Category: Birthday

Cakes' 3rd Birthday Yellow Art Party - The Masterpieces

5/21/2013

The one aspect of Cakes' Yellow Art Party I came up with on my own (without any input from Cakes, haha) was to paint the white concrete wall in the back yard. When Cakes was very small I painted the wall white, painted a small section with blackboard paint and never really did much with it. I thought about painting a nice mural on it (but who wants to look at a painting their Mum did?), then getting her to paint a block each year as she got older (but what if she ended up with a sibling and we started to run out of blocks?) and that is when it hit me this party was perfect for her to get some art from her friends she could keep forever (or until she wants to repaint the wall).

The first hurdle was how I was going to ensure each child only painted on one block. My first thought was to newspaper it up (but somehow every newspaper I kept, ended up in the bin). I then decided to use a table cloth (one of the plastic ones we use as an art mat occasionally). I had intended to precut this into pieces for an easy stick up on the morning though got caught up with everything else and never got to it. So early on the morning I headed out and stuck it up with what I thought was awesome packing tape (but it wasn't great and fell a little). I cut out the holes of each block with a stanley knife (following the grouty bits) and taped it up with Cakes' painting tape (so now I owe her a new pack).

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Cakes' 3rd Birthday Yellow Art Party - The Invitation

5/18/2013

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Cakes had her third birthday party today. Seeing I still haven't blogged about her second birthday I thought I better get a crack on with this one and start straight away (I will catch up, and do her second birthday sometime this year as I know rainbow horsey parties are all the rage, haha). Her party is going to be a series of posts so I can bite off small bits at a time and really show case her hard work in planning and implementation. Yes you read that right this little almost 3 year old planned and implemented most aspects of her party with a little help (when skill and time became a concern). So where better to start than the invitation.

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A Wiggly 1st Birthday

7/30/2012

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Being Cakes's first birthday I wanted it to be special, something she would enjoy and something all her little friends could have fun without dragging their Mum's and Dad's around all morning. I decided the best thing to do was to pick something Cakes was currently interested in and something we had many resources for to prevent unnecessary expense. This led to her enjoyment of the Wiggles music and my slight obsession with Wiggles toys. As most of the children attending the party were not much older than 1 year old I thought it was best to have activity stations (like at Kindy) rather than a mountain of games (but threw some in anyway).

Games and Activities

Henry's underwater band

Using a blow up pool I had borrowed from my Mum we placed all of Cakes's musical instruments and a few borrowed Wiggly instruments from Big Cousin H. This was such an easy activity to set up and had all the children making music through out the morning at one stage or another.

Captain Feathersword's buried treasure

I wrapped up some party toys (including kaleidoscopic, whistles, bubbles, clackers and a few other things I cannot really remember) that were wiggly colours in aliminum foil and buried them in Cakes's new sandpit. Apart from finding a few missed toys over the following weeks this was a great game. Some of the children were excited to find their new shiny blob and needed to be shown there was something fun inside.

Dorothy's Rose toss

When I thought of this game I knew I just had to do it, but being the cheap skate that I am I spent many weeks checking the cheap shops for the best priced roses. Eventually they went on sale at Sam's Warehouse for $2.50 each so I bought 4. The idea of the game was for the small people to line up and toss the rose's as far as they could. The longest throw was thrown by Little Miss L, who was not even one and a half yet.

Find Wags's bones.

I printed bones on the computer with numbers inside them and laminated them. We then hid them around the yard and let the children and parents know about them. We didn't have a set time to collect them so the children could discover them during their normal play. This seemed to work well. Towards the end of the party we counted who had the most and gave them a Wiggly colouring-in book and some pencils.

Pass the Parcel

Obviously an oldie but a goodie we had to play pass the parcel. Keeping the game themed we place a Wiggles sticker in-between each sheet and had a Wiggles colouring-in book and some felt pens. I wasn't sure how a handful of one year olds with the odd bigger kid was going to go. But it all went well apart from Daddy struggling with the instructions to start and stop the music.

Wiggly dress ups

This activity centre was no brainer for me as I had purchased the tails years before we had Cakes, just because "I needed them" (what did I possibly need them for, I didn't really let Big Cousin H use them much before Cakes was born). Then at our first Wiggles concert (when Cakes was about 6mths old) I talked her into buying the headbands (yes I really did make her pay for them). So, an easy to set up activity with the dress ups strewn across the mat this activity was a hit (apart from the Mum's and Dad's having to assist with tails on, tails off, tails on again and so on, just what I was hoping to avoid).

Wiggly blocks

Any blocks would have been fine but Big Cousin H happened to have a set of Wiggles blocks (I remember when his Mum bought them on eBay a few years back and I sledged her for paying so much for them, oh well thanks for sharing Aunty Teen).

