The Birthday Sleepover

Friday night, middle DD finally had the long ago promised birthday sleepover. Her actual birthday is in May, which winds up conflicting with spring sports as well as Mother's Day. But this sleepover wasn't just promised to her in May, it was promised to her LAST May. And no, we don't ignore or forget our children's birthdays. There is always a family celebration. But there isn't always a kids party. With four kids that's just too much to handle every year. So we aim to celebrate milestones. This party is officially in celebration of DD's 10th birthday, which was last year.

Middle DD enjoys crafts. Let me rephrase that, middle DD loves crafts, lives for crafting times, never wants to stop creating something. So her party was a big crafting party. This was great for her friend on the right, who also likes crafting. It wasn't so great for her friend on the left who really doesn't enjoy crafts all that much. First we started by making vests for their Webkinz. (The guests were asked to bring a favorite Webkinz and their American Girl Doll).

Next they crafted hot air balloons for their Webkinz. (These fit the little kinz better). They decorated paper lanterns with markers and strung plastic strawberry baskets from the bottom with yarn.

Then the birthday girl wanted to decorate cakes. I made individual cakes in star shaped foils and mixed up frosting with natural colors. Pink - strawberry juice, Yellow - Turmeric, White, Purple - blueberry juice.

I filled four decoraters bags with frosting and let them go to town. I demonstrated a few different techniques on my cake, but the frosting was rather soft and melty. Apparently the object was to see how much frosting you could get on your cake rather than what it looked like :o)

Here are the finished products. (Minutes before they got eaten).

Here are the girls with their finished crafts - vests, balloons and pom-pom animals. (More about those later).

After the cakes the girls got busy with their American Girl dolls. Time to experiment with different hair styles.

They put together pom-pom animals from some kits I found on clearance at Wal-Mart. These also looked cute riding around in the balloon baskets.

And DD got two new Webkinz for gifts.

By the next morning the curls had dried and the dolls were really stylin'.