Jesus' Birthday Party

One of our favorite Christmas traditions is having

a birthday party for Jesus.

We'd done a pageant a few years ago, before she can remember,

but it was that Rose angel in the middle that just had to act

out this story - and she wanted to be an angel - the one

above the manger, to be exact.

The outifts are made from clearance ($2!) fleece blankets

from Walmart and since there were no white blankets -

plastic tablecloths and gold garland from the Dollar Tree.

With a few belts and scarves thrown in, of course.

Everyone agreed that the perfect Mary was dark haired and lovely.

Ethan, however, was a little less enthusiastic about being

Joseph. I think he was afraid of all the "married" jokes

that his sister might inflict upon him.

The children all insisted that Bella be the baby, even thought she's

not "quite" a newborn - and the wrong gender for the role.

She really didn't want to lie in the manger - she was much more

interested in crawling around.

I thought the cake was pretty, but I'm never sure what to

do about the candle, and I never think about

that ahead of time. It is tradition, though, for

all of the children to blow it out together.

They also enjoyed a beaded wreath craft,

watching "Small One", a hot potato-like gift passing

game with a gift that was wrapped several times and

contained party favors, and Christmas charades.

Aunt Eloise's birthday

It started with asking if Aunt Eloise was doing anything for her birthday (a few days before Christmas) and then a request to bring her over and I'd have a cake to surprise her.

But I am me, and they are my children, so it kind of morphed into a bit of a birthday tea party.

Bella thoroughly enjoyed her first tea - I think it was tangerine zinger. :^)

A Rainbow Birthday Party

Anna Kate spied a rainbow cupcake cake at Walmart

a couple of months ago, and decided that she wanted

a rainbow party.

After watching Noah's Ark the kids came up to eat cupcakes

and tie-dye ice cream

" Pin the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow"

The boys high-tailed it to Ethan's bedroom while the

girls headed to the playroom to enjoy Anna Kate's new

I Want to be a Hula Dancer and Wear a Flower Lei! DVD

Painting watercolor rainbows - they then added foam

flower and animal stickers, several painted arks as well

After opening presents, they all got a pack of glow

necklaces in rainbow colors.

Some friends slept over and the Lucky Charms and

simple version virgin Tequila Sunrise (make your own

by adding some grenadine to your glass of orange juice)
completed the rainbow theme.

Anna Kate's Birthday Pics

the make-up kit she's "always wanted"

breakfast at Dunkin' Donuts


new outfits from Gramma - she sent four,

Anna chose one to wear to the park - and so did Rose!


at the park


finally at the end of the day, the new Barbie Mariposa
movie she'd been waiting for

Anna Kate's Ballet Party

ballerina cake - a 12 Dancing Princess barbie, no less

real leather ballet shoes from Gran

doing a ballet routine on an improvised barre
with the I'm a Ballerina Now DVD

"Happy Birthday, dear Anna Kate"


Beautiful Beaded Hair Ribbon Ballerina Craft

Ballerina Says

the up and coming ballerina

More Links and Ideas for a Ballet Party:

1. Free printable ballerina party invitations
2. We started with this ballet class hidden picture activity as the guests were arriving.
3. Raspberry floats - raspberry soda with raspberry sherbet
4. Blow up a bag of pink and a bag of lavendar balloons and scatter them across the floor
5. Dollar Store princess crowns and/or tutus as favors - we also had stuffed ballerina bears and unicorns that I got 50% off after Valentine's Day (and later saw for 75% off!)
6. I meant to scatter artificial rose petals down the table too, but I forgot
7. Play "pass the slipper" (hot potato) to Nutcracker music
8. You can find Angelina Ballerina coloring pages here.
9. More great ideas here and here.
   

Pilgrim's Progress Pics

Most of these pics are pretty lousy. I was the narrator, so even when I had a chance to snap a pic, I was never at a good angle.

The cake, with a MegaBloks Dragon "Apollyon" and "Christian"

The Slough of Despond

Fighting Apollyon

Crossing the "River"

The Celestial City, set with fine dishes and gold

There are gold helium balloons just above the picture line.

A Pilgrim's Progress Party

"God has set a Savior against sin, a heaven against a hell, light against darkness, good against evil, and the breadth and length and depth and height of grace that is in Himself for my good, against all the power and strength and subtlety of every enemy." - John Bunyan

This is the theme my soon-to-be seven year old has requested for his birthday party this year. So this Saturday we will take the journey at my mother -in-law's split level home. I'll be reading excerpts from A BEKA's simplified Pilgrim's Progress (one of Ethan's favorite books).

• The basement a.k.a. City of Destruction where they begin their journey with a weight in their backpack burdens
• The Slough of Despond where they will be stuck playing Twister
• Up the first half of the stairs to Mr. Legality and the ten commandments poster
• Through the Wicket (baby)Gate as "arrows" rain down from the living room above
• Up the rest of the hill (stairs) with a wall on either side named Salvation to the Cross where their burdens will fall off into the tomb (box with round hole) and they will receive their scrolls and armor
• Into the first bedroom where they will fight Apollyon (Brian in a dragon head)
• Then into a second bedroom with a cardboard Doubting Castle wall and the Giant Despair who will throw them in the bunk bed dungeon which they will eventually escape using their God's Promise keys (baby rattle keys?)
• And finally back down the hall to The River ( blue streamers hung in a celing to floor curtain) separating the living room from the Celestial City kitchen.
• The Celestial City will have a Pilgrim's Progress coconut cake with the coconut dyed to grass green and a large dragon on it and a small knight postioned on a hill, served with root beer floats. We're using a real tablecloth, white dishes, and pretty goblets too, instead of paper goods.

