Kaia's 4th Birthday

Oh, my, I've had a little blog break. For some reason I really didn't want to do this post, and at the same time felt like I needed to do it before moving on. I think, in large part, it was all the stress and craziness leading up to her party, and I was still too exhausted to want to even look through the pictures. Why was it stressful and crazy getting ready for her party? Because it always is, no matter how much I try to prepare in advance. 

Anyway, getting on with things. Since Kaia's theme choice was a bit.. well.. not very concise, (she wanted fairies, unicorns, dragons, castles, rainbows, and mushrooms!) I tried to do her decorations mostly based around a rainbow theme. I bought a big bag of multicoloured balloons, and after they were blown up I tied them together in bunches of colour to make the "balloon rainbow" she had requested. We hung it up on the living room wall, and I think it came out very pretty!

I did find rainbow streamers ahead of time, while we were picking things out and price comparing, but, (oops!) I totally forgot to pick them up. Instead, we used purple and green streamers we had on hand, and she got a big bunch of helium balloons, including all the colours of the rainbow, and some special birthday bubble balloons.

Her one big birthday request was to have the basement (our play space,) finally painted for her party. That soaked up a whole lot of our prep time, and added greatly to the stress and craziness, as she didn't make this ever-so-important-to-her request until about two weeks before her party. We did get it mostly finished in green, teal, and purple, using the absolutely fantastic, no-VOC, Yolo paints that we bought over a year ago for the basement from our wonderful local Michigan supplier. I am so happy it is finally painted, and it is lovely! We have yet to finish all the trim, (which will be cream,) cabinets, and doors, but having the walls slathered in beautiful colour was quite enough for her. I will have to get pictures when we complete it.

To decorate the play space walls I painted a great big unicorn, (styled after The Last Unicorn, with some Kaia-requested alternations,) cut grasses and bushes out of green paperboard, (Kaia then glued plastic "gems" to all the bushes,) and we made construction paper mushrooms, (which the girls really enjoyed adding the spots to!) I wanted also to make a big dragon, and turn one of the doorways downstairs into a castle entrance, but I ran out of time. (sad face) I stuck all the decorations up for the below picture, but this was before we painted, and for the party I spread them around the room.

I looked up a number of rainbow themed party ideas, and good grief! What a lot of sugar was involved in all those table settings! I'm not against giving out some candy at my kids' parties, don't get me wrong. To be honest, though, to lay out the kind of sweets-laden table that I found pictures of all over the web at a child's party, you would have to be insane! They certainly look pretty, but I can only imagine what kind of candy-frenzied berserker-child madness must ensue once you have unleashed the children on it! I went with a healthier, more woodlandy theme for our snack table. I bought some butterfly plant stakes that I put here and there around the house and tables, and did get some rainbows involved in the form of jelly beans and fruit skewers. The rainbow fruit skewers were a big hit!

We put out a variety of crackers, chips, salsa, guacamole, pretzels, peanuts, cinnamon sugar almonds, "veggie sticks", and a veggie platter full of broccoli, red, yellow, green, and orange bell peppers, carrots, celery, and hummus, using various baskets and wooden bowls with cloths lining them. To have enough, I picked up a few more baskets at the thrift store.

(Kaia wearing her special birthday shirt made by Handmade By Jenn, an Etsy shop.)

We prettied the snack table up with green burlap down the center, and scattered it with a rainbow of cloth flowers and pine cones that Kaia helped me collect before hand. I cut a pine branch into slices and rubbed mineral oil onto the cut ends to place candles on, which we set amid the snacks down the center of the table. (Out of reach of little hands!) You'll have to excuse the fact that I didn't get some of these pictures until after the party, and didn't manage to get a picture of the complete table that didn't include other people, which I don't make a habit of posting on my blog. So I'm afraid you'll have to be content with individual elements outside their setting.

And, of course, there was cake. Ohhhhh, the cake. We have a silicone castle cake mold that Kaia desperately wanted to use for her birthday cake, but every time I have tried I cannot get the thing out, no matter how much oil and flour I coat it with. It looks similar to this one. All those pointy turrets and little fiddly bits will not come out for me. (We did use it successfully to make our castle ice lantern, at least.) I was expecting this, but gave it a shot anyway. I am not sure what I am doing wrong, but when the expected happened, we ate the pieces and tried again to make a castle cake, this time by baking sections and constructing it ourselves. That was disastrous, too! The cakes didn't rise at all, (I am wondering if our egg replacer is past its prime, I use it so seldom,) and they certainly couldn't be made into anything approaching a castle. I amateurishly decorated the large one, anyway, and had some fun with all the icing tips I had never used before. And then I baked cupcakes. It's a good thing I started my cake shenanigans a few days before the party.

