Quick Lil' Buggers

My two big boys had a friend sleep over this past weekend. This particular friend has been to every one of their birthday parties I think since my now 7 year old was three. He knows I like parties, he knows my boys like parties, and just about every time he has slept over he's asked to play some sort of game. This time he didn't asked to play a game though. He asked to have a party.

It was close to bedtime so I went over the Basic Games with them and told them to think of some ideas and that after breakfast the next morning we would sit down and plan, make the games, and then have the "party". But before the griddle was even warm for pancakes, our guest had decided on a theme (bugs) and already made a game. How about that?

*If you're planning a party remember to involve your child in the planning. You will be amazed at what they can come up with. Discuss the Basic Games with them and see what they think of. I plan to do a nice long post about bug parties in the future but for now here is a short list of the 4 games we played...all thought up by the three boys.*

Bug Hunt -

We called the game that our guest came up with Bug Hunt. He buried my youngest son's entire plastic bug collection in a box of gravel/colored macaroni.

(In case you're curious, I have a box of gravel mixed with colored macaroni because my little one decided to pour our colored macaroni for crafts into the gravel his daddy was drying off after rinsing for the fish tank. I have since found it useful so I decided to keep it.)

He decided that all bugs except for the flies were worth 5 points, the flies worth 10, and the "really big huge" fly was worth 20.

They were all given 30 seconds to find as many bugs as they could.




Musical Spiders - We made Black Widow spiders using paper plates. I was in charge of drawing red hourglass shapes on each paper plate and then coloring around it black. My middles son drew heads for the spiders and then I cut them out and glued them on. Then I cut paper strips for legs. The legs were glued on by our guest.

We put the spiders on the floor and played Musical Spiders just like Musical Chairs.




Spider Walk - For this game we just added numbers onto the hourglass shape of each spider. This was played like a cake walk. They walked from spider to spider until the music was turned off. Then I drew a number and whoever was on that number won a prize. Both of the spider games were thought of by my middle son. "We can do like we did (The Little Mermaid) shell games but with spiders instead of shells!"


Pin the Tail on the Scorpion. - I did make this one entirely by myself but it was the idea of our guest. He even dug a toy scorpion out of the bug hunt game for me to look at. I just drew the scorpion, traced the end of his tail and cut one out for each boy.



Throw the Bee in the Hive - Our guest suggested we "throw some bugs in some holes". My oldest son immediately yelled out "Bees! Throw bees in a hive!" So that's what we did. Our guest drew a bee hive. I glued it to the front of a box and they took turns throwing two bees into the hive. We had three spots to throw from worth 5, 10, and 20 points.




This whole little party was planned, made, and played out in the span of maybe three hours so we had no food and therefore no decorated place settings. We did have prizes though. Inspired by my son's teacher last year I started a treasure chest with my boys last year. I highly reccommend it. Not only is it a great reward system, it is wonderful to have on hand for impromptu parties. All my prizes were purchased from a thrift store for 10 cents each.



Since this post is all about the boys' amazing party planning skills I decided to ask my oldest how to end this post...

"Remember to BEE good". ("and capitalize the bee!")

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The Little Mermaid Theme

[Sidenotes]

Up first in movie themes is The Little Mermaid.



Place Settings

Cups- Buy a sea blue or green cups. Draw or print out Flounders for them. Cut them out and gluestick them on. Add little bubble detail with a white paint or glitter pen. You can also cut out stars or shells, cut slits in them, and attatch onto straws.



Plates- You can glue to the underside of each plate a fin on the top, tailfin on one side, and fish lips on the otherside.



Silverware - Attatching paper tags that say dinglehopper onto your forks is a must!

Napkins- Wrap your dinglehoppers and/or spoons in napkins and slip into shell and starfish napkin rings. For more detailed info on making your own napkin rings click here.



For Little Mermaid themed products click the photo below



Centerpiece

A purchased treasure chest or just a cardboard box painted like one filled with goody bags, shells, beads, and jewels would make a great centerpiece.

Another idea is to make Ursula. I thought a photo tutorial would help with this one so I made a quick example. It doesn't look the best but it should give you a good idea.


Put an vase or other tall container in the middle of the table.


Drape a black trash bag (or black fabric) over it.


Then cut legs from the part of the bag that hangs down onto the table. Twist them and tie a small knot at the end to help them hold shape.


Then draw or print out a large picture of the top portion of Ursula.


