This year we went all out for my oldest son Ridley’s seventh birthday. We don’t do this every year, but this year it felt like the right thing to do and we had a lot of fun doing it. We invited all his classmates, hired a magician and filled the house with balloons.
When we decided to hire a magician I considered going with an elaborate magic themed party. But as you can see we didn’t really have a theme or big concept, just lots of colorful details in the form of balloons and sweets and patterned papers, of course. I’d love to share a few more details with you about what we did.
The chalkboard in our kitchen usually serves as a menu board when we throw parties or have friends over for dinner, partly as a way to let our guests know what to expect, but also as a reminder to us as the event progresses. I had completely forgotten about the watermelon (and how to spell watermelon, evidently) until I checked the board.
As much as I wanted to avoid giving bags of future trash to the kids, goodie bags are mandatory to my host with the most seven year old. My boys put the bags together the night before in an assembly line fashion. We printed S&G Balloons imprints and the striped cards from this coordinate card set on my ink jet printer at home to dress up simple paper lunch bags. I didn’t have enough of one size/color of the bags, so we mixed it up. The bags were filled with either water or rocket balloon kits along with a few of Ridley’s favorite sweets, things that get used up quickly at least.
The night before I decided to go a little overboard and make paper cones to serve the popcorn. As I was doing it I thought “I am crazy, this is crazy. This is a seven year old’s birthday party.” But let me tell you, this might be the single best thing I did to keep the party flowing. My plan had been to slip out of the magic show a little early and set up the hot dog buffet…..but the show was too much fun to miss. As the kids filed out of the house and into the back yard, I grabbed the pop corn and asked a friend to pass it out while I scrambled to get lunch ready. It kept the kids occupied and they really did seem to enjoy the novelty of eating out of a paper cone.
This last picture is my favorite. That is my boy pinching off the frosting of the cake I make for him every year. I make it whether we have a big party or a simple family one. I will make that cake for him as long as he asks for it and I will hope that as the years pass the taste of it will remind him of good times.
Photos by Ebony and Becca (thanks so much, Becca!)
Tags: Birthdays, cake, Candy, Children, Color, cookies, Crafts, Home, party ideas, wrapping paper
I still dream of that cake. And, I would love to be 7 again just to have a party like that! So awesome!!
A blog post fave!