Category Archives: Parties

Hia-Ya! A Ninja Party!

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Last year it was pirates and this year it was ninjas who invaded the house in celebration of a special boy’s birthday!

Pinterest provided lots of inspiration for this ninja theme party from the decoration to the food.

Sushi

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Ninjago Cake

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Faux Sushi roll cake

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4Mothers tipped me off to these Ninjabread Men . . .

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Most of the kids came in costume and joined Sensei Wu (major props to Daddy for sporting this outfit) and Fearless Nya.

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The two hours went by “fast as lightning” with a variety of games that the kids loved.

The boys started by making their own ninja headbands.  I bought an extra large bandana and cut it into lengthwise strips that were the perfect size for their heads.

To keep it less messy, I opted to put out fabric markers instead of paint.

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Once their headbands were tied on, the boys moved onto the photo-booth where they posed as stealth ninjas showing off their handiwork and some props in front of the Pagoda.

Thank you to Craft, Interrupted for the idea and the free downloadables!

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I had pre-made ninja stars but the young ninjas were tasked with decorating them before testing out their aim at a delicately stacked collection of plastic cups.

Origami isn’t nearly as intimidating as I thought, thanks to the step-by-step tutorials that I found on You-tube.

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We finished up the quieter games with Pin-The-Beard on the Sensei (thank you again to Craft, Interrupted) and moving marshmallows from bowl to cup with chopsticks.

We moved to the basement for the more active games where the boys karate chopped their way through Balsa wood and ninja-kicked weighted-down helium balloons while screaming Hia-Ya!

Then they scoured the house for the hidden ninjas (tiny ninja figurines) before heading outside to smash the piñata.

On the way out the door, the birthday boy handed out his loot-bags filled with Ninja pencils, Lego mini-figurines, Ninja-bread men and piñata candy.

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It was whirl-wind of a few hours but the birthday boy had the time of his life and excitedly exclaimed that next year’s fete will be Star Wars.

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Everybody was Kung-Fu fighting!

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My middle son turned 5 yesterday.  Where has the time gone?  It feels like yesterday that I walked into the hospital extremely pregnant and anxious.  I was overwhelmed at the idea of having two children close to 16 months apart but it felt like old hat walking into Labor and Delivery on April 01, 2008, like I had left but had forgotten something and was back for one more.

The triage nurse who admitted me couldn’t believe that I was about to have a baby.  She had pegged my bump at 7 months along and was shocked when I told her that I was starting my 39th week.

A few hours later our second little boy was born.  He came into the world with a shrill scream and furled in a tight ball.  It’s funny how in that exact moment that we met he showed me his true personality: a feisty homebody who likes to be surrounded by his comforts.

We mark birthdays in a big way at our house.  I love birthdays – an entire day dedicated to celebrating someone special.  My boys have parties with their friends that I gladly assume the responsibility of planning and an elaborate dinner with our large family is always a must.

My now 5 year old has strong ideas about his parties.  He knows exactly what he wants to eat, how he wants the house decorated and where the piñata will hang.  As early as three years old he would dictate the theme of the party and pitch-in with the planning and preparation.

Last year, our entire family descended on our house dressed as pirates and this year it will be ninjas.

Quick tip: do not Google “ninja costumes for women” with your child on your lap.  There will be a lot of stutters, back pedaling and frantic mouse clicking.

Pintrest has offered a wealth of inspiration but make no mistake, it can also make one feel pretty inadequate in a hurry.  We decided on a list of activities and games and of course, a cake.  I will bake the cake but I have had to talk myself down from some of the more lofty examples found on-line.  I know my limits and Martha Stewart, I am not.

This is my favourite ninja item that we have come across and it will be included in the loot bags.

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The back of the box reads:

Everybody was Kung-Fu writing,

Those words were fast as lightning.

In fact it was a little bit frightening,

But they wrote with expert timing…

How could I resist?

Available here.

Valentine’s Day Round-up

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It’s that time of year again.  Whether you think Valentine’s Day is a Hallmark holiday better left uncelebrated or a reminder to tell those closest to you how much you love them, February 14 will be here before you know it.

If your plans include track pants, take-out and a bottle of wine (my dream evening!), I say enjoy!  However, if you are looking to add something extra special to your Valentine’s Day be sure to check out this round up of easy-peasy, simple ideas.

Martha Stewart always offers a variety of crafts and recipes that appeal to all skill-levels.  These crayon-melted hearts are an easy craft to do with children and would add some much-needed colour to gray and gloomy windows.

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This simple to construct candy and tulip bouquet would make any special lady smile this Valentine’s Day.

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Karissa Goss of Piece of Cake Events by Karissa, was featured on Salem County Woman.  Her marshmallow lollipops are simple to create and an instant favourite with the kids.

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Jennifer Hallissy of The Write Start dedicates her blog to exploring literacy in the everyday.  I am a big fan of her blog and often look to her for inspiring ways to engage the boys in fun, creative activities where they get to flex their reading and writing skills.  This Valentine card was created by Jennifer’s daughter and would be a fantastic activity for a quiet Saturday afternoon.

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Every night I tell my boys, “I love you, I love you, I love you.  For now and forever to bits and pieces, more than you will ever know.”

My middle-son always responds, “Do you love me to bits and pieces of poo?  Because that is the most you can love anyone.”

And I always say, “Yes, to bits and pieces of poo.” 

What can I say?  Love is strange.

EAB Designs is a visual delight and this year they are offering readers a free download of their elegant tags inspired by Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee?”  The download comes with 12 tags for you to write 12 individual messages to the one you love.

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If you are not into the craft or creating, why not just add some heart-shaped food to your table?  At our local salumeria, salami d’amour is always available and makes for an instant Valentine’s Day treat.

