Well we did it! The weather man came through :) A great amount of our friends and family were able to join us and boy does it pay to have a mom who is a caterer! I am a procrastinator as it is so really the only difference with this party is I invited everyone last minute and I didn't make the invitations myself. If I had planned ahead I also would not have gone to Costco on a Friday! Yikes! And we had bought spots in a pickle ball tournament at an auction and it ended up that it was Friday night, so my mom and dad agreed to come to our house to babysit and help me get ready! Mom I love you SO much! I couldn't have gotten this done without you! While I was gone she made the potato salad, pickled cucumbers got the creature power suits figured out all while watching my 4 children!
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My mom had this cake made by Jamie at her kitchen. It was SO AMAZING! It became the centerpiece of our party! The rhino and the tree she sculpted out of rice krispy treats. The stones along the bottom are marshmallows. Cam was so pumped when he saw this. Plus Gayle made adorable cupcakes that had oreo "dirt" on them and gummy bugs! |
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I bought animal print paper at the craft store and just cut out the letters to make this sign. I literally was gluing it as people arrived. But it helped pull everything together. |
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| Cam was insistent that he and his friends have creature power suits. I'll show you below how we did them below. |
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| Cam was in awe :) |
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| Awesome bounce house! No one could believe how big it ended up being and the company was so nice. If you are in the Snohomish County area, bouncyhouses.com is the place to go. They had a ton to choose from, the owner was available for questions and can we just say, for reserving this Wednesday and to have the reservation, delivery and clean up go so smoothly was great. |
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| We cut felt in a black strip about 12 inches wide. Folded the piece in half. Cut a v-shaped whole for their heads. Cut out the colored felt for the paw and details. Just glued everything on! My mom did the majority of them Friday, but we underestimated the amount of kids that would want them. So we were throwing more together during the party. Even Keegan at 9 thought they were pretty cool :) |
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| Having a blast! Maybe too much cake :) |
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We ended the party with a showing of Wild Kratts on our backyard screen. It's a piece of plywood, my husband Joe painted white. The kids love snuggling up out there and watching a show. These kids were so pooped by this time, that they were almost falling asleep. |
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Our version of "Creature Pods" Cam was thrilled with them. He likes to pretend it is his "handheld device" NEW INFO: For the creature pods I used these FOAMIES markers, bookmarks and animals I got at the local craft store. The markers took much longer to dry then I anticipated. They were more like paint then markers. So do them ahead of time. If you play games that earn them badges you can make them sticky (stickers or labels maybe?) and stick them on the back. You could even punch holes in them and hang them from strings like necklaces.   |
Here are some extra photos of the creature power suits that I hope helps!
Here are 2 blogs the first one Kara's Creative Place is where I got some of my ideas. She had great game ideas.
The 2nd one I just found and she has great ideas but I warn, she is MUCH craftier then I and is more capable at sewing then I am. So it is awesome but WAY beyond my skill set, hopefully not yours. It's still great ideas though :)
