Where the Wild Things Are! It's a party!

Hello Internet! I've had a wee bit of  blogging hiatus. The date of my last entry coincides with the beginning of my school year -- in my very busy world, I have to choose deliberately where my time is spent. Blogging disappeared for a bit; it was the easiest thing to abandon. I'm not sure if I'll be able to blog as much as I would like...but I do want to go back and retroactively put up some projects and parties. Since September, I have officiated a wedding (with my next officiant/day of wedding coordinator job in two weeks!), thrown some fun parties, traveled to Chicago with a baby, graded...oh, let's see: 400+ essays? (120 juniors, give or take a few, 4 formal essays assigned since September? And let's not get started on the journals.) Hosted a Halloween themed book club; a baby shower; finished the rough draft of some writing I've been working on for ages. It's been a busy, but productive, six months!

I'm enjoying my first year as Yearbook advisor. Our "End of the World" theme is, well, awesome. We asked the PE department: "Ability in what sport would prove the most valuable in the event of a zombie apocalypse?" Yes, we did.

So, that's what I've been up to!

However, it was Isaac's first birthday party that took up the last month or so of my life.

My baby is now entering toddlerhood. I love him so much.

Matt and I don't know if we are having any more kiddos -- a third is not out of the question, but at the moment we are liking the idea of just these two boys. And the older they get, we can see this hazy light at the end of a long and exhausting tunnel. Today, we think: No more. Next week? Who knows.

I went into Isaac's Where the Wild Things Are first birthday thinking  that this COULD be my last first birthday party! I know, I know. Really it was just an excuse to have fun without Matt on my case too much.

Now, in full disclosure -- there is no way I could have thrown this party without Pinterest. Really. When I think of all that the Internet has given me...I am forever indebted to this small addition to my life. A gathering place for all amazing ideas? Where was Pinterest when I threw Elliott's Hungry Caterpillar birthday??

Anyway, yes, it's true: I stole, borrowed, copied from greater party-throwers than I am. :-)

So, why this theme?

There is so much to work with with a Wild Things theme. Also, I love, love, love the Sendak book. I feel this urge to defend it against people who just think that Max is a pill. I'll save you the soap box, but I think this book represents the beauty of imagination and love in childhood.

Once I knew I wanted to start there, and after hitting up Pinterest for a long while, the party grew and grew.

Greeting our guests by the front door...

Entry with favors

Tissue poms are so versatile! 

I printed on the burlap with the font I downloaded...but after a few hours the ink had faded. So, I went over it in Sharpie -- which is fine, but I wasn't overjoyed about how it turned out.

A mural -- and a tissue pom forest for the dessert table. 

Isn't that artwork amazing??? 

Cake pops and suckers with Isaac is one stickers.

Our ebay score -- Max from McFarland toys as our cake topper. Bunting made from pages of the book. 

Lukas drew the picture of Max for Elliott's first birthday. Masks for the kiddos. 

Our food table -- chips in cool wooden bowls to fit with our theme. The boat!

Isaac's boat

Vertical "Watch me Grow" banner -- I ran out of wall space elsewhere...

Wild Water water bottle labels

Make your own Wild Thing craft table. Kids got to name them and provide all sorts of other fun information. 

Elliott was pretty excited about his Wild Thing

Pin the tail on Max

Tails with names on them

The birthday boy!!!!!!!!

I know, I know -- how cute is he?

Highchair bunting made from pages of the book.

A cake pop -- for his first foray in sugar, we thought this was better than a giant slab of cake. 

Well, that's most of it! I'll post some other projects from the party tomorrow and upload some PDFs for things too (the water bottle labels, the "Make Your Own Wild Thing" questionnaire for the back of the paper bags, blank tails, etc.) -- I'm a little sad that we didn't get a good picture of the canopy I made to go around the high chair; it was easy to make and a lot of fun. We didn't get a good picture of the food table either, but we put individual plastic cups with fruit in a cupcake stand and it was totally cute! 

And we had a basket filled with musical instruments, ribbon wands, and crowns for a "Wild Rumpus."

