke into teams, handed out bandanas and the first clue and off they went. The kids were hilarious trying to solve the clues, one came dressed as a detective and I overheard one of the kids say to another "the reason we could figure everything out was because everybody knew something and we all worked together to figure things out!"

I have to say, other than the time that I took cupcakes and plastic buckets to a public fountain in Portland for Briton's 4th birthday when we were in the midst of moving, this was by far the easiest party we've ever done. Still, I have to say I'm glad that birthday season is over at our house. Whew, and just in time to start planning our Halloween Party. Honestly, I must be out of my mind. (But secretly I love it :))

Birthday Season is Upon Us

Well, almost. For our family, our little family of hour (six if you count the dog and cat, I cant even think about adding the chickens) we are summer heavy when it comes to birthdays. Evie, Will and Nigella all have June birthdays, Briton and I are both in August, as is our anniversary. So we get pretty busy around here at the start of summer in terms of party planning. Last year Briton opted for a kind of non-party. He had a sleepover with two friends and really they didn't come out of the playroom the whole evening. We had to drag them out for cake. It was lovely. But also kinda sad for me. I love planning parties and so having my child express taht he didn't really want a big to do anymore, well, I might have been a little teary. Then there was the "I just want a yellow cake from a box" incident which, I can't even talk about (come on kid! Your mother loves to bake, are you really going to make her make box cake? Yes, yes you are) Although we were in the middle of moving so it ended up being a good thing. This year he hasn't decided what he wants but Miss Evelyn knows for sure what she wants. I'm not really sure, but she is sure. So far she has told me she wants a GIRL party, but with boys too. And a TEA party, but really with cake. And a playing outside party, but wearing dresses.

You see my confusion. So we're having a Mad Hatter's Party which, I think, covers most of the bases there. I'm starting to gather old teapots and cups for the party and have great plans to get started on a bunch of paper mache hats for them to decorate and wear. I've been informed that the cake MUST be pink, with pink frosting and pink sprinkles and am in the process of making some very Alice-like "Eat Me!" signs for the food. I have a vague idea of dressing myself up as the Queen of Hearts, somehow. But most of that is still on the to do list. Or even just on the "in my head we will have this" list. The only thing that I have done is the invitations.

These are pretty much the same as the pencil cups I just made, except this time I typed out the party information in a (totally dorky, but they're three, what do they know!) poem and swirled it around some funky tea cups that I found at Salvation Army. Each of the kids in Evelyn's little posse of three year olds is getting one. I'd almost say that I'm going to have to give this whole strange and unusual (and only hand deliverable) invitation thing up once Evelyn hits school, except that's kind of the bonus you get for having summer birthdays. The trade off you get for having to suffer through 100 degree weather while pregnant, twice, is that you don't have to invite the whole flipping class to birthday parties. Don't get me wrong, it's fun to have a big party, but really, all they want is to hang out with a few really good friends. Or at least my kids do.


So in honor of the kick off to the Grimm Family Birthday season, here are Evelyn's totally unmailable Mad Hatter Party Invitations.

More Fairy Party Dodads...

I love flickr.Anytime I'm searching for ideas for something I spend a few minutes (or hours) nosing around on flickr. Not that I've ever posted a photo there (sorry dad!) I'm the worlds worst photo organizer. iphoto organizes them by date when I download them and that's how they stay. But I love that other take the time to post there photos so that I can go and search out things I need inspiration for.

Before we moved to Charlottesville I spent a good number of hours looking at every photo tagged with the town on flickr. It helped convince me it was a good place to live. I've looked at room designs and found bird photos for Briton and all sorts of thing that I needed a lot of examples with minimal effort. Today I spent a happy twenty minutes looking at cupcakes. Yeah, go ahead, laugh. But then go type in cupcakes on flickr and see what you find. Today there were458,588 photos tagged with the word "cupcake" Tomorrow I'm sure there will be more.


So now that I'm (mostly) decided on what kind of cupcakes I'm making (I say mostly because we'll have to see how the royal icing turns out, could be a disaster, in which case I have a tub of pink Pillsbury frosting on standby) I can get to work finishing up the crowns.


I had planned to sew these, but my sewing machine is not being very friendly these days, it either needs a major cleaning or to be replaced, both of which cost about the same and neither of which I feel like shelling out for at the mo, so instead I opted for fabric glue and felt.


Felt is fabulous. It doesn't fray, it sticks to itself, it comes in lots of colors. Maybe it's the feltboarding kindergarten teacher in me, but I have a deep and enduring love for felt. So with that in mind and a table full of ribbon, stickers, glue and some interesting scrap booking borders I found on the sales rack at Michael's, away I went. I ran out of ribbon, which means another trip to Michael's (Oh, I wonder what I'll find this time, so many crafts, so little time) and I haven't tried them on a child's head yet to see if they stay on, but I think they are pretty cute. Hopefully the girls will think so too. T minus 5 days and counting to party time.