September 15, 2005
Party Planning
Party Planning
My head is stuffed with cotton, or feels like it anyway. I fear a sinus infection may be in the works, but I am still hoping it might just go away.
Things move on at a rapid pace, whether or not I feel up to dealing with them though. The Middle Girl will be three in less than two weeks and since she has an older brother to learn things from has decided she needs a birthday party. I'm not terribly inclined to throw such a thing, but I suppose birthdays do call for a little spoiling, so we'll be having a butterfly party (per her request) for her and the two boys her age from church, plus I'm going to invite the three teenage sisters from church with whom my daughter is totally in love and an attorney from my husband's firm who told us he expected to be invited to all of our children's birthday parties. I painted this to put on the invitations. I'm not really trying for the übermom award. It only took 20 minutes or so. I spent more time laying out the invitation in Word and longing for Pagemaker.
I am not sure what one does at a butterfly birthday party. Since there are only two kiddie guests, I might make them all butterfly wings, but otherwise I think we'll just stuff them full of cake and let them run around. They are a bit young for most crafts and games, and the most fun parties seem to involve plenty of time when parents aren't scripting things.
Which leaves me to decide -- do I make a cake in the shape of a butterfly or use my cake pan that has flowers in the pattern and stick plastic butterflies on it for decoration? I'm leaning towards the latter. That would give me a cake and toys to play with all in one.
Well, considering we're gathering my side of the family at a rented vacation home in Massanutten next week for Jay's first birthday, you can expect no criticism from me! I told them that showing up was a better gift than anything else they could bring (and goodness knows Jay won't be expecting wrapped gifts, though by now I'm sure he could extract them), but you know how families are with their youngun's.
Paul's family wasn't able to make it, unfortunately. We'll probably go visit at Thanksgiving.
Posted by: Lenise at September 15, 2005 10:27 AMI think if you just have more butterfly things around than usual, she'll feel like she had a butterfly party. Maybe you could pin a butterfly or two on her clothes to make her feel all butterfly-ish, or stick some here and there around the house. They have some little silk ones in the floral section of Michaels for not much.
I'm with you about activities for kid parties-don't need much, if any.
Posted by: nina at September 15, 2005 10:59 AMGo for the flower cake pan. The added butterflies would be great fun for the girls to play with afterwards.
Oh and I'm a huge fan of unscripted parties. The kids loved it when we ran the sprinklers for them.
Posted by: Sarah G. at September 15, 2005 11:21 AMWrap her in a chrysalis, tell her she's still a caterpillar and can't come out until she's a butterfly. Once everyone is at the party, then she makes her grand entrance, everyone applauds for the beautiful butterfly fluttering her wings. Afterwards she can run around the house with the other two yunguns while the adults eat cake and talk about stuff (and her big brother can run after them with a butterfly net).
[Course you could just leave her in the chrysalis and not have the party, but that would not be too nice.]
Posted by: MarcV at September 15, 2005 11:43 AMYou are a cool mom. My 5 year-old's last party was butterflies and it was waaaaaayyyyyy overdone. But it was our first REAL party with friends and all. What can I say? We were stupid.
Your ideas are all great. The floweredy cake sounds fabulous. Go with it!!
Posted by: angie at September 17, 2005 03:11 PM
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