After food and gifts, they will enjoy Torchlighter's John Bunyan DVD and a Pilgrim's Progress board game ; several John Bunyan/ Pilgrim's Progress activity sheets put together with construction paper covers, will be their party favors.

I'm going to try to find a Megabloks knight to go with a new dragon of Ethan's for the cake decorations, if that doesn't work out, I'll have the grocery store make a sugar disk with a scan of Ethan's drawing of Apollyon and Christian.

What about the tableware? I was thinking maybe I should go all white and gold to go with the Celestial City concept. Or even use real white dishes and glasses. What do you think? I've got to get this all together right away today, so hit me with your feedback fast.

Oh, and have you ever heard this?

New Year's Eve Time Warp Party

Tonight we're hosting a time warp party for our shepherding group friends. We will celebrate midnight at 9PM.

Food:

ham and bean soup - I add a can of diced tomatoes and hot sauce
homemade bread (brought by a friend)
meatballs
little smokies "pig in a blanket"
vegetable tray with dip and hummus
Dr. Pepper (Brian's favorite), hot cocoa, and coffee, chocolate mint and gingerbread creamers
Candy dipped pretzel sticks, candy canes, and marshmallows
peanut butter cheesecake balls
brownies, both gluten free and regular


Activities:

a snowflake cutting contest
recitations/testimonies
maybe some Christmas charades or BOGGLE
a movie for the kids
countdown to midnight with noisemakers, glow bracelets, and, weather permitting, sparklers



What are your plans?

Jesus' Birthday Party

This year we had 11 kids (including mine) at our birthday party for Jesus. We had streamers, the "happy birthday" sign, and balloons. First we played charades by drawing an action form a hat to either act out a portion of the nativity story or a winter/Christmas pastime like ice skating or putting the star on the top of the tree. Then the children dove into a basket of scarves, oversize vest, crowns, and other accessories and acted out a part in a living nativity. After some hot dogs, mandarin oranges, cheese puffs, and not-so-hot cocoa with candy cane stirrers, we lit the candles on our cupcakes, sang "Happy Birthday", and blew out the candles. Then we read The Legend of the Candy Cane and made these simple pipe cleaner candy cane ornaments.

A Curious George Party

Here are some pictures of Rosie's official birthday party (as opposed to the "party" on her actual birthday). I'm going to link you to all of the great ideas that we used as well as a few that we didn't get to. This would make a great homeschooling party. Some of the printable party stuff online is actually designed to be a book, not birthday, party.

The decorations are just streamers, a birthday sign, and some inexpemsive Curious George boingy things from the party store. The Curious George is one of the bubble blowing variety - Anna Kate just happened to get it for her birthday. With a few balloons from the dollar store, he was really cute and allowed me to trade a complicated cake for some brightly dyed cupcakes. And I couldn't resist the $2 palm platter from Target. I read a neat idea online of attatching artificial palm branches to the ceiling fan blades, then using brown streamers coming down from the middle of the fan and attaching to the table to look like a palm tree -but I couldn't find brown streamers.

The food: aforementioned chocolate cupcakes with vanilla icing dyed bright with gel food coloring. Paste coloring would have made richer colors, but i had the gel already. Root beer floats took care of the drink and ice cream for less mess and less waste. M&ms, cheese popcron and frozen bananas that were then chocolate dipped and sprinkle doused.

Okay,crafts. We made these toilet paper roll Georges, Curious George masks, and also had a variety of coloring and activity pages (in the links at the bottom).

Rosie enjoyed her new toys, including props for her doggie routine and a camera.

Here's the rest of the links:

1. Lots of cake ideas
2. Coloring Pages
3. Party and game ideas - here too! And this one includes the streamer palm tree idea.
4. Complete set of printables for a Curious George reading party. I especially liked the mazes, dot to dot, and step by step instructions for drawing George. Here's the pdf for all of it.
5. The official movie site is great! Don't miss the downloads page which includes printable stickers and t-shirts. With craft store t's and transfer paper you could make t-shirts for about $3-4 a shirt.
6. PBS has a Curious George party page. My favorites there are bookmarks , a flip book and a the mask.

Ethan's Birthday Pics

I know these are reallllly late, but my computor quit acknowledging that I have media card readers, and even my teckie husband can't figure it out. So we're on to Plan B.

Ethan's cake on his actual birthday.

He served his cake by himself and would resheath the cake slicer in the above manner .

The requested "Transformers cake" showed up at his real party a week later when everyone was feeling better.

The Great Pumpkin

Today we had Great Pumpkin party with some friends.

We did some Halloween math pages, learned the names of bones and cut and pasted a skeleton craft. Cut out the cutest masks and trick or treat scenes from Wondertime. Read lots of books about jack o'lanterns, a pumpkin cat, and a tree that couldn't get it's colors right. Made paper plate spider crafts, watched It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, ate lunch and a Great Pumpkin cake(mine didn't look nearly that pretty), and played our new It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown board game!

And I think I still have enough stuff that we didn't get to,to take care of next year! Oh,well.

Please bear with me as I try to figure out how to make these posts look the right way. I'm also trying to figure out how to show the real pictures of all of these events that I'm dying to share with you.