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It’s already February! That means only a couple of months left until it is birthday season in our household. Each of my [biological] kids are 2 years and 11 months apart in age; that means we have birthdays back-to-back in April, May and June (how’s that for planning??)! I barely have time to get through one kid’s birthday and then I’m on to planning the next. To top it all off, I throw a big gala for my non-profit in June, a “Memory Masquerade”. Needless to say, April through June becomes party central around here!!
Some might say I should just combine birthday parties, and maybe they’re right; it would be a lot easier for me. But truth be told, I like giving my kids their own special day. Even though I grew up with a twin brother, my mom always made an effort to make our birthdays special and personal. Even though our parties were somewhat combined, she always had them segregated when we were little, with activities themed one way for my brother and another for me, and we each had our own cakes, made with love by Mom. I wanted to keep Mom’s tradition in giving my kids their own special day.
Not to toot my own horn, but I think I’ve come up with some fun party ideas over the years. I thought it would be fun, now that we are approaching birthday season, to share my ideas with you. Let’s just call it “Party Time Tuesday”. Each Tuesday, I will share a different party idea with you here on my blog!
Some years are more elaborate than others, but in the end I think I care more about the details that my kids do; I’ve learned that they are perfectly content with a simple celebration of pizza and cupcakes with their friends.
In fact, last year was the most low-key party of them all, and it was a huge hit! I was feeling a little overwhelmed with all of my gala planning and tried talking my youngest son, Ryder, into not having a party at all but rather, going to the movies or something with just a couple of friends. But all he wanted to do was play outside and have cupcakes with his neighborhood friends. I figured that would be easy enough; I could invite his neighborhood friends over for cupcakes. I really didn’t want a bunch of kids running around through the house, so I figured we could gather the neighborhood kids to ride their bikes outside (like they usually do everyday anyway) and then bring out cupcakes and sing happy birthday. He wanted a shark theme; he is a little obsessed with sharks, so I decided I would buy paper goods with sharks on it and call it a shark party.
Of course, as soon as I got to planning, I couldn’t leave it as simple as that. I didn’t go overboard, but I did come up with a few cute ideas to “dress it up” and make it feel like a legit party and in the end, I think it was totally legit. All of the kids had a blast and couldn’t stop talking about what a fun party it was. Since it was a neighborhood friend party, and we are family friends with our neighbors, we made it a family affair. We invited everyone over to come hang out in our driveway where we set up chairs and food tables in the garage. I hung a few blue streamers behind the tables in the garage and hung a Happy Birthday Banner above the garage door. We told the kids to bring over their bikes and scooters and they spent the next 2 hours riding around our little neighborhood. I also bought chalk and bubbles for them to have fun with. This party idea worked really for us because we live in a gated community that has very little traffic coming in. We did set up cones in front of the house to warn passerby-ers that kids were out playing (we do that every time they are out there playing) but we don’t get many cars driving by. I really love our neighborhood for this reason; it’s very kid-play friendly!
Look how happy this birthday boy was! Of course I had to get him a shark shirt for his birthday and we’d already been planning on getting him a new bike, so it was the perfect party for his gift!
I ended up doing a little bit more than cupcakes. I figured if we were making it a real party I should serve some food. I kept it simple with pizza, fruit and chips. I did make these cute jello shark cups. They were so easy to make! I made a box of red jello, poured them into clear cups, put them in the fridge for about an hour (until the jello was starting to set and become thick), and then added the shark gummies into the thickening jello. The kids loved these (what kids don’t love jello??)
Instead of a cake, I did cupcakes. I saw an idea online that I loved and I did my own version of it. I ordered fin toppers online and then I hollowed out a small part of the cupcake and added red filling inside. It was supposed to create the look of a shark attack, with blood oozing out when bit into. The kids were very amused by that. I tried to make the blue icing look like waves, with specks of coarse sea salt to give it a foam look.
I used a cupcake corer (linked at the end of this post) to hollow out the middles, and then added the filling and iced on top of it. Super easy! I will use this idea again for sure!
I didn’t go all out on party favors, but I made each kid a “chum” candy kabob to take home. I made a simple tag on word document and tied it around the kabob.
This was the most laid-back, easy party ever and my son loved it. I could do parties every year if they are always this easy! But I don’t want to keep reusing the same ideas, so I’ll have to put my thinking cap on and come up with some other low-key party ideas for this year.
Here’s where you can find supplies for your own shark party (the internet makes shopping so easy!):
And for the cupcakes and jello cups:
If you have a shark-obsessed child like I do, I highly recommend this book!! Ryder used his own money to buy this last year after Christmas. It’s a 500 page encyclopedia about every shark you can think of, with amazing pictures and facts about each one! He loves his shark book.
Here’s where I got the cupcake corer:
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