P is for Party

We had an M is for Man on the Moon party this year based on Zack's interest in astronauts' journey to the moon and back.

Zack and I made the invitations together (ok, I mostly made them, but he "helped"). They were black with silver stamped text and decorations. I am loving stamping, which my sister got me started on. This was my excuse to get some metallic ink, which I'm excited about. We also glued on (yes, individually) silver stars, small confetti sized ones. Zack would have liked to put about 50 on each side of each card. I only had the patience for three on each invitation.

Our table theme was "S is for Space" so all the food started with S. We had sugar snap peas and squash with spinach dip. There were strawberries and salted soynuts. We had salsa and Santitas tortilla chips. Finally, there were star-shaped sandwiches - peanut butter on white for the kids and caprese on wheat and cheese on pumpernickel for the adults. Too bad I gave in and served crackers with the spinach dip... they were those new "scrackers", yeah, that's it... This picture is before I distributed the Starburst around the table and sprinkled the silver star confetti around. The plates, napkins and forks were silver. I had a great time thinking of foods that started with S to serve, but if you try it be forewarned that it gets in your head. I started speaking solely in sibilant sounds, the sneaky s's stealing into my speech.

I'll point out that when I brought the remainder of the veggies and dip to a church function, I did have a lady there a bit puzzled about this having been food for a kids' party (I didn't even tell her I had to talk myself out of the sushi). It hadn't occurred to me that veggies weren't normal foods to feed kids. But, there were parents at the party, so it was for adults too. I'm glad all that real nutrition wasn't wasted on children. [Abort, abort usual soapbox rant! Return to party report!]

The cake was in the shape of a space shuttle and was seven-up flavor - yum. This was my favorite flavor growing up and it was fun that Zack chose it as well.
For our activity we had a journey to the moon! First we made helmets out of white paper bags. The paper bags were prepared before the party (by Glenn, yay for Glenn) by cutting off the handles, cutting slots for the shoulders and a circle out for the face, then putting a transparency in for a face shield. Since we started with 8x10 plain gift bags (because that was what I could find in a value pack), they were just barely big enough for the kids with the transparency squishing their noses. They didn't seem to mind. We used a black pipe cleaner to form a headset microphone for each helmet. Then the kids got to decorate their helmets with markers, crayons, metallic stars, puffy foam stars and glow-in-the-dark stars. Our friend Lily was the cutest, requesting to "go glow my stars". We stepped in the powder room to see the glow - fun!Then we headed out to the yard where we had a cardboard space shuttle and blasted off to the moon! Uncle Glenn had helped with the artwork, hence the professional appearance. It was a bit of a puzzle to figure out how to make it. James' parents tracked down a refrigerator box for us, so we had a large, sturdy piece of cardboard to begin with. We sketched out a plan, then the shape out of the cardboard, leaving the bottom of it attached to the next panel of the box. That way, we would be able to clamp the panel to the table with big garden clamps and stand the shuttle side up with extra large binder clamps. We used spray paint to paint the shuttle half white, then Glen finalized the design with sharpie over the paint. It ended up to be a sophisticated coloring-book level of detail, and really cool looking. He even did the swoopy little NASA symbol!
The kids climbed up onto the picnic table and we shouted a countdown and blastoff. Then they each picked up a "moonrock" from the yard. The moonrocks were remarkably egg shaped and filled with Pop Rocks - who knew! They were nice moonrocky colors thanks to some acrylic craft paint.
The spaceship became even more entertainment when we laid it flat and let the kids work on coloring and decorating it too.

After cake and all the final birthday festivities, we sent each guest home with a jumbo crayon made in the shape of their first initial. Zack and I made them by melting down his old crayons, though we ran out of the broken ones and used regular crayons too. We poured the melted colors into candy molds and let them set. The finished crayons went into clear bags marked "Z is for Zack" and so on.

We really enjoyed the party and Zack had a great time. We couldn't bring ourselves to throw the space shuttle away, so we still have a gigantic cardboard in the shape of a shuttle in the garage. I guess that could come in handy someday?? As much fun as it was, since it came on the heels of elk camp I was very glad to have it done so I could move on to the next thing!