My mother-in-law made that adorable Max outfit for the birthday boy -- complete with tail and crown! (And did you get a good look at those clawed feet too??) I got the boys' matching Wild Rumpus shirts off of etsy from Lady Green Designs . The cake pops weren't a disaster, so I am happy with that. (I couldn't even bring myself to blog about the atrocity that was my Mother's Day cake pops.) The boat was repurposed from a student project on the book "Life of Pi." The tree stump cake-stand was funny -- of all the party things, that was the one feature that threatened to start a massive fight. 

Thanks to the following blogs for all your great ideas:

http://www.armelleblog.com/2010/04/where-wild-things-are-party.html

http://blog.hwtm.com/2011/03/bright-modern-wild-rumpus-birthday-party/

http://nikkiikkin.com/2012/02/15/my-party-featured-on-amy-atlas/

http://myrumpus.blogspot.com/

Shelbi

Anne of Green Gables Appreciation Party

"The girls sat down by the roots and did full justice to Anne’s dainties, 

even the unpoetical sandwiches being greatly appreciated

 by hearty, unspoiled appetites sharpened by all the fresh air and exercise they had enjoyed."

It started two months ago during a book club -- that moment where a seedling of a good idea takes shape. After a long discussion about our love affair with all things Anne (with an 'e') Shirley of Green Gables, we decided that an Anne of Green Gables party was in order.

We would eat food related to the book, drink raspberry cordial, and watch the 1985 miniseries of our childhood. Then I discovered that this existed and I was beside myself with excitement. The Anne of Green Gables Appreciation Party was going to happen and we all know I love myself a good theme party.


Of course, had I been going all out, I probably would have even used some iconic image and sent a delightful invitation to tea. This picture of Anne and Diana seems particularly appropriate -- seeming as how our entire party was going to ride on my success in making raspberry cordial. (Although, in hindsight, with the ferocity of Diana's drunkenness after a tumbler of Marilla's Currant Wine, I am feeling like we should have tried that recipe instead!)

Our menu was perfect for an afternoon tea:

Egg-salad and chicken-salad sandwiches
Cranberry-Orange Scones
Shortbread Cookies
Mint and chocolate chip cookies
Crackers with Orange marmalade and Toni's homemade Strawberry jam
Croissants
Tea
Wine

In the Anne of Green Gables cookbook, the author -- granddaughter of L.M. Montgomery -- gives a recipe for "poetical egg salad sandwiches", among other traditional recipes found on Prince Edward Island during Anne's time. (It's helpful that you can find most of the recipes online instead of shelling out nearly $40 for a book since it is out of print.)

Here is the recipe for the cordial:

Ingredients

2 (300 g) packages frozen raspberries

1 1/4 cups sugar

6 cups boiling water

3 lemons

Directions:

Put the unthawed raspberries into a saucepan and add sugar.

Cook on medium, stirring occasionally until all the sugar has dissolved.

Using a potato masher, mash the raspberries and syrup thoroughly.

Pour the mixture through a strainer, extract all the juice.

Squeeze two of the lemons and strain the juice, add it to the raspberry juice.

Add the boiling water to the raspberry juice.

Allow the cordial to cool, then chill it in the refrigerator.

Here is the final product:

It was really yummy and very, very sweet. The girls over at my house agreed that adding champagne or -- ahem -- some vodka would spice it up pretty nicely too. I had none of those things, so we went with the next best thing: Diet 7-up. 

After snacking and talking, we settled into our miniseries watching and swooned over Gilbert Blythe and adored our Anne girl. This story, published over one hundred years ago, is timeless and wonderful. There is something so incredible about this precocious, impetuous, delightful orphan -- who finds her way into trouble no matter what. I'm sure I can attempt to impart upon my sons the beauty of Anne of Green Gables. Just like I will try to read them all the Little House of the Prairie books too. But something tells me that my sons (the oldest of whom just bit through his tongue for the second time in 9 months...like 10 seconds ago...) are probably gonna be more interested in swashbuckling pirates and space adventures.

Good thing I can do theme parties for those things too. 

A Sesame Birthday

In our house it's been a Sesame Street vs. The Muppets battle. Elmo vs. Animal. Cookie Monster vs. The Swedish Chef.

Ernie and Bert vs. Kermit and Piggy.

