Favorite things

The other night a small group of friends came over for a favorites party. Have you heard of these? Everyone brings five of their favorite thing (under $5, or homemade) and after putting your name five times into a bowl, you draw five names of other people - and you bring their favorite thing home with you. So you come with five of your favorite, and go home with five new favorites. Get it?

(le diner)

So much fun. I love learning details like this about friends. A sampling of the favorite things people shared: a great bar of dark chocolate plus organic chapstick; mini colored enamel colanders; bags of pink lady apples; homemade lemon sugar scrub; stationary for writing thank you notes; packets of homemade cards with a great pen (nothing is better than writing with a good one!); and basil + tomato plants with an amazing recipe for a summer no-cook spaghetti sauce (which I can't wait to try).

I brought - 5 small packets of loose leaf herbal tea from Teavana, packaged in muslin bags with a tinier bag of sugar cubes inside. (The citrus lavender is my most favorite flavor but the wild orange blossom is pretty great too).

Minding the unruly: 8 year old party

I was excited to throw my little-now-big 8 year-old a party this year, since last year we had to forego (it turns out you don't get a birthday party in our family if you cut all of your little sister's hair off). It was so fun and I was so, so proud of her for having a scissor-free year.

(a blind-folded birthday girl)

Elements of a successful party in our household include a very very loose theme (in this case, color), lots of balloons, games (bobbing for donuts - hands tied behind backs; button button who has the button; smashing dyed eggs filled with glitter; freeze dance); and candy. What kid doesn't love candy?

(my daughter is a cheater! look at those hands.)

a toast to the birthday girl! thanks for being such a delight, little one.

party poppers

Just a tiny bit of summer left for us - hooray for school and more peace and quiet, but boo for homework and the return of running around after school! Anyone else have a love/hate relationship with summer vacation? :)

Our last(-ish) summer project is my daughter's birthday party this week. We made invitations inspired by these festive party poppers...

...out of toilet paper rolls, tissue paper, wrapping paper, glue, and string. These are pretty simply constructed and you probably don't need me to show you how we did ours but just in case, I will.

Cover one end with a little square of tissue paper glued down around the edges of the tube (I used hot glue)...

and then fill the tube with confetti and a skinny little invitation.

Before you glue tissue paper on the other end of the tube to seal it up, poke a little hole through the tissue, thread your string through, and tie a big knot (this will be the pull string, to open the popper).

Glue the tissue paper on the other end of the tube, with the string hanging down outside of the tube (I'm writing that because I totally glued one of the strings inside a tube by accident).

Once both ends are covered with glued-down tissue paper, cover the body of the tube with wrapping paper (or any interesting paper you may have laying around). Voila! This could also be a fun idea for Valentine's Day*

*if your little one had a very small class.

fairy fun

Our little friend Lolo just turned 5. She's my daughter's first and best friend.

We decided to have tea for her because we adore her.

We made her a cake

(the ubiquitous rainbow cake. I couldn't help myself! It was hard to cut, but fun)

here they are, the party girls. After this picture was taken they trotted off to play their favorite game, "Honey and Sweetie," which is basically pretend mother and daughter. I overheard them talking about bombs through the bushes, though, and when I asked them what exactly they were playing, my daughter sweetly replied that today they were playing "Honey and Sweetie, and the Dangers of Hell." Nice. Come over for some cake, and my daughter will play a game with you about hell.

Thankfully we had a gift for Lolo to make up for all the talk about you-know-where. We made a FAIRY TRAP from a stick & thread & hot glue (kind of like a dream catcher - put a dab of glue on your starting point, and then wind the thread back and forth, gluing a little as you go to secure the thread). The fairy trap is meant to be woven with flowers to lure unsuspecting flying folk into having a little nap on the wee hammock you've made for them.

(fairy trap in action)

We also made her a FAIRY ROOM out of a small box with clear sides that I found at Michael's. We filled it with a nest, bags of moss, glitter and sparkly string, and a bundle of pretty fabrics (see below, being mauled by the baby).

The point is to decorate the box, and then leave the top open at night so that maybe a fairy might pop in for a rest while you are asleep. You never know, right?

Sparkly play dough was also in order. Because play dough is awesome and with glitter even better.

Happy birthday, Lolo! We're sorry you learn swears when you come to play with us!

Fake Sleepover Birthday Party

This was probably the easiest birthday party we've done, and it was ever so fun.

a donut cake

girls in pajamas, stories on a big bed of blankets in front of the fireplace

painted fingernails

truth or dare

(the four year-old version, where truth=what do you want for christmas and dare=pretend to be a chicken, etc. :) )

freeze dance (eternal favorite party game in our house)

then...(a brilliant idea, which I can't take credit for. Thank you genius Jennie!)

the four year-olds toilet-papered our bushes. Which really capped the whole experience off on just the right note.

p.s.: about ten minutes before the party started, I remembered that Cookie had done a very adorable fake-slumber party story a couple of years ago. I wish I had thought of it earlier, drat. Maybe I'll use some of their cute ideas in August for an 8 year-old birthday party - I especially love the eye mask guessing game. (I'm scanning them in below, since I can no longer link to them. Sorry for the torn edges.)

Almost Four: Party Time

To continue with the discussion of the four year old's birthday - Saturday morning we're having a pretend-slumber party for her (the deepest dream of her young heart). As far as I'm concerned, any activity where you can wear your pajamas = awesome. And if you can incorporate donut eating, even better.

Since the party numbers are few it took no time at all to deliver the edible invitations.

Details on Monday.

Have a great weekend!

Doll Fair

I have an ongoing fantasy about living in a Tasha Tudor book (if you don't know Tasha, I highly recommend forming an acquaintance. Your imagination will become more charming by the page). In my favorite book of all, A Time to Keep, Tasha's family puts on a doll fair for their dolls. We decided that we should do this, too.

The flower show and button money...

...getting ready for the musical number

The girls decorated a carriage so Mrs. Squirrel could arrive in style. Anything less would just be humiliating, really.

Pants, and the presence of hair on top of one's head, were optional for the toddler crowd.

special button jewelry was required.

p.s. Remember the game hen we were in the process of mummifying? My husband just reported to me that the feral cats in our neighborhood tore open the bags it was packed in (I had put it on a corner of our porch to cure - no way that thing was staying inside) and ripped it apart! Wow. Gross, and probably the end of that particular experiment.

Happy Birthday, Agent N64

Meet Agent N64.

And his sidekick, Agent Root Beer.

My little boy just turned 8. Sigh! So big. We had a secret secret agent celebration. Fun and easy on the budget. When the boys came, they all got mustaches, hats & sunglasses (found on the cheap at an online party warehouse store) and were photographed for their top secret spy passports.


Then we went on a REALLY LONG spy treasure hunt around the neighborhood (I love treasure hunts). I coded the clues so it took them awhile to crack the messages at each of the stops.


Look, they are nervous that they'll be caught.


And then time for this crazy concoction. Can I even tell you how many cans (that's right, ladies, cans) of frosting I had to use to get this baby to stick together? It wasn't looking so good so I had to send my husband out for some last minute dry ice. I am a great believer that dry ice on/around a birthday cake can redeem even the most sorry creation.

But the best part of the whole thing was making the invitations. We'd typed up a secret memo with all the information except my son's name, & a note explaining that in order to find out the identity of the birthday boy you'd need to hold the document under a heat source (with a parent, of course. We don't want any invitations on fire.) E. signed them all in lemon juice, which works like invisible ink. I wish I'd saved one...