kirstencan

A Calvin and Hobbes Party!

Because he's SUCH a Calvin.  And he is reading my complete set (I've given up trying to keep those away from the kids) as I type this.  I grew up with Calvin, too, so it makes me happy.

And because there are a total of like TWO Calvin and Hobbes birthday parties I could find online, I'm posting lots of details for anyone interested.  Man, my kids like obscure birthday themes!

We did a quick photoshoot, basically dressing him kinda like Calvin, and sending him down a hill in a wagon a bunch of times.

And making Calvin-esque sneaky faces.

Oh, and plush Hobbes didn't get done in time for the party, darn it.  But you've gotta let stuff go, right?

I stencilled the stripes and Calvin silhouette for his birthday shirt.

This year we held the party at our church.  LOTS of room to play.

 I blew up a Calvin image (much like the 80's posters from this party) but I wasn't too careful putting them together...

I wish I'd gotten a closeup of the table - they had cute red with white polka dot paper straws, sparkly (annoying) noisemakers, and comics lining the table.  It was fun.

The banners are circles of Calvin pictures and newspaper triangles.

Like this:

One corner of the room was the Box Corner.  I've been saving them...  A few were turned into time machines and transmogrifiers.

Other activity setups (click to see anything bigger):

Newspaper hats, Calvin's comic corner, dinosaur tattoos,

make your own snowgoons, knock stuff over, Spaceman Spiff's paper spaceships.

And then we just needed guests.

Let's go back to the food table...

I totally forgot bowls for the 'tiger tails' and pretzels!  Classy.  Did the boys care?  Nope.

Also I think The Girl may have been offended that I made a G.R.O.S.S. sign.  But I had to, right?  While they were eating cake the boys had a club meeting. ;)

I also forgot to stick in the Calvin cupcake toppers I made!  Darn it!

We had comics on the food table as well as prints from our little shoot.

Chocolate eight pops, cupcakes (sans toppers, boo!), 'tiger tails' (cheetos), pretzel sticks, and...

Chocolate frosted sugar bombs (cocoa puffs)!  Adorable printable transmogrifier papercraft found here.

I had so much fun making the Eiffel Tower chocolate pops last year I thought I'd do some again.  Visually they look good on a table, too.  But red and white?  Was more Halloween-y than I had intended... a few were kept in reserves because they were a bit too 'dripping blood-ish.'

 

Also I forgot my floral foam blocks to stick them in.  Luckily the Box Corner had a big piece of styrofoam in it!  But then they didn't stand up straight, oh well!

Okay, remember all those activites I set up?  That was a Just In Case kinda thing.  Here's what they did:

(Please click to see that one bigger because my boy dressed as Calvin wearing swimming goggles running around in a time machine box kinda slays me).

They played with those boxes.  No organized games, and while a few did get hats, a few dino tattoos, and a few knocked the cups over (with a balloon or their hand while zooming by), the boxes WERE the party.  Well, boxes and treats.   And that was awesome.

They drew, cut, punched, transmogrified, chased, hid, sneaked, ran and ripped.

Not your typical party game!

Let's talk goodie bags.

I wanted to make sugar cookie favors (again (and again)) but the kitchen thingy we're doing didn't allow.  As it is, my daughter made the cupcakes at Grandma's kitchen.  So I made a list of some of Calvin's favorite things, and whipped up some little Calvin pins (fun to break out the button maker!) as well. All tucked into little white craft paper bags with red/white tape to cute it up.  (side note:  I found teeny packs of playfoam - the boys LOVE playfoam, and it is a necessity for the redhead - on amazon for cheap!)

The boys had fun, especially the birthday boy, yay!  A proper celebration for an eighth birthday?  Check and check.

Next up:  the baptism celebration!  Oh goodness.

Eight

Today's a big day for our littlest (not so little!) guy.  His big 8th birthday.  Today he has a belt test at taekwondo followed by family dinner at a restaurant he picked.  His party is Saturday, His baptism is a couple of weeks after.  AND this morning he got to dump his booster seat.

Holy moly my baby is grown up!

We took a minute (not more than that, really) Saturday to dress him appropriately and send him down a hill in that wagon a few times for his invitation.  Do you know who he is?

Tigger was a stand in, because Hobbes hasn't happened yet.  Hopefully by Saturday...

And 7 years ago, on Easter Sunday, we celebrated his first birthday!  Wow.  Soon after I started this blog, so this is what he looked like way back then.


My baby!  *sniff*

Happy birthday to the silliest 8 year old I know, who will ALWAYS be my baby.

