Elise's Birthday Party

Elise's Birthday party (March 28th) almost didn't happen! We had an ice storm that threatened to keep people away. All day we watched the weather and tried to decide what we should do. They had projected a ton of precipitation but it turned out to be a lot less. While the trees and plants and ground were iced over, the roads were okay....so the party was on.

I told myself we weren't going to be into "theme" birthday parties - but that idea is out the window. We did a Sesame Street theme. simple and easy. What we did: played some games like feed cookie monster cookies by tossing, musical shapes and dancing to Sesame Street music, crumpling up newpaper and putting it in Oscar the Grouch's trash can, coloring, decorating snack bowls, eating snack and eating cupcakes.
(sorry -the pics are a bit out of order but I'm too lazy to fix them!)

Elise made a mess - she's very good at that. Too bad the red stained her face for a day. Oh well!

Elise admiring her handi-work.


Can I really go to town on this cupcake?

I love watching kids' expressions when all of the focus is on them - like when everyone is singing "Happy Birthday" to them. :)

Towards the middle of the party, Elise decided to take a break and read a book in our little story corner.

My sister, Gina, suggested that I try an Elmo cupcake-cake. It was the easiest birthday cake I've made so far! SOOOO easy that I was able to do it last minute in a major hurry and it was fine.

When I plan a party I really try to plan things for the kids! Sometimes it's easy to get carried away (which is very easy for me to do!!!) in making things really "cute" or what not but things run so much more smoothly when geared towards keeping them busy and happy. (trial and error speaking!) We went through things so much more quickly than I thought we would but that was okay...sometimes you just have to fly by the seat of your pants.

Why I felt the need to paint this the morning of the party - I'm not sure. If you remember Ava's 2nd birthday party. You might notice that this is the same foamcore board we used to make a puppy bean-bag toss came - just on the other side. I thought I was being a little green.