All summer Geddy has told me he wants another Pokemon party (age 6 he had one). So I have been planning for that - thankfully not spending anything until the week of. Well the Monday before his party rolls around and we are getting ready to print and deliver invitations and he tells me he has decided he would rather have a Cat party. I gladly went with it as I could think of more games and favors that would cost a lot less. I love how the party favor bags turned out. They were much cheaper, but much more time intensive - I had little to no sleep three nights in a row getting everything put together. But it was fun and he had a great party.
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| First, I made each person a "cat toy" out of felt. They didn't take too long to make and were a lot of fun. I made a total of 13. One girl ended up not coming so Rocky got her mouse and loves it. |
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| I couldn't find any cute gift bags that I wanted to use, so I decided to make my own. I found this cute roll of wrapping paper at the Dollar Tree. Then I took a small paper lunch bag and opened it up to use as a model. This project took a lot longer than I had thought it would, but again, it was fun. They are far from perfect, but they did the job and look good from a distance. I am sure it would have gone quicker if I hadn't been doing it at 2am. |
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| Inside was the stuffed mouse, a plastic cat figure, some Swedish fish and a couple other little candies. Also an animal print bracelet and a yo-yo, and some foam stickers as confetti. I made stickers out of pawprints from the wrapping paper to hold the bag shut. I then printed "cat tags" out to write each child's name on. I attached that on a string along with a jingle bell under the sticker to hold the bag closed. I had also used craft scissors - the decorative blade kind - to trim the tops of each bag to make them pretty and even them up a bit. |
Okay, so I am a little unnaturally proud of these party favor bags. They were time consuming, but I love the final product. Geddy was quite proud to hand them to his friends as they left. He was quite stunned by my sewing all the little mice and making paper bags instead of buying them. He said he didn't know I was so creative. Guess that just shows how little I use my creative talents. Maybe I better make a change there.
Now on to the actual party. We invited 11 plus Geddy for an even dozen. One little brother wanted to come so we said yes because I was pretty sure one of the little girls we invited wouldn't come. I was right, and things worked out splendidly.
The invitations had a picture of Rocky on one side and the important information on the other side. I found an adorable free font online called Cat Alphabet that I used. So it was pretty obvious this was going to be a cat party.
The first game we played while waiting for everyone to show up was Cat
Tail Tag. I just gave everyone a long strip of yellow crepe paper to
tuck in their waistband. They then had to run around trying to grab
other peoples tails. That's pretty much it. It was kind of a flop
because it was so hot they didn't want to run around much. But they loved having the tails.
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| This is not a picture of the tag game, but you can see one of the tails.... |
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| The next game we did was super simple but fun. I printed out twenty pictures of famous cats and had all their names in a bag. The kids got to draw names and stick it on the correct cat. The other kids meowed if it was right, hissed if they got it wrong. It was so easy I don't think there was much hissing. |
The next game was a ball of yarn that I had wrapped 12 pieces of candy in. Starting with Geddy they each had to unroll the ball as fast as they could until they could get a candy out then they passed it to the next kid and so on. It was supposed to be more like hot potato and with music but I didn't feel like it. It got a little boring for some kids but they ended up in a tangled mess, which is kind of the point and they had fun. I wanted to just wrap twelve individual balls with one candy in the middle and have them all do it at once, which I probably should have just done. But for some reason Geddy didn't really like that idea.
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| Thanks Scott for catching me in the middle of talking. Very attractive, let's just focus on Geddy unwinding the yarn. |
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| I had to help out a few times to speed things up. Again I think I look kind of scary, but I literally had only slept two hours that night and a crazy morning trying to get everything ready. |
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| Geddy enjoyed being covered in yarn during the game, until it started to itch. |
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| I think this picture was waiting for me to bring out cake and ice cream. Somehow we didn't end up with a picture of that. |
I had made little Lava Fudge Cakes - which weren't my best because I had hurried them that morning. So the kids just thought they were brownie cupcakes. They mostly gobbled them up. And those cute little cups of vanilla ice cream with the wooden spoons. And I think we went through two full pitchers of Kool-Aid, it was so hot. I think Scott tried to video the singing of Happy Birthday, but it never works out. The breeze always blows the candle out, Geddy blows it out before the song is over, etc.......But it did eventually happen. We just had one little "8" candle on his Lava cake.
Now for presents:
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| Star Wars school set from the Harris kids. |
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| A play FBI spy kit from the Harris kids. |
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| Some tissue paper from the Harris kids....Geddy just being silly saying it was the best gift ever. |
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| Spider-Man Lego set from Jade. |
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| Beyblade spintop from Alex. |
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| A Superman Lego set from Jason. |
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| Pokemon cards from Matthew. |
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| A Nerf Zombie Strike Crossbow from Kendel. I think this was his favorite. |
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| Keaton gave him a Zombie sticky target to go along with his sister's crossbow. This has been played with for the better part of the last couple of days in our living room. By all members of the family, not just Geddy. |
His friend Ali gave him two packs of M&Ms and a cool card with $5.
And as the grand finale I gave them each a can of silly string - the most expensive part of the whole event. Scott and I got them all ready and then did a countdown and had them blast each other (and us). There were some tears, but for the most part everyone really liked this part and were quite sad that the cans ran out very quickly. Overall a very successful party that I think was enjoyed by all. Geddy told me it was better than he thought it would be and he loved it.
It was fun trying to get them all to stand still for a group picture. A great group of kids. They then played more Cat Tail Tag until the parents picked them up.
Now it will be interesting to see what he picks next year. Though I have already told him he can't change the week of again.