Fetch with Ruff Ruffman Party!

Well, here's a photo overload for ya!  Because I know there are other quirky awesome kids out there who love the Fetch show, too, and let me tell you, there are VERY FEW Fetch Birthday party ideas floating around the interwebs.  Weird but true. ;)

The redhead chose a Fetch theme months ago.  He's been stoked about it.  Fetch is a pretty cool show, I have to admit.

Anyway, here we go:

Invites:  I modified the Fetch Club invitation (lots of printables somewhere on here) to turn it into a birthday invitation, also adding the bunting Ruff is holding to make it more festive, and the number 10.  Oh, and taking out corporate sponsors on the bottom. ;)  Because they didn't pay for the party.

Also from the print shop (I don't have a color printer, so I emailed some PDF's to a local print shop and had them print on white cardstock.  Then I swung by and picked everything up - easy!) were these certificates, also modified from printables you can get from PBS.

If you look closely you can see what I did (click to see it bigger)

And I printed a couple pages of cropped Ruff heads and attacked them with my circle punch.  We'll come back to these.

Other decor/projects:  a door sign,

some fun foamboard cut-outs (yes, I like cut-outs and this one seemed appropriate.  I painted these while watching election night coverage - funny, last presidential election I was making these invites for his Star Wars party!),

I covered an oatmeal box with orange duct tape,

and of course, made some of these:

which turned into these happy guys (hee!) with some circles!

Speaking of circles...

This easy peasy garland was done with baker's twine, washi tape and the cardstock circles (and if anyone is in need of one of these, I could be persuaded to give it away). It is about 6 ft long.

Um, I kinda love this (the photo's a bit bright, you can't see all the detail on the sign, but oh well).  The blue streamers are to represent the blue siding in Ruff's garage Studio G.

Watching Fetch as guests are about to arrive:

(Our couch isn't always placed that awkwardly, we moved it to create a bigger open area.  Which was very smart.)

See the orange shirt?  It's this year's birthday shirt:  10 dog bones (stamped with a cookie cutter and fabric paint) for a newly 10 year old

We got these lanyards (ordered CHEAP on ebay) on the boys quickly before this happened:

But they chilled out a bit to do an activity page (also from the Fetch website).

BTW, I didn't plan on repeating the lanyard thing (Lego party), but they had a printable name tag on the PBS website that was too good not to use.  Plus, it's kinda fun to have something for the kids to wear that's not a party hat (or a tshirt, which would be more $$).

Then the kids were divided into two teams and given their first challenge (I made up some story about Ruff wanting to build a tower onto his doghouse, so he wanted them to try and make something tall with materials found... in the mailbox (oatmeal box)!  GO FETCH!


Inside the mailbox were marshmallows and toothpicks (we love this).

They could work individually, in pairs, or however they wanted, but the winning tower got extra points for their team.  Star stickers were given out for the backs of their tags, but we weren't consistent at this.

Next up:  a challenge to make the slowest paper airplane (again, I made up a little two-second story and the paper was in the mailbox).

They had a few minutes to build and test and modify, and then we had them compete a few at a time to see who won.  Our crazy-high ceilings came in handy!

Next up:  target shooting with nerf guns.  My husband hung up paper plates from the ceiling in the playroom (I wrote numbers on them and drew cats on a few of them - because Ruff doesn't like cats) and they had to add up the points they got for their team.  Everyone got six shots, and my daughter was busy reloading guns while my husband kept score.  This part got a little crazy, it would have been better with a smaller group! ;)  And I took no shots during this section, but you can see the plates here (and the cluttered not-Apartment-Therapy-worthy-anymore playroom! ;)

After this we did a Half-Time Quiz Show!  Each team was asked five questions.  They varied between questions about what we'd done at the party, questions about the birthday boy, and questions about the Fetch show.  BTW, this is about when we stopped keeping score for the teams and no one noticed or cared.

Then it was time for cake!

(and 'kibble' (cocoa puffs), skittles, soda, and chips - wow, junk!) 

Because I'd glazed cookies the day before, I didn't feel like FULLY making a frosting mess again the next day by making a Ruff cake.  So the wonky cake has 3 dog bone cookies stuck in it and skittles around the edges.  Done and done.

I broke out some of my precious Heather Ross fabric as a little table runner.  Orange AND dogs!  Perfect!

I had a couple more activities planned (make a costume for a stuffed animal out of paper and building with index cards) but we ran out of time so we opened presents next, the boys hung out, and then they got their 'doggy treats' and certificates.

