Seussical Party



Today was Miss Addison’s 7^th birthday party. It turned out well despite the fact that none of her school mates came (insert sad mom face here). Thank goodness for family and friends. (They were so awesome that Addi didn’t care that her friends were no-shows.)

Showing off her necklace from Sis Sammi

 What I thought was a brilliant idea turned out to be not good at all. Here are some of the obstacles that we faced and discoveries that we made along the way.

1. Addison’s birthday is June 15, by mid June all of the kids have scattered (usually on vacation or at joint custodial parents' houses for the summer) so we decided to move her party towards the end of school. Life got in the way so we couldn’t have it until the day after the last day of school.
2. You know what happens the day after the last day of school? High School Graduations!!!
3. You know who goes to High School Graduations? EVERYONE!
4. I wanted to have it in the late afternoon: the weather man said it was going to be 100^o by 2:00. So I moved it to late morning.- result: Cooler weather and lots of  “no see-ums” munching on us.
5. Also, I had no idea that so many mom’s and dad’s (& people in general) worked on Saturday mornings. (Including 4 of her 6 siblings!) Thank goodness her oldest sister’s hubby and her oldest brother’s wife were there to represent for 2 of the missing sibs along with the 2 sibligs that didn't have to work.
6. I had originally planned to have it at our house: Addi wanted it at the park. Ok, I can move it to the park. Result: severe limitations on our decoration possibilities.
7. This was our first year at this school. At our last school, few of the mom’s worked outside of the home (I did but had Saturdays off) and everyone had –“invite- your-whole-class room-to-your-party”- parties. Not at this school! At this school apparently it’s –“take-a-friend-or-two-to-Chuck E Cheese-or-a-movie-and-call-it-good”- parties. Result: Addi goes to school with a bunch of party poopers!!!
8. So while I thought I planned the party to a T: theme, games, candy buffet, cool off the wall “cake”, party favors, decorations, and even photo props, it turns out I FAILED everywhere else in the “Throw your kid a party they will never forget” game. 

But the wonderful people who DID come, made it a wonderful day just by being there and showing Addi how much they love her.

NOW ABOUT THE PARTY!

Our theme was Dr. Seuss. Addison has always been a Dr. Seuss fan, I mean come on, who isn’t?

Here is the invite:



Sorry, I don't know why it's fuzzy

So, originally I had planned to have a Seuss themed food table: red fish/blue fish, green eggs & ham etc., and a Seuss themed candy buffet. When we decided to move it to the park, I aborted the food table (all I could think of were bugs and things).

But, we had still had a candy buffet (all of the candy was in sealed wrappers). I have to say, the buffet was a fun idea. We had planned on naming each of the sweet treats after some Dr. Seuss story or character, but after adopting the park setting, I also adopted a much more laid back attitude toward the whole thing. So, fun food without the fun names was the new premise. I found these "pop corn" tubs at the dollar store. I bought several and put them to good use.

I can't believe I didn't take a picture of the Candy buffet.
Well, here is a view of if from the back side.
Just ignore the table cloth that doesn't quite go all the way around. LOL

In addition to the candy, I made tuti-fruti pop corn (Seen above in the green bags). I found two recipes on Pinterest, neither was quite what I was looking for, so I combined the parts that I liked from each and came up with my own. Here are the links to the ones I found,

http://amomnotapro.blogspot.com/2011/09/easy-and-yummy-candied-popcorn.html

http://cookingclassy.blogspot.ca/2011/11/old-fashioned-pink-popcorn.html

and here is my recipe:

¾ c unpopped pop corn (I air popped mine) makes about 8-10 cups popped. I think you can use 1 bag of microwave pop corn and get about the same yield.

¾ sugar

¼ c water

1 package jello gelatin in flavor of your choice
(to make our tuti-fruti, we made 1 batch using orange, 1 using grape, 1 using lime, and 1 using strawberry.) (We had 20 pop corn bags and put about 3 C. of pop corn in each and it came out just about even)

Parchment paper

Cookie sheet

Small pan

1. Pop the corn and set aside in a large bowl. (I mean LARGE bowl- I used my punch bowl)
2. Put next 3 ingredients in a pan and heat to a full rolling boil over medium heat. Boil for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.
3. Slowly, pour this syrup over the pop corn, stirring well as you pour. You may not need all of the syrup. So only use as much as you need to coat the pop corn, if you notice you have a pool of syrup at the bottom of your bowl, stop pouring and mix.
4. Once mixed thoroughly, pour pop corn out onto a cookie sheet that has been lined with parchment paper.  Spread out evenly. Set aside to “dry”.
5. Repeat this for all of the flavors you are making. I noticed that even though the pop corn felt dry, when I bit into it, it was a bit gooey. So I plopped them into the oven, one cookie sheet at a time. 250^o for 10 minutes worked perfectly. But I think that letting it air dry first was important. 
6. Also as a side note, if you are using a flavor that is particularly strong, and not necessarily one of your favorites, only use ½ a pouch of jello (that’s about ¼ cup). I wish I had not used a full package of the lime flavor. OOOHHH it was very limey!!!

For games we played twister. We spray painted circles on the grass and played it the traditional way. We were going to have stars (like Sneetches) instead of circles, but good ‘ole mom left the template at home. The kids had a blast with this one. It looked like this.

Don't you love my symmetry?

Addison contemplating her next move

Then we fished for Norvel (the talking fish from Cat in the Hat). We set it up like a carnival game. There were 3 little fish bowls each with a gold fish in it. And 7 mason jars with colored water, and 3 brightly colored ping pong balls. Just like in the carnival game, the kids had to stand at a reasonable distance and toss the balls at the glassware. When their ball landed in a fish bowl, they won that fish. Much like actual carnival fish, one of the 3 fish died before making it to the park! So that game only rendered 2 fishy winners.

Can you see the 2 Norvels?

Autumn is seriously contemplating this

Then we had a Hop on Pop sack race. We forgot to take pics, but imagine if you will,  6 kids each in an oversized pillow case, hopping from start to finish. These kids displayed some serious athletic skill out there. We may present this to the next Olympic committee for consideration.

Then it was time for the Birthday “cake”. This was my take on a Pinterest find. It was probably the biggest hit of the whole day. This was kept stashed at my mother in law’s house right down the street from the park. It went quick and every one loved it. Here I utilized another pop corn container from the candy buffet.

Here was the inspiration:
http://diycelebrations.blogspot.com/2010/07/popcicle-birthday-cake.html

For this "cake", I ran each popsicle stick through a cupcake liner. This served 2 purposes: 1. It worked as a drip catcher for the fastly melting sicles and 2. They covered up the styrafoam that the sticks were stuck into.

My Popsicle cake

What started out with rocky beginnings, turned out to be a very fun party. As each person readied to leave, they were handed an empty goodie bag and told to fill it up at the candy buffet. Also included on the candy buffet table, was a tub of toys.