It's A Crazy Life.....

....and that means that Momma is in major birthday party planning mode!!

I love, love, love planning parties.  In fact, if I could do any job other than the one I do now (teaching) I would be a party planner.  I love all aspects of the party planning, from figuring out a budget to planning a theme to creating items to go with the theme or shopping for them to making the food to the actual day of the party and pulling it all off! Kids birthday parties are my specialty, but I love to plan baby showers, wedding showers, anniversary parties, superbowl parties, bonfires.....pretty much any kind of party you can think of!

So Thing #1 is getting ready to celebrate her 7th birthday at the end of March and Thing #4 turns 2 this weekend (I can't believe my baby is so old already!).  As with last year, we decided to do a combined birthday and invite both family and friends.  Makes things a bit easier.

Well, Thing #1 decided at first that she wanted a Magic Treehouse party.  Have you seen these books?  They are totally fantastic and my kids are enthralled with them.  So anyhow, I was like, okay.  But then I was stumped...I mean, really what could we do?

So Thing #1 and I sat down and talked about it and decided to have a Hula Girl party instead.  Much better, to Momma's mind....I can think of a TON of fun things to do!

Right now we have invted 14 of Thing #1's friends from school and about the same number of family and friends.  I made Hawaiian shirt invites using flowered scrapbook paper. The party will last about 4 hours and include lunch.  The kids will play games, have lunch and dessert, do a craft and open gifts.

 We will be doing these games: hula hoop relay, the limbo, pin the flower on the hula girl and pass the coconut (hot potato, hawaiian style).  Thing #1 also wants to do musical chairs.  If we have enough time, we could throw a potato sack race in there (only named something Hula-Girl-ish, of course!)

I usually do a craft at the party, so we'll make tissue paper flowers (and I need to find something for the boys as well, not sure they'll like the flower project).

 I have sunglasses and beach balls for party favors, along with some dried tropical fruit.  I'll probably make the favor bags out of white paper lunch sacks, decorated with flowers and the kids' names cut out with my Cricut machine.  I'll make some of the decorations this way also.

Lunch will consist of a tray of lunchmeat for sandwhiches and various breads/wraps for those.  Probably ham, turkey and bologna.  I'll have some PB&J on hand as well for any picky eaters.  Then we'll have some chips and a salad.  I'll have fruit and cheese kabobs and a veggie tray.  Also I want to make a fruit rainbow, using muticolored fruits (strawberries, melons, pinapple, green grapes, blueberries, purple grapes and mini marshmallows for the clouds).  For drinks we'll have some tropical juices.

We'll have cake and sherbert for dessert.  I'm thinking each girl with have a separate cake.  I found a couple of amazing cakes at Coolest Birthday Cakes.  I'm thinking something along this line for Thing #1:


I could go on and on and on and on.  I have so many more ideas....and so little time!!!