The treats were sugar cookies and more 'kibble'.  I really like giving cookies as favors instead of plastic junk.  I glazed the dog bone cookies and ... well, maybe I'll get it right the third time around (Monkey's party will be in April!  I kinda hope he picks a Lego theme, because we already know what to do! ;)

Then, when I'd kicked all the guests out, we all took a deep breath and vegged on the couch for a while while the boys went through the loot pile.

And from an autism standpoint:

He did awesome.

I was a little worried, because, while I haven't written about this here, the redhead has NOT had a great year.  Especially post-fire.  But we are in the midst of changing some things up and trying new treatments, so hopefully things will start looking up.  ANYWAY, being around a million (11 guests + a brother) boys sounded too hard.  But he really wanted to invite a lot of boys, plus our street has a million boys on it and they all play together, so it's hard to draw the line. PLUS, his next party will be in two years... and who knows what the social situation will be then.  Maybe there won't even be a friend party.  So let's live it up this year, I say!  It was LOUD and he didn't love that.  He didn't fully participate in all the activities, but he loved  having his friends over - he was so happy.  He LOVED when they sang to him, and made a nice little 'toast-like' speech afterwards.  He was ready for them to go, but after an hour or so break, he went right outside where most of them were playing in the snow.  Boys are funny.

The Redhead is 10

Today is a family holiday, as all birthdays are, so I thought I'd pop in here for a public declaration of awesomeness.

He's ten.  The redhead.  Crazy crazy stuff.  He was still 3 when I started this blog!

While I guess you could say he is our most challenging child, he is also the one that has taught me the most, pushed and pulled me in directions I didn't know I could go, and made me a better person.

For real.

I see the world differently because of my boy.

I see people differently because of my boy.

He is awesome and I am so grateful he is mine.

Hard sometimes?  Oh yeah.

Do I worry, stress, get frustrated?  Big time.

But overall, he has made me more.

I hope I can be the mom he needs me to be.

My heart breaks regularly for him.

I wish his life was easier.

But when he is happy it is contagious.

I wish you could hear him belly laugh.

Not everyone sees him as I see him, and that's okay.

The time you meet him might not be a good representation of who he is and can be.

But take my word for it, he rocks.

I love him to pieces.

My heart is full today,

but that's not a horrible thing.

.

(Oh, and his party was on Saturday, ridiculously detailed party post soon. You knew that was coming.)

Use your imagination:: Paris Party

The most jumbled post ever: and if you didn't read my previous post - remember I lost all my good shots of this party so you'll have to imagine it with me.

I did have these first two photos uploaded.  Here are the invitations.  Our little photoshoot turned into these invites, which I think are pretty adorable.  The text and info is all in French, so on the back we taped a translation.  And the (badly) photoshopped Eiffel Tower in the background fooled many!  Hee.  Click to see it bigger.

Crafting fail:  my tiered treat plate.  Bought cheap melamine dishes and dollar store glass bowls and candlesticks.  Put them together with the E-6000 glue which everyone says to use.

Adorable?  Yes, but Guys?  Don't do this.  That glue is crazy fumey.  And on the directions it says not to be used on anything near food! I made these about a month or so ago and left them in the garage to air.  I could still smell it a tiny bit, but no one else could (I'm a super smeller or something).  I pinned some fabric scraps around the bottom of the candlestick so no food would touch anywhere near the glue.  But I tossed them in the trash after the party.  Darn it, these were cute!

They were on our school cubbies, under the paper flowers (pretend the blue one didn't fall), with cookies and candies.  I had wanted to take down the beach photos, but Aaron disagreed so the flowers just went on top - worked okay.  We brought the girl's bike basket inside, with a baguette, flowers, and her Parisian doll (that she made from a mikodesign kit last year).  The vases of flowers were lined up on the table, one jar of flowers was left on the cubbies.  *sigh*  Trust me, it was cute.

(the rest of the photos from the iPad, mostly post-party)

I didn't want to do the traditional black + pink + poodle scheme, so I just went for lots of colors + some black.

These (big) chocolate pops I made (except there were LOTS!) were standing in floral foam blocks covered with scrapbook paper among the other treats.  They were a hit.  I'm so pleased they turned out - they made me happy!

The cake plate had the Eiffel Tower cookies (except some in purple as well).  At the beginning of the party we told the girls that everyone had to try escargot, and they FREAKED.  Until I brought out a dish of snail cookies.  Whew!  That was pretty funny (and the girl's idea).  Except imagine the snail cookies with the shell filled with yellow, too, most of them were. 