Matt and I are big advocates of limited screentime for kiddos -- I mean, we're not fanatical about it by any means -- and when we first had Elliott we thought, "No TV for this kid!" But soon that became, "Well, only the Muppets." Introducing Elliott to old episodes of The Muppet Show and purchasing the entire collection of Muppet movies was for purely nostalgic purposes.

(Puppets, in general, were a huge part of my childhood since my parents met as performers in a traveling puppet troupe. And for early and formative years of my life, I was carted around to their puppet shows. I wasn't allowed to watch many cartoons...but we lived for The Muppet Show.)

So, buying The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, and Muppets Take Manhattan filled me with giddiness. And much to our joy and amusement, Elliott fell in love with these movies too. On our road trip down to Southern California last summer, we had an endless rotation of DVDs to pacify our poor 18 month-old child stuck in his car seat for nine hours a day; we added in some Sesame Street DVDs and the boy was sold.

When I asked him about his birthday theme, the boy chose Sesame Street. I was a little sad because I wanted to plan a Muppet party...but I wasn't going to argue: The boy wanted Sesame Street and he was going to get Sesame Street.

We started with invitations. This time I decided to make handmade cards (skipping the easier computer designed cards that we did last year). And while I love these invites...my hands hurt sooooo much from punching out all those circles. Not to mention the gluing. So. Much. Gluing.

For the back, my brother found a cool Sesame Street font that you can download here. (Some fun ideas: I am thinking of using the font to make flashcards for Elliott -- or a memory game! But there are endless options.)

The birthday banner was fun to make; and in true Shelbi fashion, I made some of it at school. I printed of the letters at home and brought them to school to cut out -- after cutting out two letters, I thought, "I never have anything for my TA to do. She's sitting over there on Facebook. I'm delegating these scissor duties!" So, for the banner I recycled a Sesame Street book that Elliott demolished. He had effectively torn out almost all of the pages. So, I cut the book up and turned it into this banner!

Here is a closer look at one of the letters:

For food, I made Sesame Street cupcakes. After looking online for designs I liked, I just combined all the best features from several different people's ideas. The eyes were white candy melts and chocolate chips (held on with a bit of frosting); Elmo's nose was an orange peanut M&M; mouths were Oreo Cookies. Everything else was frosting -- although I wish the brown frosting I bought for Oscar's eyebrows turned out better. 

And we also had these AMAZING cookies. My cousin Christy -- who I hope goes into the cookie business very soon -- makes cookies for all sorts of events. Her talent is unparalleled; she handmade each of these Sesame Street themed cookies for Elliott. I wish I could have kept them forever, but I must admit that we ate all of them.

Here is our whole table set up. (Goldfish crackers for a "Dorothy-centric" snack? Awesome. But I did buy a fishbowl specifically for this purpose and now I have a fishbowl taking up space in my garage. So, if anyone has any other fun crafts for fishbowls...let me know.)

Want a fun way to create cups that match your theme? Stickers on cheap plastic cups works great. I thought they would look tacky, but they turned out super cute. 

So, besides the invites, banner, and the cupcakes, I didn't do quite as many crafty things this time around. But my favorite thing to make...not for any other reason other than the joy it brought to my child's face...was Elliott's party shirt.

I printed off an image of Cookie Monster, cut it out, and used it as a template on pieces of black and blue felt. While I originally wanted to topstich the felt on to the onesie, I was making this the night before the party and opted for the good old hot-glue gun instead. Add those googly eyes and it's a pretty darn cute Cookie Monster.  

And here is the birthday boy in his shirt, enjoying some cheese and crackers, and looking pretty adorable. 

A Hungry Caterpillar Birthday

Planning parties is a huge love of mine. As a matter of fact, it was a childhood dream to run my very own event planning company. As an eight or nine year-old, I set up a home office (some paper and a defunct rotary phone stashed in my roll-top desk) and had a client list (cut out men and women, complete with created biographies, from my mom's JCPenney catalogue). I would pick a client at random, hold a complete imaginary dialogue with him/her about their party needs, and then spend hours in my room creating that party on paper. I even had my mom buy me invoices at an office supply store so I could bill my pretend clients.

