I'm not going to lie. This party was a lot of work to put together. So much so, that I have vowed to not have such involved parties again. As much as I enjoy doing them, the time that they take to plan and prepare make me neglect other things too much. (Enough of that "Negative Nancy." I want some party pics!)
We covered the ceiling with snowflakes to make it look like it was snowing. I spent many an evening cutting out snowflakes. Do you know that true snowflakes have 6 branches, not 8? I think I grew up making 8-sided snowflakes exclusively. Whoops. Cutting them out was fun for the most part. I also purchased two different punches that made a snowflake pattern. I bought some silver snowflakes and some fun three-d ones (thank you after-Christmas sales). My mom pulled through with some ultra-large laminated ones, some larger punched snowflakes, and some felt ones too.
I didn't serve much food because I planned on making a time-intensive cake. A cake ball cake. Now before you roll your eyes because "cake balls are so last year," I have NEVER even had a cake ball before, so I wanted to try them. They're pretty easy. I did have to bake four cakes to have enough cake balls to make my three-tiered cake. The idea was for them to look like snowballs. The tiers themselves are actually dummy cakes - they're make of styrofoam, covered in white fondant. The cake balls are just stuck onto the outside with toothpicks. Each layer had a different flavor cake ball. Bottom: French Vanilla with buttercream rolled in coconut, middle: dark chocolate with mocha hazelnut and sugar crystals, and top: oreo with cream cheese. I was so glad it turned out as I imagined and was not a trial and error ordeal like Paul's party.
I didn't get too into Clara's clothing, unlike her Hundred Acre Wood Party last year. I did make her a tutu, which I explain on my other blog here. Thanks to encouragement from my extended family, Clara did wear it, although she didn't want to at first. Her pretty white dress was a gift from her Aunt Kay.
The big surprise of the whole party was that I bought fake snow! It's called Sno-Wonder, and it's pretty cool. (This is not a paid endorsement, by the way.) I think it's related to the stuff that they use in disposable diapers because the powder they send in the mail expands to like eight times its size! A teaspoon powder to a half cup water! I initially thought I'd use a small kiddie pool to hold it, but that idea didn't work out. So I bought four pieces of pipe insulation (which kind of looked like fun-noodles) and stuck them together in a circular shape. Then I laid a white tarp down on top and filled it with "sno." (See the upper right picture above.) It really worked out wonderfully! Clara was so thrilled when she saw it. She played in it for no less than two hours straight after the party was over! (Anything over 10 minutes is a good attention grabber for a toddler.)
She kept asking people if they wanted to touch it. Ha!
Paul wasn't so sure about it at first, but he has come to like it.
The cool part is that it lasts a long time. After the party my dad filled up our empty turtle sandbox with the sno, (so it wouldn't keep messing up the house) and the kids have been playing in it most every day since (over a week).
I made little "sno day kits" for everyone to take home.
One other fun activity was the pinata made from an ice cream bucket and filled with sno. It was a pull-pinata instead of the traditional hit-it-with-a-stick type (I figured we didn't really need anyone, let alone Clara or Paul running around with a large stick hitting things).
After the pinata, we sang and Clara blew out her three big candles.
Then she opened gifts.
Of course she had to make a snow angel or two!
It ended up being a really enjoyable afternoon with family and good friends.
Happy Birthday to my sweet three year old!
No comments:
Post a Comment