My mom and I spent Friday morning putting glaze on these cookies.  The favors were a set of a Merci cookie, a tower cookie and a snail cookie packaged in cello bags with cute cardstock + washi tape toppers.  Oh, and  the cookies above are on part of the table runner that ran along the whole table made from extra blocks from the quilt my MIL made for her birthday.  I just sewed those extra blocks together in a long row.  She's cool to send me the scraps!

Here's the real deal - she is in love with her new quilt, thanks, Nana!  And perfect colors for our party.

Another photo from her shoot was framed on the mantel, along with paper Paris cutouts from here.  Both buntings were up as well, of course.  And little paper mustaches on the boys big photos - they thought that was hilarious!

Our party soundtrack was courtesy of Pandora - the Ye-Ye Radio station was the perfect 60's French girl singer mix.  At one point we heard a groovy French hokey-pokey... Weird.

We started with Apples to Apples as guests arrived, then they designed their own party 'hats' (idea from OhHappyDay) with those flowers I made.  Pretend I have an awesome photo of them NOT squished and leftover on the floor...

Lunch was then served:  croissants, strawberries and grapes, cheeses, chips and nutella.  Pink lemonade and cookies of course, too.

Then the girls went nuts with the 'photo booth'.  They used the remote for my camera (set on the ottoman) and took turns being photographer.  I had made some props (many inspired by OhHappyDay as well) with a marker and posterboard + skewers.

The backdrop:  Red, White and Blue.

While my mom and I decorated cookies the day before, my little sister made a ton of crepes for me (anything to get out of cookie decorating, she said*, she still hasn't forgiven me for the 80's ribbon barrette favors).  So for 'cake' we had crepes filled with a yummy (made up the recipe as we went) cream cheese/pudding/cool whip mixture and topped with a little melted nutella and whipped cream.

YUM.  And PRETTY!  On pink square paper plates.  Really pretty, actually.

Pretend the basket below is full of the cute cookie bag favors and the 'Bonjour' sign is taped to our door and there are lots of little Paris bodywashes/lotions there...

The nametags were a hit - I found them at Darlybird last year (also where I got the paper flower decorations).  My girl was disappointed that the grammar is wrong (?) but they're cute.

So, yeah, I have SOME record of some of the stuff, but not of how it was actually set up, and none of my girl and her friends!  boo!

*For the record, we used Ann's suggestion of glaze on the cookies rather than royal icing.  Amen to that.  The glaze is YUMMY, royal icing usually isn't so much.  Very doable, we will definitely be doing this again.   At the end we decided that our glaze was a little too thick, and so the wet-on-wet dots and stripes I'd wanted to do really didn't work.  But for a first attempt I'm pleased.

Also, Ann pointed me to Cookiecrazie, which is a cool glaze + cookie blog.

Also THIS method of filling decorating bags is the only way to go - it worked so well!

Curses

So the Paris party was Saturday.  It was pretty cute.  The girls had a good time.

And I have no photos.

My memory card decided to freak out and die that evening.  AFTER having taken photos of the party all day.

After the girls spending most of the party taking silly photos of themselves.

After not uploading photos from Thursday, her actual birthday, and Wednesday, when her new church group surprised her and brought her treats and decorated our lawn.

I cried.

Aaron maybe thought I was overreacting (you might, too) but photos are WAY important to me (maybe you've noticed).  Also my children are way important to me (duh).  And their birthdays.  I LOVE birthdays.  And the little details that I love planning for their birthdays (again, she picked the Paris theme two years ago - we've had a lot of time to plan little details).

And it was her 12th birthday!  In our (Mormon) culture, 12 is HUGE.  It's a bigger deal than 16, I think.  And she's still pretty adorable - what a fun age.

I still can't believe I have NO photos of her 12th birthday!

Her birthday came right after a really hard time for our family (yet to be blogged) and we weren't sure her party would happen.  It had to be simplified a tad, and the awesome present we were going to make for her didn't happen, but the party did.  Because she shouldn't miss out on her birthday.  We pulled it off, which I needed to do, but I really needed those photos, too!  For me.  I just needed them.

ARGH.

Weirdly, she's the only one whose birthdays we have had camera problems on.  I also have no photos of her first birthday (my first baby!  only girl!).  I still hate that. 

Seriously, this makes me so sad!  And I'd better go order another memory card ASAP before her dance recital this weekend.

