I had the worst birthday party ever when I was a child because my parents hired a pony to give rides. And these ponies are never in good health. But this one dropped dead. It just wasn’t much fun after that. One kid would sit on him and the rest of us would drag him around.
Rita Rudner
Picture 7 little girls, 4 litres of Shirley Temples, 2 dozen blueberry and chocolate chip pancakes, 6 bottles of syrup, a tub of Cool Whip, and 1 chocolate cake with chocolate frosting edged with 20 full Kit Kat bars and topped with a dozen little boxes of Smarties.
Can you see it?
Now,
RUN!!!!
Ummmm hello? Why didn’t I think of that 5 days ago???
Seriously though, we had a GREAT time at HBear’s 7th birthday party this past weekend!
We started the celebration on Tuesday. A low key family dinner, gifts… and of course ice-cream cake!
To be completely honest we started a few weeks ago. HBear has had some great birthday parties in the past but they were all out of the house parties. Bowling, Bellydancing, and Gymnastics. I just brought the cupcakes and snapped great pictures. That’s it.
This year she really wanted a party here at home. She was VERY specific in her ideas. I see an event planner in the making! LOL She had ALL the details worked out, every last one of them 🙂
To begin with she wanted Pancakes & Pajama’s as the theme. She wanted to use the theme to make the invitations. I remembered back in Elementary school making a card for Father’s Day, a card that you folded to make a shirt and tie. I searched Pinterest for a “recipe” for a card like that and I found 1!
This tutorial From Sue Stampfield was amazing! We went to Michaels and HBear picked out 8 different sheets of pretty paper, all from different colors of the rainbow.
Sorry about the nails… My Mom is yelling at me from wherever she is right now lol
She picked out stickers for the “slippers” and we printed up the invite.
HBear did the folding, the stickering and she glued the inserts inside too!
Then we glued the ribbon around the waist and added a bow 🙂
The day of the party was also HotDog Day. SBean was super excited to have her very own sleepover at Grandma and Grandpa’s and they picked her up at 10am for a fun filled day painting and charming her Grandpa into giving her whatever her little heart desired LOL
So, after Hot Lunch I got home and decorated and got everything ready. My HotLunchBesty convinced me NOT to steam the floors until the kids left… After pouring multiple flutes of Shirley Temples out of a terrible pitcher with an apparently faulty spout, I was silently thanking her for her awesome advice!
HBear gave me a list of supplies: a blue tablecloth, pink napkins, and yellow cutlery!
We had planned on fresh fruit but strawberries were $11.00 a pound!!!! So we settled on fruit syrups from a Summerland Sweets 🙂
I even bought “fancy” plastic champagne glasses for the girls!
For a birthday activity HBear and I chose decorating pillowcases. I bought plain white and cream pillowcases and HBear and I designed each of the girl’s names to be ironed on to the P’cases. HBear asked each girl’s what their favourite color was and we chose fonts that described each girl. I printed them out on iron-on paper and then spent a hour ironing them on. GAWD I hate ironing! I’m sure a normal person could have done it in 20 minutes but for me, it was a good hour of swearing and burning myself. I remember my Mom once telling me to always use an ironing board. No matter the time it takes to get it out, it will take longer if you try to do it half-assed. I have now found that advice can be used for pretty much everything lol. I remember one time I was trying to quickly iron a t-shirt on my bed. When I leaned on the bed to unplug the iron it tipped over and burnt my leg. I still have the pointed tip on the inside of my calf to remind me how much I hate ironing.
I baked a chocolate cake… from a box 🙂 I bought frosting from a Betty Crocker tub and left it in the capable hands of Ninja! He cut it into a 7 and frosted it…
AND decorated it!
We were all ready for the party! We asked everyone over for 5pm. HBear got home from school at 3pm.
2 hours of waiting.
In that time she practiced for her upcoming Oscar award. She threw herself on the couch with her arm over her forehead and wailed, “When are they coming? That is sooooooooo long from now!!!! Why can’t they come noooowwwww????”
She ran from room to room. She sat at the window staring out in anticipation. She tidied her bedroom. She practiced giving her dolls a tour of her room, so she was prepared for her guests of course.
She got showered and dressed in her brand new Jammies that were made with love from Grandma!
When the girls (7 in total) got there we started with a “cocktail” complete with a maraschino cherry and everything! Then Ninja got the pancakes going. The girls could have as many as they liked and whatever syrup they chose. They topped them with fresh bananas and whipped cream.
HBear’s face when the cake came out was SO worth the time it took Ninja to make it! LOL The girls stopped singing in the middle to oooohhhh and aaaahhhh!
While the girls played spin the bottle (to choses a present to open) Ninja and I cleaned up and got our pillowcase craft ready.
The girls spread out and designed their pillowcases. While creating their masterpieces they liked watching to see if Maynard (our Elf on the Shelf) moved or was looking their way LOL. Some made Christmas P’cases, others drew pictures and others got each of their friend’s autographs. Ninja even got in there and crafted it up!
After the girls were finished crafting we cranked the music and played freeze dance! It was at this point Ninja and I started watching the clock. 7:08… 7:12… 7:14 OMG Stop the insanity!!!!! LOL
Just in case the pillowcases went quicker than I had planned (which they did) I had a backup plan. I had made Pictionary cards. I brought out the whiteboard and we played Pictionary for the last 15 minutes.
The parents (bless their hearts) were right on time! By 8:07 the majority of the kids were headed home and just coming down from their sugar high. Ninja drove 1 friend home and HBear & I and the 2 remaining girls set up a theater in the living room. We moved the couch, gathered the stuffies and turned on Home Alone!
A little over a half an hour later Ninja texted me and asked if I wanted dinner. LOL We had forgotten to eat dinner! In fact, I had been on the go all day and hadn’t eaten at all! Ninja got home with some KFC and a few minutes later the last friend was picked up and it was just HBear and her Besty. We allowed HBear to choose a friend to stay over for her very 1st sleepover. It was just past 9:25 when HBear looked at her Besty and said, “I’m kinda tired do you want to go to bed?” and she said, “Yes! I am so tried too!”
WOW! That was easy!
They stayed up for about an hour longer once in thier room but they were super quiet 🙂
It was a GREAT night! So much fun and laughter! I know she will remember this night for years to come 🙂
Ninja and I slept HARD that night. Until 5:50am when I heard the girls get up and exclaim “OH NO MAYNARD DIDN”T MOVE!!!!”
…
Shit.
😉
0 thoughts on “Pancake & Pyjamas: HoneyBear’s 7th Birthday Party”
You are an amazing mom! I know it's really fun to bring so much joy to your child, but goodness it's a lot of work- and you were over the top! I love the cake! My 3 year old son talked about his birthday for at least a month (prior)…and at his party he was on top of the world, living the dream, the best day of his life. I was glad that I went ahead and put some time and energy into his party- it was a blessing to watch him really live it up. Great ideas on entertaining kids (every 15 minute activity counts!)