We had a whole rainbow of fairy wings, (which I also forgot to take a picture of until I only had a few left,) that I found here. They are the butterfly wings, and were all very nice, which is more than I can say for the sloppy, glue smeared ones we looked at in the dollar store. This is the same place we purchased all the cloth flowers.

I asked in our invites to please include in the RSVP a fairy / dragon count, and all the boys went dragon and all the girls went fairy, with the exception of one little girl that wanted to be a dragon, and one little boy who asked if he could be a fairy dragon. Okay, I wasn't shocked, but I did want to give them the option. :) I ordered olive butterfly wings to try converting to dragon wings, which I would say was semi-successful. They weren't large enough to remove the extra pair of wings and not look silly, and I didn't have much play with the wire because the nylon was tightly formed to their original shape. They did get worn, though, so I will take it as more success than fail, even if I wasn't very happy with how they came out. If I had had the time to make 8 pair of dragon wings from scratch, I think they would have been much nicer.

We did feed them all pasta before sugaring them up with cake and candy. We had around 40 people at our house, all told, about half and half in kid to adult ratio between attending parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Since I have only one large burner, and one large pot, I made a few pounds of pasta ahead of time which we made into a yummy pasta salad for the adults to dig into. Then, while the kids were playing, I cooked up a few more pounds of hot pasta for them, which I kept pretty simple with margarine, a little salt, a smidge of powdered smoke, and a heap of nutritional yeast. The kids all ate and liked it, saying that it tasted like mac and cheese, and went unaware of its veganess until I told them. Boy, were they a lot of kids to sit down around a table!

We had a unicorn pinata as well, which I had someone take a video of, but was too distracted trying to keep 20 kids from being smacked with a big stick to remember to take a photo of. It was a fill-yourself pinata, which was nice, enabling me to use all vegan-friendly candies, which I put into separate treat bags before putting into the pinata. We had children aged 1 ½ up to 12 years old, so I didn't want all the big kids getting the whole of the loot. I was afraid this may take some of the excitement out of it for experienced pinata destroyers, but I forgot how powerful the possession of candy is, none of the kids cared. :)

We had a great time, once everything was done and the party was ready to start. I was really happy to get dinner figured out for everyone so that we didn't have to try cramming the whole thing into two hours like we have previously done. It seems so much easier to order pizzas all around! I only know of one pizza place in the area that makes vegan pizzas, though, and they are an hour away and far too expensive for us to provide a party load of people! It was worth it, though. The kids had so much more time to simply play together.

I was also much happier to give out a pair of wings to use in imaginative play to each child, instead of a baggie of plastic junk that would end up broken and in a landfill by the end of the week. I have never given out these seemingly obligatory goody bags, but Kaia has brought home her fair share. Ugh!

 Oh, yes! Kaia did wear her unicorn crown and rainbow tail with her wings for a while, but eventually ditched them for just the wings. It's a good thing she has worn them so much outside the party, or I would have been pretty disappointed after all that work making them for her birthday party!

Bringing in the Spring (Make a Spring Rain Book)

Spring started with a haircut. Papa cut his hair the other morning.
That afternoon, so did Kaia.
 

I left her washing her hands to put Miss Katalin down in bed for her nap, and when I came back.. all her little curls, all over the counter. :( This was the first time scissors touched her hair. I cried, and she got confused. Well.. luckily she left enough to work with, she really got the sides, though. Serious mulletude.
 

So, through the thunderstorm of the first day of Spring, we drove to a hair shop to finish the cut. Papa and I are the only ones sad about it, Kaia is very excited.
 

Okay, I'll admit, I think her haircut is really cute, though I wouldn't have chosen to do it yet. She is thrilled with her short hair, so I am trying to be happy, too. :)

When we got home, we shook off the rain and started making a book about how rain helps things grow. I cut the pictures out of construction paper ahead of time, and everything was ready for her to start gluing. We talked about the stages of seed to flower as we glued. First, she "planted" the seed in the dirt, set the sun in the sky, then, on the next page, she made it rain for the seed.
 

 
The seed cracks open, and out comes a shoot. The shoot grows into a sprout, then a flower.
 

 She was so excited to make her own book!
 

Kaia decorated the cover with rain and grass.
 

 We reviewed the sign for Spring, which I was amazed to find out she remembered from last year.
 

Kaia also received a new notebook, she fills them up fast! She happily drew away, using my favourite pen which just so happens to be her favourite pen as well, and I filled in words on the pages of our book. I also added in the roots and rays of sun, which she wanted in the book but didn't want to draw herself. *shrug*
 

 Our completed book:
 

It's a very simple little book. Kaia loves it, and the next day she is still reading it over and over again.
 

