Balloonapalooza - recap

Boo and Yum Yum turned 5 two months ago. They have been looking forward to becoming "big girls" for the past year... soon they will be off to college, err I mean kindergarten.

Although they were very keen to include ten pin bowling, Dora and fairy princesses in the party theme, I took advantage of a fortunate TV moment to suggest a balloon party. It was so much fun I want to do it again. Tomorrow!!!

Although we hoped that by waiting another 4 weeks we might be able to enjoy an outdoor party, April showers meant we had to have the party indoors. In a confined space, with little natural light, there aren't many good photos. However the party was a blast. The balloon sculptor filled the space with the most wonderful wacky balloon creations. He made everything the kids requested and then some. We used a small helium balloon kit to inflate multi coloured confetti stuffed balloons in lieu of a pinata. The kids were able to pop the floating balloons using a stick with a pin taped to the end. They burst very messily all over the room. Big fun. I just wish I had a photo because I loved doing that. (The Dyson cleaned it up easily enough). When it seemed all the balloon fun was over I brought out my secret stash of balloons (hidden in the TV cabinet) and challenged the kids pop them by sitting on them. More fun, more mess.

Can you spot the "ooops" in my rainbow. Note to self, pay more attention to the balloons you are buying,especially size and random bags of smiley face balloons. Actually I think the yellow smileys added a little extra cute to my rainbow. I had to make this after I discovered BALLOON TAPE! All future Bear, Boo and Yum Yum events will now feature my signature Rainbow Smiley Balloon Arch TM!

Goody Bags....full of balloons of course...and mini balloon pumps. I found the perfect bags at Target.

Balloons on sticks...waiting to have sticker faces added. This kept the kids busy until everyone arrived.

The food table. Taken the night before so there's no food actually on it.I resisted all temptation to have a blogland "candy bar". Maybe for the Breadwinner's 50th I'll do one...but for a small kids afternoon tea party it would hav been overkill. We had fruit and cupcakes, birthday cake, GF carot cake and GF cinnamon cheesecake, veggies dips n crackers. And I hid all the crap in our house under the table :-0

This is their birthday cake ... on their actual birthday. It was small and from the supermarket LOL but they didn't care one bit. The cake we had at the party....that was super special.

Boo and Yum Yum celebrated the big 5 in a big way, it seems as if the celebrations went on for a month because, well, they did. They are very happy girls and we love them so. Bye 4, it was wonderful SNIFF.

Birthday parties... Frida Kahlo

I like planning the birthday parties, I get to indulge my kids in a special way and it is an outlet for my creative energies.

My interest in Frida Kahlo's work and planning birthdays, collided spectacularly when I came across this fantastic blog. My mind went into overdrive. I then re-read Kahlo's biography (which I have had for a long time) and bought the Selma Hayek movie which is visually stunning.

Bear's birthday gift was to be an easel and paints so it fit with the theme perfectly. Later I added some Frida themed framed prints from LuLu...and Tacsha ( I also used her cards for the invites). The prints look lovely in her room and are a great reminder of her party.

In hindsight I planned to do too much in this party (too many ideas!!) so there was a big fail in one respect - there was only one portrait completed during the party but I must say that one portrait was gorgeous. I really should have listened to that little voice that whispered "paper collage". Bear's birthday is at the end of summer so the party decorations were excellent summer craft activities for all of us.

I spent many hours online seeking out more Mexican themed ideas and tutorials for the making of pinatas and papel picado. I ended up with 40ft of papel picado and a tissue paper chandelier.

In addition I made rose headbands and little stuffed Milagro 'burning" hearts from fabric for the favours, together with a colourwheel from Blik. Party game prizes were brightly coloured bracelets from Claire's. The game of Loteria I purchased online very inexpensively, a large one to play and mini ones for inside the pinata to accompany the candy. As Loteria is a game of chance I felt it appropriate to give Milagro charms as prizes. It was an opportunity to learn a little about Mexican culture and practice some spanish.

We found a brightly tiered skirt for Bear, together with bright party dresses for Boo and Yum Yum, at Children's Place. I already had a tiered peasant skirt. I embellished Bear's skirt with additional ribbons. And with a huge silent YES!!! I scored two perfect peasant style embroidered white blouses at a local discount clothing store. I trimmed one down to fit Bear and used the excess to give mine a little more bust room. We also did beading together to make her a special necklace featuring Frida Kahlo charms from Michaels Crafts. Together with several purchased hairbands with large bright silk flowers, a bunch more necklaces, some make up, shawls and an eyebrow pencil ...we had plenty of fun dressing up and taking photos of our guests " Fridafied" against our personalised backdrop.

We had fajitas and tacos for dinner. We had fun making fresh fruit smoothies for the girls and margaritas/pina coladas for the adults. We would have been saved some work if we had catered the food , even though ours was delicious it was hard work trying to do everything at once.

There are loads more photos in my Flickr set.

Thanks again to Erika of Mikodesigns for the inspiration. Please feel free to ask any questions about the party that you may have in the comments. It was over 6 months ago but I might be able to find additional links for you if you are interested in the suppliers. During this time the breadwinner was actually in Mexico several times but he was not much help- shopping is not his forte. Sorry, I am still figuring out how to fine tune the layout of my blog posts.