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Free Marple Mountain or Skating Party for 10 children plus the birthday child a ($159 value) food is not included but can be purchased when booking party. Party slots are on Saturdays and Sundays at 12:00 and 3:00 (2 hr time slots). Coupon can be used up to a year after it is received. 

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One More Thing About My Daughter's Party:

 For the first time in my daughter's nine years, I was not able to make her cake for her. (It is an important tradition to me that I make and decorate the kids' birthday cakes every year). I couldn't decorate her cake because I recently broke my hand.



Lucky for me, my good friend Anamarie at A Pocket Full Of Frosting came up with this awesome film reel cake for the (Red Carpet themed) party. So I didn't feel that bad about not being able to make her cake. How could I? The film reel cake was so clever! She even printed black and white pictures of Lara, some family, and friends to put around the cake... so the strip of film was actual pictures!

Cake artist, Anamarie presenting the cake to the Birthday girl

A huge thank you goes out to Anamarie at
A Pocket Full of Frosting for the really cool and really yummy chocolate chip birthday cake!

-Crystal

Willy Wonka Party-Part 2

Missed Part 1 of the party? Go HERE to check it out! Before the girls arrived we had “lollipops” outside lining the driveway up to the house. I made my lollipops with balloons because they were $1 for a bag vs. $5 per round Styrofoam piece I found at the craft store. Some cellophane wrap, dowel rods & ribbon finished the job.

When the girls first arrived, we had the movie playing & they watched as they waited for rest of their friends to arrive. Once all the girls were there, we served our “TV dinner” on trays I found at the Goodwill, 5 for $3 ( a very lucky find)!



After a dinner of hot dogs, mac & cheese and broccoli, there was an Oomph Loompa race. The girls were split into 2 teams and I had Oompa Loompa costumes ready. The costumes were made from white women’s shorts I found on clearance, white ribbon for suspenders & brown t-shirts I already owned. The girls did a series of Simon says-like commands before I said go, and then raced to get dressed the fastest. The first girl to put up her hands, rock back & forth and say “Oompa Loompa Doomadee Do”, won thea point for her team. The winning team received bubbles as their prize.



Oompa Loompa Race



After the races, we moved to the candy portion of the show. We had the table set up to make candy art (like sand art but made out of pixie sticks, nerds, jelly beans, gum drops, etc). This took a fair amount of time because they were trying not to spill the candy all over, but into the bottle. After the candy art, they moved to chocolate fondue. We had marshmallows, animal cookies, pretzels & cookies to dip, and that was part of the goodie bag that they took home. Plates were labeled with the girls name, so they took home what they dipped. We also let them dips strawberries & bananas and eat them at our home. After all the dipping & candy art, was cake & they finished watching the movie. I only wish I had thought to bring out a few aprons for the fondue, it was a little messy!



We had a few minutes before all the parents came, so the girls played charades…which is our go-to time filler-upper. They love the game and it super easy. Party favors were easy, because they made candy art & chocolate dipped food that was the bulk of the favors.



More than once we heard one girl another comment on how much fun party was-one girl even said it was the best birthday party she had ever been too (woohoo!), my daughter loved and it was inexpensive. We waited to buy candy until after Halloween (and a few of our friends donated candy to the cause!) used items we already had, like a silver serving tray, to display the candy and didn’t go crazy on elaborate decorations or food



This is the third year we’ve done the party at our house & the third year my daughter said , “It was the best birthday ever!”

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Willy Wonka Birthday Party - Part 1

My daughter loves candy…all sweets-mostly she gets that from her father. So it should come as no surprise that she wanted to have a Willy Wonka/Chocolate Factory birthday party to celebrate her 8th birthday and because she starts discussing her ideas for a party months in advance, we had plenty of time to plan! (I should also mention, her birthday is November 4th…so being right after Halloween, candy is cheap & easy to get!)

First we had to decide on the wording for the invitation. We’re purist so we went to Google & searched for the wording from the Golden ticket in the movie. There were many options to choose from but we decided on this:

GREETINGS TO YOU, the lucky finder of this Golden Ticket from Mr. Willy Wonka & Miss Olivia --- Present this ticket at the factory gates of The Chocolate Shoppe located at _______ from 5-8 pm on the 5th day of November and do not be late.

In your wildest dreams, you could not imagine the marvelous surprises that away you at Olivia’s 8th Birthday

Golden Ticket ensures admittance.

Finding the gold paper was actually one of the hardest parts of the party. We wanted gold, not yellow! We settled on a gold card stock from a craft store & printed out “candy bars” from the internet (The image of a Wonka bar). The original idea was to include a Wonka bar in the invitation but they were pretty expensive so in the end, we settled on Nerds…because they’re a Wonka candy too!

Invitations are sent, RSVPs received-now we had to get to business. There was going to be candy…a lot of candy!

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Gratitude List Day 4~Happy Birthday!

Today is day 4 of the gratitude list and today I am grateful for my (as of today!) 8 year old daughter!  I am thankful that she is healthy & smart, kind & generous but most of all I am thankful that I am her mother and can see her grow from a feisty little girl into an incredible big girl/young lady/almost tween.   She really is awesome and really, really great kid. 

I know she is 8 but in my heart I am truly shocked that the time has gone so quickly.  There is also a mixture of great happiness for her birthday but sadness that if the first 8 years were so fast, how fast will the next 8 years be? (Read this two ways, 1.  Driving, enough said! 2.  She'll just be getting so old!)

I love you Liv & hope you have an amazing birthday! 

Birthday Freebies

In honor of a very happy (because this weather is amazing!!!) and because this was a frong page article on Yahoo, Freebies on your Birthday!

A few I have done is the Toys R Us birthday club. We get a card with a $3 gift card in it about a week before the birthday. If you go there around the birthday they give the birthday child a balloon, hat & announce to the store that there is a birthday child in the store.

Applebees also gives you a free entree with the purchase of another entree. Though Applebees is not my fave restaurant, it is super family friendly and if we feel like being cheap we buy a chicken fingers meal & then my husband and I split a meal...with desert this is enough to fill us up for cheap.


Check outBirthday Freebies.