Claire's Halloween Birthday Party

When we heard that Claire's due date was October 30, we knew we just might have a Halloween birthday on our hands. No problem—my birthday is July 4, and having a holiday birthday has been so much fun over the years! Claire ended up being born late on November 1, but her big day is still always intertwined with the Halloween holiday. Last year, we even trick-or-treated on her birthday because of heavy rain the night before. I knew she'd have Halloween-themed birthday parties at least a few times throughout her growing up.

So this, her third birthday, was her first holiday-themed party, partially because the church had the audacity to schedule its fall festival on her actual birthday, a Saturday, so if the party was going to be before Halloween anyway, might as well go all out! With our family Wizard of Oz costumes Claire was the witch, a classic Halloween figure in its own right, and she was the wickedly precious star of her party.

Theme and Décor
It was a classic, kid-friendly, non-scary Halloween party. Orange and black and a bit of green, witches, ghosts, spiders, and pumpkins. I bought a big pack of orange and black cardstock at Michael's and used it for the invitations (thank you, Pinterest, for the ribbon bat idea!) and for pennant banners to hang on the mantle and doorways.

I reused some of the paper fans from BGC's bug party a few weeks ago, adding some white yarn for a spider web on the wall. Usually there is a collection of crosses hanging on that wall, so there were plenty of nails to wrap the yarn around, and on which to mount little Styrofoam ball and pipe cleaner spiders!

Frightful Food

There's always a point in the day or two before a party when I start to feel I'm going overboard with thematic food and such. I'm proud, at least, that I let a couple food items go at the last minute, telling myself "It's okay just to sit and rest for the 20 minutes before guests arrive!"

My mom made chocolate-covered pretzel rods, which I thought of as "magic wands" when combined with these witch hat cookies made from Hershey kisses and inverted Fudge Stripe cookies.

I bought a pack of Halloween picks months ago (as an add-on to get free shipping on VBS supplies from Oriental Trading, I recall!) and they were really cute on the cheese tray, as were the clementine "pumpkins" with celery "stems."

 

Also from Oriental Trading were the little pumpkin cups that I put out for the kids, beside our "witch's brew" green lemonade and "pick your poison" ice bucket with beer and sodas.

 

I had planned on cake pops being the main sweet, but it would have been awkward to stick three candles in one for blowing out, so I'm glad I found this little mini-cake ready-made at Kroger. It had a candy Frankenstein monster on top, which I replaced with this little witch figurine we already had around the house.

Ghoulish Games

I planned three games/activities for the kids to play during the party. 

First, "Pumpkin Bowling." I made the pins with empty water bottles (a little water in them to weight them) and styrofoam balls glued to the top covered with scraps of a worn-out sheet set. The kids knocked down these ghostly pins with pie pumpkins—the perfect size for little hands.

I positioned the game on the front porch with a wall behind it, but pins and pumpkins still ended up rolling down the driveway and into the storm drain. Alas!

Another activity was "Make-a-Monster." I'd originally planned to have little pumpkins the kids could decorate but the more I thought about that, the messier it sounded, and I didn't want little costumes smeared with paint or even Sharpie. So instead, I used the leftover green plates from BGC's party as faces to be decorated monstrously!

I cut out a variety of shapes, and had googly eyes and glue laid out for the kids to go to town with their creativity.

Third, "Pin the Broom on the Witch." Kate had enough practice with it before the party to learn to feel her way to the witch's hand and get the broom right on there (a trick she promptly taught the other kids), so we had quite a lot of "winners." There was still some spontaneity to it for the smaller kids, though!

 

Costumes

 

Even the grown-ups got in on the dress-up action for the party. My in-laws were Mary Poppins and Bert, my mom was a black cat, and my dad was the Great and Powerful Oz to complement our family Wizard of Oz ensemble. We also had Elsa, a dragon, a cheerleader, tennis pro, and football player. A rocket, shooting star, and the cast of Peter Pan were unable to make it at the last minute :0)





 

 

 

 

I'm sure it won't be the last Halloween birthday party for my little fall baby, but it was a fun first!

Happy birthday, Claire!

Creepy Crawly Party

Well, we've not only had BGC with us for more than a year, we've had her with us for two birthdays now! Last year, she had only been with us about six weeks when she turned one, so we did a little Sesame Street mini-party at church after our casual evening service.

This year, we gave her the full Kelley-family birthday treatment with a "Creepy Crawly" themed party in honor of her (pre-spica-cast) creeping and crawling and all her other progress in the last year. I can't show you how big and robust she's getting these days, how much more interactive and verbal (her few babbly sounds are big steps, with hearing loss as profound as hers!), but I can show you her sweet 2nd birthday party, at which friends and family celebrated her growth.

I found the invite on Etsy, and personalized the text.

For the centerpiece, I just used flowers, flanked by a light-up ladybug toy we have and a caterpillar I made from styrofoam balls that will do double-duty in a game at Claire's Halloween birthday party in two weeks.

 

Since it was a morning party, a "buggy brunch," the cake was a tower of doughnuts, being climbed by an orange doughnut-hole caterpillar (stuck in with toothpicks). I love the little name banner I made to hang over the doughnut "cake" (letters obscured for blog-sharing, of course).