Wiggly puppet theatre

Now it wasn't really a Wiggles puppet theatre as the Wiggles puppet theatres are only table top theatres and cost lots of money. I just happened to pick up a Winnie the Pooh one (well actually three, spares for presents) for $20 reduced from $150 at Target many many moons ago. The Wiggle puppets (who knows where I got these and how much I spent, I do know I got a free Dorothy with another puppet and used it as one of the prizes for one of the games on the day). This activity wasn't played with much, possibly not enough encouragement from us adults or the children simply had no interest.

Wiggly colouring-in

The easiest activity for any party (especially a themed one) with only a few print ours and some crayons needed. Yet again another cheap skate moment I had money left on my uni printing so I printed the colouring-in for free at uni.

Wiggly soft toys

The Wiggly soft toys were a huge hit. The children didn't realise how special it was that they had them to play with. You could say some of them were vintage Wiggles as I had bought them over 10 years ago and the little singing inside them still worked. When I first got them a friend of mine's parents were selling them on eBay for a very large profit as the Wiggles were just becoming big in the USA and had not yet started selling products. They offered me extra money to sell it to them but I just couldn't part with them. Then the other half of the toys were ones my husband said "you don't need them and they cost too much" even when they went on sale. So when I got one of the Wiggles as a farewell present from work he had to let me buy the other three.

The Food

Rosy Tea

A large punch bowl with fresh squeezed juices of all sorts and and frozen fruit (I pureed the fruit before freezing as I had for Cakes's when she first started solids). Then I added a few plastic roses to make it look really rosey!

Fruit Salad

Using paddlepop sticks we made fruit kababs with 3-4 pieces of fruit. I found lots of honey dew melon around the yard so I think the strawberries, watermelon, apple and orange were the popular fruits.

Crunchy Munchy Honey Cakes

After much searching we decided to follow a recipie for Crunchy Munchy Honey Cakes fromKidspot.com.au. These were easy to make (so I believe as Cakes's Nanny made them) and tasted great.

Dog biscuits

Using a family recipe for the dog biscuits Cakes's Nagymama used a cookie cutter we bought on eBay and we placed the cookies in a new dog bowl for effect.

Hot Potato

For hot potatoes we put out a selection of wedges and chips with a small variety of sauces. These were eaten quicker than anything else on the table.

Cold Spaghetti

Keeping with the Wiggly theme, what is hot potatoes without cold spaghetti? We put some pasta salad out that was only eaten by a few people at the party though was definatly enjoyed by us at dinner time.

Mashed Banana

Each child enjoyed half a mashed banana iceblock as it was a little cold to eat the entire thing. I mashed the bananas in the food processor with a little milk and froze them in iceblock moulds (banana paddlepops would have achieved the same effect)

Cakes in her Dorothy party hat. I initially wanted to buy the Dorothy party things though decided a few green hats and cups with yellow stickers were just as good.

Cakes's Aunty Teen makes yummy cakse so she made a chocolate mud cake and covered it in green fondant. I was able to help with the rainbow, it was tricky but fun. Then I was talked into opening my box of Wiggles figurines to use on the cake. Turned out pretty good and Cakes loves playing with the figurines. There was enough cake for the party leaving the rainbow for Cakes to take to school to share with her nursery friends and teachers.

The invitation

We are lucky enough to close to Dreamworld, home of Wiggly World. With yearly passes being so cheap Cakes was fortunate enough to frequently meet the Wiggly characters often. We decided on using a photo of her when she was a little younger than 1 as three of the four characters were in the photos (the more recent ones had only one or two characters).

I did lots of research on what I could write on the invitation, I wanted something a little creative. This is what I came up with:

Cakes is turning 1 and she wants to celebrate with you. She loves the Wiggles and Henry too, so Wiggle over and party...won't you? Come help Wags find his bonesAnd then join Henry's band and play a few tunes. Captain Feathersword is looking for treasure. So come help us dig, it would be our pleasure! Anthony says: Whao-hoo the food is going to be great! There's Rosy Tea, Fruit Salad, Mashed Bananas and hot potatoes, I know you'll clean your plate! but make room for those Crunchy Munchy Honey Cakes!!
When to Wiggle:
Where to Wiggle:
RSVP to:

Being the cheapskate that I am I found the cheapest way to have these made and it was subscribing to Vistaprint and using their free offers (where you only pay for postage). I needed about 40 so I could have got 4 lots of 10 invitations for about $11 each or I could get 100 postcards for about $12. Well you know which option I chose I am sure. It was also much less effort not having to stuff each invitation into an envelope (lazy much). With about 60 spare invitations Cakes is now able to play post office with an almost never ending supply of postcards.