Kaia's 3rd Birthday and Dinosaur Party

On the morning of Kaia's 3rd Birthday, she picked out her clothes, dressed herself and when she stepped out of our bedroom it was to find one shiny balloon and one shiny wrapped gift. She paid no mind to the gift, but was so instantly ecstatic about the balloon that Papa's 2:30am extra stop on his way home from work was immediately worth it. She stared in wonder for a moment, then ran to the stairs to shout to my Dad, (who was staying with us to help with reclaiming our basement after a flooding,) 

"Papy!! There's a balloon in our house!"

"Wow, who do you think it is for?"

"I don't know!!"

"I think it is for you for your Birthday."

Thus commences the running about, trailing a balloon and squealing happily in sheer joy until she decided she was hungry. What she wanted for breakfast was to make her own pancakes. Completely by herself. She usually helps cook, and she does quite a bit herself anyway, but this time she wanted absolutely no scooping, measuring, pouring, or stirring assistance. We told her things like, "2 cups of flour" and after 5 partially filled cups we would tell her that she probably had enough, but aside from that, she did every step of the process on her own. Because she is 3 now, and there is nothing she cannot do.

As the pan warmed up she eventually took notice of the gift on the table. 

"I wonder who that gift is for?"

"It's for you, Kaia, for your Birthday."

"I wonder if I can open it..."

So as the first pancake started cooking, we sat down in a rare February sunbeam in the living room to open her gift.

After opening her present, we all ate her pancakes, which were actually very good and not even lumpy. She had fun all day trying her best to distract Papy from getting any work done and had some sweet snuggles and reading time with him before saying goodbye. That night she had a special ice cream treat, covered in sprinkles that she put on herself, of course.

Then, happy and exhausted, she curled up in her chair with her balloon and fell asleep, face still covered with ice cream.

The following weekend was her Birthday party. Kaia wanted a dinosaur party. She wore the special skirt she'd picked out at the store and the shirt I made for her with a big number 3 on the front.

I semi-mentioned that the basement had flooded and was being worked on. Well, we managed to have almost everything done by her party, including getting our new carpet in (yay!) but our paint was held up, so the walls were prepped, but unpainted. The carpet is made out of corn sugar and it is so fantastic! 

Over the last month and a half, Kaia has helped me work on some dino decorations for her party. We had big long rolls of brown paper that came to us wrapping our dishes. I squirreled it away because it is coated and not recyclable, but it was so much paper, and in such long pieces! I didn't know what we'd use it for, but it had way too much potential to throw away. We used it to line the basement walls, taped two pieces together to make a volcano, and rolled a couple more pieces up to make tree trunks. We tore strips of (previously gifted to us,) tissue paper to make lava exploding from the volcano, and Kaia also gave it some flows of red glitter glue. I cut open a couple brown paper bags and Kaia painted them green for me to cut into the tree leaves. I sketched out a little triceratops, a pterodactyl and some grass tufts and Kaia helped me paint them. We left the center horn off the triceratops so that we could use it to play pin-the-horn-on-the-dinosaur, which is why it is covered in horns in these pictures.

Kaia's friends, (the ones that are kids, anyway,) range from 2 years old to 12 years old, so we went easy on organized games and tried to pick ones everyone would be able to play together. This is Kaia having the bandanna tied over her eyes and being spun by some of her friends to pin her horn on. 

The results of pin-the-horn-on-the-triceratops, I like the one on the grass!

We played two other games and the rest of the time they just had fun playing, I came out feeling that the "planned" activities were just right, woot! For one game, I handed them each a sheet of dinosaur stickers and the object was to get all your stickers on other kids while getting the least amount of stickers on yourself. They had a ton of fun with that, and a week later Kaia would still run around cheerfully shouting, "Oh, no! Stickers! Not stickers!" I also painted some spots on easter eggs to magically turn them into dinosaur eggs, (because everyone knows dinosaurs laid spotted eggs, right?) filled them with jelly beans, and hid them around the basement for everyone to hunt for.

 After games and play wound down Kaia opened her gifts.

The dinosaur cake pan was borrowed from my parents and is the same pan that was used for my older brother's dinosaur Birthday party 20 some years ago! Papa Juise's Mum kindly baked it for us and my Mum iced and decorated it, because we were crazy with everything else we had to do. Is it not so cute?

Kaia blew out her candles and I don't think anyone noticed they were eating a vegan cake, neither the kids nor the adults. :)

Kaia was overjoyed to have her friends that used to come to our house every day for daycare back in our home, and Miss Katalin was super excited about all the commotion and children everywhere. She had fun pitching her own squeals into the great ruckus. And balloons. She loved the balloons.

Kaia's cousin stayed the night and they played until very late. Neither of them wanted him to leave the next day and they were all sweet hugs. <3