Bloody Marys and mimosas for the grownups, plus juice boxes for the kids (BGC learned how to drink through a straw via said juice boxes today, actually!)

 Kate and Claire helped me with much of the food, like putting grapes on skewers for our "grape-a-pillars."

Cinnamon rolls became "cinnamon roll-y polys."

I used crescent roll dough with bacon and American cheese to make these little pastry "snails." I read online that broccoli slaw makes good antennae (and felt gratified that I was not the only person out there looking to create edible bug anatomy).

 I also made a bunch of quiche muffins, no cutesy name required.

For an activity to keep kiddos occupied, I put out supplies for crafting little bugs out of mini styrofoam balls, pipe cleaners, toothpicks, and pony beads.

These were the products left at the end of the party!

 

Happy birthday, BGC. This is going to be a big year for you!

Kate's Winter Wonderland Tea Party

Tuesday was Kate's fifth birthday. She's smart, tall, creative, and SOOO ready for kindergarten, which I can't believe begins later this year! Matt and I were actually out of town on her birthday, but since Kate firmly believes that it is blowing out one's candles that makes one magically turn a new age, it was her party on Saturday that really mattered.

I tried something different this year, after three years of parties where we invited whole families and everyone mingled while the kids played. This year, I thought we'd try a kids-only party (mommies optional) with a "Winter Wonderland Tea Party" around the dining room table.

We invited just four friends, since our dining room has six chairs (four guests, plus the birthday girl and her sister) and I planned activities to keep six little girls ages 2-6 occupied for two hours. After coordinating VBS last year, I was well aware how time is harder to fill than you think and how groups of kids so easily dissolve into chaos!

There were definitely moments of chaos, but overall, I thought it was really fun and special (partially because of the chaos, I'm sure, if you ask Kate!) I'm so excited to share it with you.

First, the Theme and Decor
To me, January equals light blue as much as February equals red and March equals green. So I was eager to deck the halls with light blue, silver, and white, and to take advantage of after-Christmas sales to find lots of snowflake-themed stuff. (The Mom Creative would approve: check out her post on party planning in advance.) I went to Michael's the day after Christmas and found snowflake ornaments, ribbon, and cupcake liners, plus silver doilies and netting, at 50-70% off. I later found snowman chocolates and snowflake-themed paper plates and napkins on clearance, too.

 

I decorated the table with the netting, ribbon, ornaments, doilies, and snowmen, plus some crystals (the type that would go in a vase) that I found at church, leftover from a wedding held seven months ago.

 

 

I hung ribbon and ornaments from the light fixture (above) and made a banner for the mantle with extra ribbon, doilies, and some scrapbook paper (below). One benefit of centering the party around a table was less pressure to decorate the whole downstairs!

The Food

There was tea, of course, this being a "tea party," but I suspected the kids would not all care for tea, so we also had lemonade and apple juice. My mother-in-law collects tea pots, so she had a big selection of blue and silver ones from which to choose.

 

 

The party began at noon, so I had lunch food for the kiddos. I plated their grapes, cheese, and crackers, and then carried around the tray of tea sandwiches for them to choose. I made egg salad and pimento cheese sandwiches, cut into little triangles. (As Kate said, "I don't want tea in my sandwich!") For the record, the kids hardly ate anything. They were too busy being silly around the table, thrilled by the idea of a kids-only meal.

 

I had the same food and a selection of teas laid out for the mommies in the kitchen to snack on. One mommy was out of town and another had to work, but the two that were there and Kate's grandmothers hung out in the kitchen while the kids ran in to tattle ("Claire poured her own tea!...well, so did I") and stampeded through when Kate said she had to go potty and all the other girls agreed, cramming themselves into our half-bath!

 

In place of a big cake or cupcakes, we had petit fours (ordered from Publix—delicious!) and snowflake cookies my mom made.

Activities 
I let the kids play as everyone arrived, and then called them to the table, served the "tea" and lunch. After they finished (or, rather, claimed they were finished eating) I brought out supplies for a beaded snowflake craft, prepared and plated for each child so we wouldn't have to be passing out each individual item.

Pointing out the sample I'd made, I gave a brief how-to, and the moms and grandmas helped the kids as needed. Not requiring any glue or scissors, they simply twisted sparkly pipe cleaners together, threaded pony beads along them, and folded the ends over!

 Before we sang "happy birthday" and passed out petit fours, I gave each child a dessert plate with marshmallows, pretzel sticks, a sliver of carrot, and various candies, with which to make a snowman (and eat him, as desired, alongside their petit fours and cookies).

After cake and presents, the kids got up from the table for a little game (followed by open playtime until parents arrived). I cut holes in a tri-fold presentation board and had cotton balls in a bucket for the kids to toss through the holes. (Kate helped draw snowflakes on the board,  but the Exact-O knife was all Mommy.)

It was a fun little party for my big birthday girl. We let the men back in the house for a family party that evening with pizza, ice cream, and her big gift from all the grandparents—a balance beam and mat to improve her gymnastics skills!

Happy birthday, K-bear!