Big Birthday Bash Recap

Saturday was THE DAY – the kid’s big birthday bash. It was incredibly fun, terribly exhausting and also probably way too expensive, but as I have promised myself, we do not (WILL NOT) do this every year. And it was a great time and overall SO WORTH IT.

I will do a recap Tonia style here …

The Good

• The AMAZING HELP Our family was so instrumental in getting all of this done you can’t even imagine. My mom hung with me all day Friday buying food and then prepping it and my sister joined in on that action as well and BOTH helped out at the party (my mom hardly left the kitchen). My dad did balloon and ice pickup and helped with the whole party. Our best friends, M&H and their boys were there for the long haul and helped out hugely from setup to cleanup. And my aunt and uncle did tons in the way of help during and afterward. We seriously could not have pulled it off without everyone’s help!
• The Photo Booth The photo booth Matt and I built was awesome. EVERYONE loved it. It performed just as it should and everyone got some really great souvenirs from the party. It was a huge hit and folks want to rent it from us! Ha! Here’s the jist of it: we built a surround out of standard 1×1 boards for frame and thin sanded plywood in between – including a bench which my mom and sister upholstered and a shelf on the opposite side. We put a laptop running Sparkbooth inside and a printer printing the results outside. We used a couple of gooseneck lamps for light and had a curtain (stolen from Ben’s room) on the outside to keep out interference. We went through some ink and paper, but otherwise, it ran so smoothly and we barely did anything.
• Costumes As I mentioned before, the theme was pirates and mermaids. Both kids had costumes that I just loved. Tabby’s came from a local costume shop and was around $35 (she wanted it badly and she has promised she’ll want it for Halloween too). Ben’s came from Amazon and cost me under $7. Hehe. I really loved it and he wore it all day after a pack of fruit snack bribery. Quite a few of the kids came in costume too which was SO MUCH FUN.
• The WeatherIt was a beautiful day and so the porch on the back of the space was much utilized and loved. My brilliant sister even took the kids outside to eat their cupcakes (probably singlehandedly saving our cleaning deposit). We also got to do the treasure hunt game out there.
• Treasure Hunt We filled a small (3′) kiddie pool with sand and hid stuff in there (pirate spy glasses, pirate finger puppets, candy, pirate girl bracelets) and then lined up the kids and let them hunt for 3 things each. We probably could have done five.
• The Food (type) We did KID food for the party: cheese & crackers, fruit, M&Ms, Pirate Booty, hummus & veggie and of course … Pigs in a Blanket. We cut hotdogs into fourths and made 8 trays of mini pigs-in-a-blanket. They went over quite well.
• The Venue I loved using the HOA common space. It was close and so easy to run back and grab candles (which we forgot/lost) and it was large (including the kitchen) and felt homey and comfortable. It was also really priced well at $40/hour.
• Presents We made the decision to request no presents for a variety of reasons, but besides the obvious,  the number of people we wanted to invite would have made presents fill up the playroom and also we invited a lot of common friends but then a bunch of friends from Tabby’s school who are solely hers and I didn’t want them in the position of feeling like they needed to bring Ben a gift as well to keep things fair. Mostly, people honored our request and those that didn’t were very low key and respectful about it. The kids received mostly cards and a few gift cards (they LOVED $5 giftcards to the ice cream shop in our neighborhood) and one of Tabby’s classmates brought her an especially pretty balloon with his card. They also got just a few toys, plenty to make them feel like they had a birthday.

The Bad

• Food (quantity) I am LOUSY at guessing food quantities for something like this and Matt is worse. ;)We had WAY too much except for the pigs-in-a-blanket. We will be noshing on leftover party food all week.
• The Cucpakes I made a chocolate version of the strawberry milk cupcakes and they were good, just not GREAT in the same way the strawberry milk cupcakes were. But everyone liked them well enough. I also didn’t have to decorate them … just stuck some little plastic guys on top.
• Crafts I had quite a few crafty things for the kids to do … picture frames ($2.50/doz @ Oriental Trading), necklaces, art station, etc. and they hardly got used. Some kids towards the end when they’d expended most of their energy did do some, but overall it was kind of wasted. As my mom pointed out though, if the weather had been crappy it might have been a different story.
• Decorations This is just not my thing. I would always rather spend $$ on food and fun than decorations that don’t last. The room is also so large that any decorations kind of get lost in it. We did balloons and a huge pirate flag over the fireplace. They were fun but didn’t really change the character of the room.

The Ugly

• Photos I was terrible about photos!! I didn’t even get a picture of the completed photo booth (I can’t believe it!!). I did OK with a few snippets here and there, but overall awful. I’m still quite mad at myself about this.
• Cost I will not go into what everything cost, but I know we spent a bundle. It could have been way worse, but it was bad enough. Still, we can afford it and I wouldn’t change it. It was worth it.

Yesterday was 90% about relaxing and we definitely needed it. Tabby’s birthday is officially over. Ben will be our Easter Birthday Boy this weekend. Then, I think, we really are done.