Cut it out and tape to the top of the vase pushing a bit of it down into the vase opening. If you don't have too many party guests you could even make enough legs so that you could put a prize at the end of each one.



Food

Starfish and Fish sandwiches - Cut bread with shaped cookie cutters before adding sandwich fillings.

Ursula and Seaweed - Cut midway up each hot dog 8 times. When you boil them the cut part will curl up making nice Ursula legs. You can serve atop a bed of green tinted macaroni and cheese aka seaweed.


One of my boys is allergic to milk so we also had rice seaweed

Gadgets and Gizmos aplenty Popcorn - There is a song in The Little Mermaid with the line "I've got gadgets and gizmos aplenty..." I made popcorn and added in pretzels, dried cranberries, sprinkles, and peanuts. You could have a popcorn bar to let each child add thier choice of extras. Label each bowl of addins with "Gadgets", "Gizmos", "Thingamabobs" etc.

Sea Water - This was just Crystal Light lemonade with blue food coloring added in.


Games

These games were all made based on Basic Games. To read more on Basic Games click here.

Find the Fish - I cut several fish from printer paper and added squiggly lines of different colors on them. Then I drew one of each color of fish on a piece of paper and assigned point values. I made sure to assign lower point values to the colors that I had made the most of. I also had one fish that was a prize fish. All of the fish were hidden while the movie was being watched. After they found all the fish we added up the points. One prize was given for the most points and another for the the prize fish. Instead of just a colored prize fish you could make one Flounder fish to find.



Pearl Match - I folded printer paper in half and cut a rough circular shape starting at the folded edges to make oysters. I then drew decorative lines on the outside of them as well as a pink line inside to represent the clam. Then I made two of each color of pearls inside them. I lined these all up around the dining room table and the boys took turns trying to find matches. Whoever ended up with the most matches was the winner.



Musical Shells - I cut out one shell for each child. I then added decorative lines with a marker. We played this two ways. The first time just like musical chairs. For the second time I drew shapes onto the back of each shell (you could use numbers for older children). When the music stopped I called out a shape and whoever was standing on that shape won a prize.




Pin the Fin on the Mermaid - Just like Pin the tail on the donkey but with Ariel and
tailfins.




Other games could include -

Father May I or King Neptune May I played like Mother May I

Sebastian Says played like Simon Says

Scuttle's Scavenger Hunt - Scuttle is the bird that tells Ariel what all the human treasures that she finds are called. Hide various objects including dinglehoppers (forks).

Scuttle's Little Helper - What if Scuttle was too busy to tell Ariel what all her treasures were? Pass out various random objects and have a contest to see who can come up with the most outlandish name and purpose for each object.

Seashell Shh - Draw shells like that which Ursula captures Ariel's voice in. Either glue them onto clothespins or poke a hole and attatch them to necklaces. Pass one out to each guest as they arrive. Have a list of words that are not allowed to be said (mermaid, party, present, any word that will likely get used a lot). Whenever someone catches someone saying one of the words the person that said it must hand over thier shell. Whichever child ends up with the most shells at the end of the party wins a prize. This would be best for older children or would also be a great way to get the grownups involved.

Pick a Duck with Mermaid rubber duckies which can be found here


Cake - A great cake for this theme would be the doll in the dome cake (for more info on that click here) or for lots of mermaid cake ideas click here.

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Hey, where'd I go?

It has been a bit over a month since my last post. This is for various reasons including my first "for hire" birthday cake (see pic below), computer problems, deep cleaning, a total revamp of my birthday closet (more on that in the future!), and lots of rearranging but mostly just because I have been busy enjoying having my big boys home for the summer.


Bakugan Cake - If you don't know, Bakugans are a bit like little round transformers. There are cards that come with them. There are also people on the show. That concludes everything I know about Bakugans :) Now about the cake - the boy, Bakugans, and Bakugan cards are all made out of marshmallow fondant. If you haven't made your own fondant before I strongly reccommend that you give it a try. I had a little trouble at first but in the end it is so worth it. It ends up being cheaper and tastes SO much better. The trick I found was to add the powdered sugar a wee bit at a time. I tried different recipes and never ended up adding as much as any of them said. I did have to use some toothpick support which I've never had to do with the firmer store bought kind but I thought it was worth a couple of toothpicks for the better taste. Also, see those cards? Edible markers are my new favorite thing!

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