Preparing for the Birthday Party

This year’s theme for A.’s birthday party is butterflies. I use the term theme loosely. We are not the types to go overboard. Most of the money we put into a birthday party is for food.

I do not buy goodie bags for the little cousins.

I do not plan games.

I am the ultimate Boring Mom.

However, we have parties, and everyone seems to enjoy them fine.

When we have a situation like this week, where the party was a bit over a week after the actual birthday, I try to keep that birthday feel going a bit. Especially when the children are three and under. It is hard for them to understand the whole birthday thing in the first place.

So here are some of the preparations we’ve undergone this week:

Supplies shopping: No surprise here, I’m sure, but I wish I had {1} chosen a theme earlier so that I could watch for sales and {2} watched sales on hot dogs and other food items as well. Thankfully, the hot dogs {excepting the gluten-free, etc. variety} were on sale already, even if buns and ice cream were not. I don’t, by the way, buy all the fancy plates with matching napkins and everything. We do plain, picking a couple colors that go well together. But we do go all out for the dessert plates. Aren’t they so pretty?

Preparing food: Not everything needs to be last minute. We soaked beans for chili last night, and they will cook all day today so that we only need to reheat it on Saturday for lunch. Last night, I made the cookie base for the cake {which is really a glorified GFCF cookie, and I’ll share details later}. I also made candy butterflies to go on top as a decoration. The cake/cookie will be decorated first thing Saturday morning, but I’ll premake the glaze, icing, etc. so that it’s a quick job. Normally, I decorate a cake the night before, but this cake is topped with fruit, and I’m afraid some of it will brown overnight.

Preparing decorations: All week, the kids have been working on coloring butterflies. I simply googled “free butterfly coloring pages” and ended up with a wealth of butterflies! I printed out eight or nine on cardstock, and the kids have been using our spring colors marker collection to make them look nice. E., being our resident Big Kid, got to cut them out. On Saturday morning, when we decorate the island in the kitchen for the party {our tradition}, we will tape those butterflies to a cheap spring-green plastic tablecloth and they will be beautiful!

Cleaning up: The unexpected cleanup for this party was the back patio, which was completely and utterly trashed by a storm we had last weekend. I’ve been putting off cleaning it until today out of fear that the weather {or children} might mess it up again! The kids and I are ready to tackle the project together during Q.’s morning nap!

So…that’s it for the boring report. I will try to do a better one when I post, with photos, all the details of a birthday party safe for kids on special diets.