Ella Rose's 4th Birthday Party

Howdy howdy!


So yesterday, we celebrated Ella Rose's 4th Birthday with a celebration!
Her actually birthday is April 1st, but that's a Monday and the day that Nana is leaving, and Sunday is Easter, so the Saturday before seemed like the best bet.

I can't believe that in all the years I've had this blog, I've never done a post about Ella's birthday. Until now!
Here's a quick rundown of what her previous birthday celebrations have been like:

1st = we were in the old place that'd we'd been renting, and I pretty much invited everyone from our LBCC Live & Learn class, so there were at least twenty people. Not to mention, my family flew in as a surprise from NY, CA, and even AK! It was a pretty big bash and I went a little overboard, renting a big table and even high chairs for all the baby guests - ha! The cake was a very baby friendly carrot cake sweetened only with apple concentrate. Ella was terrified of the balloons we blew up...

2nd = we were in the new house by this point and once again I invited all of Ella's little baby friends and their families. We'd been on this elimination diet and that was a little bit reflected in the party food served. I remember making these quinoa balls made with walnuts and sweetened with honey - yum. Dash baked a cake that was decorated with the Kiki's Delivery Service sign.

White frosting on a chocolate cake...yum!

3rd = this was the first year I decided to adopt the "invite as many friends over as years old you are" standard. It made it a lot more intimate and less chaotic than the past years. I think the fact that I was very pregnant with William inspired the decision as well. ;)
Ella's friends were Douzen, Moses, and Clara -- so it was two boys and two girls. Very sweet. I guess the kids just played around together and then we did a craft project which was painting little pots that were then potted with seeds of their choice. Dash baked an angel food cake. It hailed on and off outside. @_@

And now the 4th party!
As my post prior described, I was pretty dedicated to making it a waste-free, DIY-based, and generally down-to-earth. So this was the line-up!

1) Decorations:

There were about 12 of these of varying sizes all over the kitchen/living room.

I was not interested in buying disposable one-time-use decorations (streamers, balloons, etc) and instead opted to make a dozen paper flowers that I stuck on the walls. The tutorial I followed can be found here, since it'd been years since I first did these back in Spanish class in Junior High. All the tissue paper was salvaged from gifts the family had received for every holiday for the past four years at least. And there is still more left over! The flowers came out so beautifully, I don't want to dispose of them at all! Maybe I'll jimmyrig them into some kind of mega wreath that we can put on the wall in the playroom or something. I'll keep you posted about that ;)

2) Activities:

The homemade face paints! A quasi-success, heh...

  Because you can't count on the weather in Oregon, I had a line-up of indoor-friendly activities for the kids. My original plan was going to be: dress up --> paints faces --> blow bubbles --> dance around the living room --> cake! --> do chalk drawings under the carport --> make scepters --> play/dance some more --> go home.
But as with any party (especially one for preschoolers) that order flew right out the window, which was fine by me. I made the face paint and bubble solution (both from the same resource, I only now just realized @_@) with relatively good results. The face paints were best used immediately following mixing, but when they sat around too long the components separated which is no muy bueno.

Look at that concentration. I love it!

There was also an impromptu egg-hunt facilitated by Dash and Nana that the kids really enjoyed.

The bubble action also took place outside. Which was good because the kids really liked dumping out the bubble solution...and that would've sucked indoors. :D

The craft of the day was "scepter" decorating (I chose that word over "wand" because it was a more gender-neutral term, and two of Ella's initial guests were going to be boys). The template scepters themselves were bought, but the rest of the stickers, foam pieces, sequin, etc were saved from previous crafts or had been received as gifts. Hurray for saving materials!
The line-up of activities ended up being more like this: play around upstairs (some dressing up involved) --> play outside --> egg hunt outside --> cake! --> make scepters --> blow bubbles outside --> paint faces --> go home
The weather couldn't have been better!! Seriously, about 70 degrees out there. Scoooooore~!

3) Food:

So, I don't have any good shots of the food but again it consisted of challenging myself with DIY-ness...some of which I'd never tried before. Ha! So I made/prepared: hummus, peanut butter balls, ice-cream cake, PB&J star-shaped sandwiches, carrot sticks, apple slices, and guacamole (a la Dash). Then we bought two kinds of chips...and a guest brought some fruit to share. I think that's about it for the food. The ice-cream cake was a bit of a hassle and not as easy as I'd hoped it to be though it was delicious (and relatively guilt-free!).
I followed this tutorial for basic construction and recommend using ice cream that freezes wicked hard, not the kind that stays soft for easy scooping. Also, I opted to make a gluten-free chocolate cake because a number of the guests/parents have an intolerance of sorts.

A hideous but delicious cake.

And there you have it.
A party that didn't cost a lot of money, was intimate in its size, and best of all FUN!
At least, the party girl thought so:

She ended up not dressing up as a princess...but as a Sailor Scout. :D

And that is Ella Rose's 4th Birthday Party wrap-up.
I felt so relieved and happy with its outcome, that the rest of the evening I was in this happy daze. The likes of which I haven't felt in a while. It's been an incredible week so far, and I will have to give you the run-down of that as well soon.
Until then, take care and Happy 4th Birthday Parties!!