Gearing Up

I have an awkward situation. My daughter's birthday is in August. The beginning of August. So if she wants to have a friend party and invite school friends, I either have to keep track of them over the summer ( yeah, right! I can barely keep track of my own kids over the summer,) or move her party. My two choices for moving the party are either 2 months before her birthday right at the end of the school year, or a few weeks after but during all the beginning of the school year craziness. So I chose now. I have spent about 2 weeks thinking about everything I need to do, and probably two full days actually doing it. But I think I am about done!


We are doing a big party for her next year (carnival themed) so this year is low key. With her approval, we decided on painting birdhouses.

These are from Oriental Trading and came in a 12 pack. So I told her she could invite 11 friends.

We thought about games. My kids love Bingo if we use candy as the markers. Thanks to Martha, I found a Bingo game I could just print out. I did have to make my own calling cards but easy peasy!
Then, I needed to fill up the goody bags. I found this awesome tutorial for fabric pinwheels. I made the girl ones into clips and glued safety pins on the boys ones.

Then, crazy me had to make the goody bags. I found some $2 fabric that kind of resembles those canvas drop cloths and was able to make 12 bags. The boy was my go-to-kid and painted all the birdhouses using a stencil we made.

Add birdseed, bubbles, a soaker ball, some plastic pinwheels, and a monster bookmark. Clip on the fabric pinwheel and we are ready to go.

We were going to put about 150 balloons on the trampoline and let the kids go at it, but wouldn't you know it's supposed to rain. So I need to come up with a backup plan.