The Sixth Birthday Party

This year we filled a tall order.  A real old fashioned home birthday party with twelve girls and many activities.  Billed as a Top Chef Dessert Party (Penelope's choice), one may wonder about the wisdom of the combo of children and a lot of sugar.  But everyone had a great time and we are still breathing a sigh of relief that it's over.  What might you ask do you do at a kid's dessert party?  Well, let me share with you.

1.  BLIND TASTE TESTING

Each child was blindfolded and asked to taste or smell a number of ingredients from curry to gummy bears.  The results were hilarious.  The unanimously right answers?  Gummy Bears and Kiwi - not sure what that says about our households.  The funniest answer?  "At first it smelled like ice cream and then it smelled like magic marker."  That about vanilla.    They were uniformly good sports and had a great time.

Receiving the results

2.  PIN THE CHERRY ON THE CUPCAKE

Need I say more?  This classic game still holds up.

3.  THE MARSHMALLOW DANGLE

A surprising challenge and THANK GOD THE WEATHER WAS GOOD ENOUGH TO GO OUTSIDE.  I can't repeat that enough.  Needless to say everyone eventually got a marshmallow - one way or another.

4.  BALLOON TAG

No pictures of this.  It was too fast and too crazy.  They ran around with balloons attached to their ankles, trying to pop each other's balloons.   There were only two minor injuries.  Not bad.

5. MARSHMALLOW TOWER BUILDING

Who would have guessed that this would hold the most attention? But it did.  Kids just love crafts, especially when they can eat the building materials.

6.  "SUSHI" ROLLING

This craft was inspired by this blog post but our results were decidedly less successful.  It took so much supervision, I didn't even get any pictures. Let's just say it was a rice krispie, twizzler, gummy worm mash packed up in a sushi to go box with chopsticks.  Each kid took theirs home.  Sorry parents!

7.  CAKE!!!

Well, not exactly.  Penelope opted for root beer floats instead.  That's my girl.  This blurry shot is the only one I got!  I even missed the blowing out of the candles!  What kind of mom am I?

8. PINATA

The number 6 pinata was caught on video (I'll get to that sometime). Believe it or not, I showed some restraint there and did not fill it with candy.

We sent everyone home all sugared up with goody bags filled to the brim.

We even made a CD to share with our friends.  And, now you can enjoy it too, by clicking here. Is that cool or what?

There's much more to share, including these 400 pictures.   Penelope actually turns 6 on Friday.  We will be out of gas by then.

PS - The fabulous peace sign dress was made by the fabulous Nanny, of course, with fabric picked out by Penelope on a joint shopping spree this summer in Wisconsin.