Brave Birthday Party Part 1

I love theme parties. I can even go a bit overboard with theme parties like the time I did a Harry Potter birthday party for my cousin that filled an entire gym. (I'll definitely need to do a post about that one soon) but a few weeks ago I did a birthday party for both my kids. They are 2 years and 2 days apart. In fact, it was on Krissy's 2nd birthday that I went into labor with Eli. They did not want to share the day however so he took his merry ole time coming. That was not fun that cold February, especially since I do homebirths and was trying every trick to get the silly boy to come out and contractions out in the snow are not fun.

But I digress (as usual) so on to the party business! We were going to have a party for Krissy, since she is our social butterfly, complete with friends and stuff and then do a small family activity like going to the dinosaur museum type of place for Eli's birthday since he doesn't do well with crowds. However, when Eli found out it was going to be a Brave themed party, he wanted in on the fun. A lot of our friends that have kids have a daughter and a son around the same age as our kids so it actually wasn't that bad of an idea to invite the sibling pairs and just do a combined birthday party. Now our daughter just started kindergarten and she's going to this great charter school called Walden which we really love but since it's a charter school, some of the students come from a great distance - we're talking 39 miles, almost an hour drive! (that's how great of a school it is in my opinion) but due to this, I was rather unsure if some of her school friends would actually be able to make it to our house for the party with the distance factor.

So me being me, I decided to invite the school friends and some other friends we know that live farther away and even more friends that live closer. It wasn't until later that it truly sunk in that if all the children came to the party, including my two that would put oh...17 KIDS IN MY HOUSE!! Still though, I was feeling bad about not inviting other kids we know - I always hate to leave someone out - and I was even afraid to mention it on facebook for fear that someone would assume that meant they could come too and that would give us more kids, or that someones kids would want to come because I do put on a really good party if I do say so myself. But the kids we invited were the ones my kids picked out and I've done parties with almost as many kids before.

I went to use a printable fill in the blank invitation but those things never have enough space to put in everything. So I did my usual and designed one and even printed designs and names on the envelopes.   Then I set to work to figure out what activities to do and decorations to make and all that fun stuff. When the movie came out last year I had gathered a lot of pictures and information because I wanted to make a dress like the queens and we all dressed up to go to the movie. (we're a crazy family like that) Here's a picture from when we went to the movie:

Since it's been a crazy winter we had tons of snow still so I knew we would be inside which put some restrictions on what we could do - for one I knew we couldn't do normal sized bows and arrows and for two I knew we needed to have stuff to do or that many kids in a small place would  be asking for trouble. Thanks to Pinterest, and Google and my own cleverness I was able to come up with a lot of fun things and I think the party went off really well!

A few days before the party I was crazy busy trying to get everything together and then it snowed A TON and I got the crazy idea to shovel our driveway (which was pretty silly since our front yard/driveway faces south and melted a bunch the next day) but we're on a pretty busy street so I didn't want to fuss with a mountain of snow when I tried to pull out. This was a really hard and exhausting task so I was really burning out but the kids wanted to play and I decided I was going to build a snowman with them to relax a bit and not hate the snow.  Since my brain was on Brave with preparations for the party I figured I didn't want to do a boring traditional snoman so instead I did this:

Merida Snowlady!!

You can see the Merida picture I printed off for reference down in the corner

back view - she was kind of a mix between 2D and 3D

Ok, so that's a whole tone of pictures of the Merida snowlady of awesomeness but I can't help it, I'm pretty proud of it. :D The kids helped me make a big mound (it wasn't the best snowman snow so we had to pack it pretty good to get it to stick) and then I sculpted her with a butter knife (don't I rock!?) and I used a spray bottle with some water and food coloring to add the color. Her bow and arrow are some sticks we had in the backyard and her eyes are pieces of pine cone. She turned out better than I thought she would. Sadly it warmed up the next day so she didn't make it to the party but I had a lot of fun making her anyway. The kids had fun whacking the pile that was left because the color had seeped into the middle so it was white on the outside but as they hit it apart with sticks they found the color inside.

I love this action shot showing the snow flying up as Eli hit it

Thankfully due to our hobbies and interest we had a lot of Scottish/Celtic stuff already on hand so in a lot of ways putting the party together wasn't too hard. Part 2 will cover the party in all its glory with amazing decorations, theme food and fun activities - and of course more pictures!