*Aaron is a computer guy and ran several scans of the card, trying anything he could think of - and he thinks the card is fried.  But we're still going to send it to a company that will try again for us.

Getting ready...

My girl and I went out for a little photo shoot the other day, bringing the appropriate props.

Her birthday is coming up, and she picked her theme two years ago (she's so my daughter).

It's been really chaotic over here lately, and it felt SO good to get out and do something creative.  She was the perfect model, and so cute and fun.

Invites are printed - just 2,537 more things to do!  Quickly!

(Her last party shoot here turned into these invites - has it been two years already?!)

Monkey's Seventh

My baby is seven.  For you newer moms or not-yet moms, I'll bet you get tired of everyone saying how fast the time goes.  But it goes SO FAST.

When I started this blog, this kid had just turned 1. He was my baby.  He's still my baby.  But he's seven.

We got him a set of Makedo and a bunch of boxes we'd been saving for him to build with.

Makedo is as cool as everyone says it is.  For the right kid, anyway.  This kid is STOKED about it.

He is also pretty excited about these snap circuits.  When one project played Happy Birthday to him - that was just a bonus.

He chose donuts for breakfast, a trip to the library before lunch (deviled eggs with leftover piroshki), and pizza for dinner with Grandma, Grandpa and Aunt Kellie.

His birthday shirt:

Not the best picture - but he draws dragons all the time.  In fact, he has a notebook he titled '[Monkey]'s book of Deadly Dragons' and he regularly adds new ones.  So I made a freezer paper stencil based on a two-headed dragon he drew.  He critiqued the placement of the eyes, but otherwise approves.  That's okay, he critiqued his monkey birthday shirt, too.

More building.  And he still wears the birthday crown Grandma made him when he turned two.  All my kids get their crowns out and wear them all day on their birthdays.

He is such a random, creative, silly stinker of a kid.  You never can predict him.  Those deviled eggs he asked for lunch?  He originally asked for them to be in a pinata. 

I know.

We love him to pieces.

He blew out the candles in his coconut cream pie before the birthday song was over.  Typical.

And Grandma and Grandpa brought him more boxes.  So this is what my living room looked like last night after they left. 

We're so classy.

We need an inventing room...

Happy Stuff

It was a fun weekend, full of tutus, cat ears, glitter (and lots of driving).

The performances were wonderful.

So fun to see my girl performing in a ballet we've seen together six times before.  SIX.  Our first time was when she was only three years old.  And she got to perform one dance en pointe.  That's good happy mom stuff.

My birthday was fun, lots of fun treats and presents and good company. We hadn't planned on a cake (cookies + ice cream instead) until I opened my package from my in-laws.  FUN fun cake stuff!

Isn't that adorable?

One borrowed cake mix later (thanks, neighbors!) and we had super fun little cakes and cupcakes.

And the aftermath.  My sister helped my daughter decorate them. There's no way to describe the bug-cupcake holders adequately - I have to show you.

So fun!  All our cupcakes were looking at us. ;)  Now I'm off to sneak an eye into my daughter's scrambled eggs...

Train museum = Heaven

So that railroad museum?  I can't believe we've never made the effort to go before!  It takes an hour to get there, but it was well worth it!  Especially for the boy who used to spend hours watching Thomas, then hours watching train documentaries and has multiple train sets, loves the model train shows, etc.  Good. Stuff.

Outside they have a bunch of engines/cars* that you can check out/climb on.

Heaven.

Seriously, they climbed all over these things (a breakdown train!).

Oh, yeah, and this boy was wearing his birthday shirt.  I stenciled a shield shape (going with the Knight theme kinda) and decided on Roman numerals for the '9'.  I was worried if I put a regular 9 on it he might not wear it next year, and I'll bet it still fits!

Anyway, I kinda dig how it turned out...

We got to go inside a couple of cars, like this mail car (with a hook for picking up the bags! My kids didn't know what that was, but I did - cartoons?).  I loved all the sorting bins and cubbies.  We also saw a hospital car (which included an amputation saw...).

Did I mention you could climb all over these things?

We all had a ton of fun (and these are just the outside photos!  We went inside the actual museum, too and it was way cool) and really made this kid's day.

Happy Birthday part Two to the Birthday King!

*A silly pet peeve of mine is when people call engines 'trains'.  Engines PULL trains.  Trains are made up of cars/coaches.  'Thomas the Train' isn't his real name either, I don't know who started that - it's 'Thomas the Tank Engine' (hasn't everyone heard the theme song?).  Silly, right?  That's what I get for watching/overhearing years and years of train dvd's...