Mommy’s Plate

Do you have patience?  And a sense of humor? 

Well, ya better or your not going to get through it!

I like to think that I have a bit of creative streak.  Of course, that can get me into trouble.  I vowed that I would never go through the intense preparations as I did with Mina’s Princess Party last year where I was up until 3 in the morning making all kinds of princess themed goodies.  Nope, this year, I wanted to do it at Build-a-Bear, do something easy like that. 

Mina and her Papa had other ideas.  I combined their ideas and ended up with another house party -this time it’d be a costume party with a bouncehouse (Mina wanted to do it at Pump it Up although she later fessed up that it was only because she saw it on a commercial on TV).  Her father just wanted it at the house.

I ordered my invitations through VistaPrint. They always spam you with free offers and those are what I use when I order my invites so that I’m only paying for shipping and I like to get the pre-addressed envelopes.  It usually costs me a dollar or less per invitation when all is said and done.  I thought of a very cute rhyme and used one of their designs:

Next, I had to order our costumes.  We ordered Mina’s costume awhile ago just so she could have it for fun.  I ended up basing the rest of the family’s costume on hers.  I thought Ogre and Benji would make a cute Batman and Robin, but then I needed a costume.  I looked and looked and looked.  All the female superhero costume were a little too sexy for party Rated G.  I ended up getting the Batgirl costume as it was the most modest and had some good coverage.  Plus, it matched Benji and Ogre.

In the past, I’ve put together treat bags, but have gone away from that since Benji’s birthday party.  For his party, I ordered these great stuffed monkeys that were tagged with a personal greeting.  Unfortunately, I did not keep the website for that so I had to go back to the creative drawing board.  On the mommy forum that I participate in, there is one Mama who does Bento Box lunches for her kids and blogs about it.  It’s a great blog, check it out here.  Anyway, I wanted to do these for the kids and they could take their “Bento Box” with them.    Here’s what I came up with:

These cost ONE DOLLAR at Michael’s. 

Then I bought some foam stickers that the kids could decorate the boxes with.  I figured that they probably wouldn’t use them as Bento Boxes once they got home.  They’d probably use them as pencil boxes (their original intent), so in their super cheap treat bag (I used brown bags), I threw in a Halloween pencil also.

Mina’s box:

After they decorated their pencil box/bento box, I sent them upstairs to play some games with the “Mommy’s Helper” I hired for the party -she was the daughter of one of my neighbors.  I put together their lunch in the Bento Box using cupcake holders and juice boxes.  To make my life easier, I ordered chicken nuggets from Chick-Fil-A and then prepackaged everything else except the fruit.  I did have to slice up the grapes so they wouldn’t be choking hazards.

After they played the shoe game (where you hide one of their shoes and they have to find it -I also put a rubber ducky in each shoe for them to find), hot potato with a pumpkin instead of a potato and pin the tail on the cat, they came down to eat their dinner and decorate mini-pumpkins (you get these for 50 cents each or cheaper!) with more foam stickers also from Michael’s that had eyes, mouths and noses.  Here are Mina and Benji’s pumpkins:

Guess which one Benji made

And what did they do when they weren’t gaming, crafting, or eating?  Bounced of course!  I rented this bounce house from Unique Party Rentals for $105.  We ordered it for one afternoon and ended up having it for 3 days because they forgot to pick it up!

Cautions:

One of the little boys came dressed as dracula.  When he got in the bouncehouse, he immediately cleared it out.  He really, really frightened one little girl who doesn’t go to school with him and Mina.  His mom had to wash the make-up off his face.  I felt bad for the little guy!

When they were supposed to be playing the games upstairs, it apparently deteriorated to the girls going off into Mina’s room and the boys were throwing the inflated pumpkin into the ceiling fan and beating each other up.  Ogre and one of the boy’s moms had to settle that right down. Luckily, they were getting hungry and came downstairs.

I thought it was great that we got to have the bouncehouse for a few days…until Ogre mentioned the fact that our meter was probably spinning out of control from the electricity it would take to keep that thing inflated.  Sheesh.

Sleeping in the bouncehouse sucks.  I promised Mina last month that we would have a “camp-in.”  The weekend we were going to do that was the Pukes and Dukes weekend so I told her we’d do it her birthday weekend (the night of the party).  Well, Ogre brought up the grand idea to sleep outside in the bouncehouse -all of us…including Benji.  So we did.  It was ridiculously uncomfortable and it was supercold.  I could not wait for Mina to wake up and say, “It’s cold.” so we could go inside.  I will say though that Ogre thought it was very comfortable and loved the fact that the circulating air beneath us made it so that it was impossible to create any sort of body heat.  He did not have a Benji to watch out for (he woke me up at least three times) and I was freezing from the circulating air and avoidable drafts made by the humps.  The humps also made it so I could not get comfortable.  My neck was so stiff the next morning.  I was in some serious pain!!  I won’t be doing that ever again!