Because I'm better at planning parties than naming companies, my thriving business was called Parties Incorporated. And, if I remember correctly, every party seemed to feature an unnecessary number of balloon bouquets -- but this was the 80s after all, what self-respecting high school reunion or wedding reception didn't have balloons?

We all know now that my party planning future remained relegated to JCPenney models glued to notebook paper and fake conversations with myself demanding cheaper prices with my "caterer" for shrimp cocktail. I went in a different occupational direction. (If given the opportunity to ever resurrect Parties Incorporated, I think I would.) But even if I'm not diagramming a ballroom for someone's 30th birthday bash -- with balloons, of course -- I do get to exercise some creativity when it comes to Elliott's parties.

The Internet was a great source for me while I was planning Elliott's first birthday party. I stole a lot of great ideas from others, so I figured I should put my own party out there for people to steal from too. (Of course, the Internet was not available to Parties Incorporated.) Once I decided on a theme, the rest was great fun. Our theme: Eric Carle's "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." At the time, I couldn't find any commercial products to support this party theme. NOW Target sells an entire party-line with Carle designs. And you can buy them here too. I'd like to believe that means I was staying one step ahead of the trend. But I realize this is just wishful thinking.

All great parties start with an invitation. I made mine using the InDesign program at school. Yeah, I'll admit it: While my newspaper students worked late one night on an issue of the paper, I was diligently crafting an invite to my son's birthday party. I emailed myself the PDF and then printed it on heavy cardstock.

The best touch? I bought a tiny hole-punch and punched a hole in the food. Just like in the book. Too much fun. Address labels I made myself and then I had envelope seals too -- I tried to make stickers myself, unsuccessfully. So, I broke down and outsourced this job to the Party Mommas over at eBay.

My favorite craft for the whole party was Elliott's birthday banner:

I did have feet made for the bottom banner, but I forgot to glue them on before the party. Not only did I love the visual progression of Elliott's growth that first year, but the banner was bright and fun. (The letters for the top banner are these awesome stickers that I got at JoAnn's Fabrics - they are thick and sturdy.)

The table was also a lot of fun. I made the table cloth by sewing different parts of the available Hungry Caterpillar fabric to a cheap twin flat sheet. You can buy the fabric here; but I found mine at the local Mill End Store. We put the book on display and had all of our guests sign it before they left -- a great gift for Elliott for years to come! We served food that appears in the book (I was in the stages of putting the food out when the picture was taken) and the centerpiece was made by my mother-in-law with the two plush toys featuring the caterpillar and the butterfly and fruits featured in the book.

Some of my other crafts for this party:

- Elliott's bib -- I used Hungry Caterpillar fabric that I purchased from The Mill End Store and used Homemade by Jill's baby bib tutorial that you can find here: Homemade by Jill Bib Tutorial. I used scrap red fabric to spell "ONE" on to the front. 

- High Chair cover -- Also using a different Hungry Caterpillar fabric, I covered Elliott's non-themed fabric cover with a new one. The tutorial can be found over at Make it and Love it: Recovered High Chair Tutorial. Mine was designed to slip over the original fabric since I didn't want to make his high chair permanently covered and it didn't fit too well. But it served its purpose. 

- Thank you gift bags. I used the same fabric as the high chair cover and made little bags -- easiest thing in the world. Printed off "Thank you for coming!" tags and filled them with party favors: Bubbles, candy, and miniature games that I found for a total steal at RideAid. 

- Craft table for the kids -- I stole the crayon bouquet idea from Real Simple. The art teacher at school painted it red for me during his prep one day. Pretty awesome of him to do that. Then I printed off pages from a Hungry Caterpillar coloring book and we made a caterpillar maze to solve too. It was pretty amazing how quickly the older kids made a bee-line to the crayons. 

Of course, the cake was also pretty amazing. My mom's friend Debbie made the cake; she even helped make a few of my childhood birthday cakes, so it was a special treat to have her make Elliott's cake. I emailed her a picture of a cake I found on someone else's blog and she replicated it perfectly. It was almost too wonderful to eat...but that didn't stop anybody.

Tomorrow: Sesame Street second birthday!