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image courtesy of Chef-Girl

Caine’s Arcade, The Sequel

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Have you all seen the original film of Caine’s Arcade that went viral last year?

Well, last month, I saw an update on facebook.  There is now a movement underway to designate October 6th–this Saturday– a global day of play, a day of the Cardboard Challenge, when kids get their creativity revved up.  Check it out.  This kid is an inspiration.  I fell in love with this story last year, falling as it does into that wonderful category of lessons to be learned from slow living.  Leave kids alone with some simple tools, step back and let their creativity and interests take over.  This is very hard for me to do, being the meddling and perfectionist sort myself.

All summer, my middle son has been asking to build a big project from cardboard boxes, so this is it.  No more putting it off.  Now I am getting my thinking cap on to figure our how to organize a cardboard free for all in our ‘hood this weekend so that we can turn this long-put-off project into a friends event.

Put it on a Playlist

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One of the glories of the digital world is how fun and easy it is to find things.  Searching for a rare book, an odd fact, an old episode of a tv show from your youth, a beanie baby that is no longer in production?  The internet is your friend.

One thing the search function of the web has served me well for is in making playlists for my kids’ birthday parties and for other special occasions.  I make eclectic mixes of old and new, folk and punk, kids and crooners.  You find a bunch of songs, massage them into a smooth arrangement, and the next thing you know, your kids can sing Ella Fitzgerald.

My husband’s birthday falls in July, and most of his siblings, like us, make the drive east out to Nova Scotia from Toronto.  For his birthday party, I made a playlist of songs from points east of Toronto, “Driving East,” beginning with “Leaving Toronto” by Greenwich Meantime (no, I’d never heard of them either) , and ending up in Nova Scotia with “Farewell to Nova Scotia,” which technically would be the first song for the ride home!  I used the i-tunes search function and just plugged in the names of the towns and provinces that we drive through.  I supplemented those finds with music from bands from those towns and with songs that seemed to me to epitomise each province.  It was so much fun to put the playlist together, and I found all kinds of new music along the way.

I’ve also made a hockey playlist, a baseball playlist, a superhero playlist, playlists for birthday parties with themes of magic, Reduce Reuse Recyle, and the number three.  Finding weird and wacky songs is half the fun.

Here are some of the themes and songs from the kids’ playlists:

Reduce Reuse Recyle

“The Three Rs” Jack Johnson

“A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” Bob Dylan

“From the Morning” Nick Drake

“Where Do the Children Play?” Cat Stevens

“Hard Sun” Eddie Vedder

“Tofu Cowboy” Dan Hart (Go find it!  It’s hilarious!  “Riding my herd of fat-free bean curd…”)

Magic

The theme song from Harry Potter

“It’s Magic” The Cars

“That Old Back Magic” Ella Fitzgerald

“Abracadabra” Steve Miller Band

My Boy’s Three

“Three is a Magic Number” The Jellydots

“Three Little Fishies” Beth and Scott

“The Clapping Song” Laura Love

“Crank Dat” DJ Godfather (BIG MISTAKE)

Let me know if you make any!

Hire an Expert

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You’ve all been to birthday parties with magicians and clowns, and maybe even with mad scientists and animal handlers, right?  Well, when I did not register my son for fencing camp in time, I thought, “Why not hire a fencing instructor for his birthday party?”

It was a huge hit!  I had seen the instructor working with a preschool fencing club at our local park.  They used foam swords from the dollar store (no bruises! no lost eyeballs!) and practiced Official Fencing Positions.  Sure, when they broke off to spar, very few of them stuck with proper form, but it’s fun, not the Olympics.  I figured if he could handle a gang of preschoolers, he could handle my eleven-year-old and his buddies.

The event went off so well, I hired him again to do my seven-year-old’s party.  Boys and girls loved the event equally, and, not a word of a lie, when I was sparring with one of the girls, I tried my hardest and I could not touch her with the sword.  Take that, princess in distress stereotype!  The kids all went home with their foam swords and a sheet illustrating the fencing positions they had learned.  (I heard later that one boy was showing off his moves to his grandparents in England on Skype.)

You could do this with any number of skills: drumming, playing the harmonica, jewelry-making, painting, cartooning, knitting, carpentry.  The loot bags create themselves, and the kids go home with a new skill.  What’s not to love?

The Unofficial Start of Summer

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This weekend was the 26th annual street party on our street, and though we’ve only been here four years, it has become a family favourite.  From noon until midnight, the city street is closed off to cars, and the kids pile into the street with basketballs and hockey sticks, bikes and trikes; they bounce on the bouncy castle and climb up into the visiting fire truck; they have epic water gun battles while the grown ups sit on the sidewalk with burgers and beer.  Dinner is barbeque and salad, and bake sale goodies, all made and cooked by our neighbours.  Everyone pitches in and works together, and then the east and the west sides of the street battle it out in a massive tug of war.  A DJ provides the soundtrack for the whole day and night, and my little ones sing along with friends and neighbours to the sounds of summer.

For our kids, this party has become the unofficial start to summer with all its bacchanalian revelry and the rare, rare treat of being allowed out so late and sometimes even alone.  Though one was sick, my boys still had a blast and played on their street, made it theirs for a day and a night.  For a day, the car was not king, and the street was home to the simple fun of learning to ride a bike, of wearing a new face, of sinking shot after shot after shot.

Let the long days of summer begin.

Four Parties for a Four Year Old

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Like Beth-Anne, we celebrated a child turning four this month.  Unlike Beth-Anne, who very sensibly had one big pirate party, we did it four times.

There was the party with friends, which happened on a weekend day a few days before the actual birthday.  So far, so good.  Loot bags, alligator cake, balloons, kids playing and having fun for two hours.

Then there was the actual birthday day, which fell in the middle of the week.  On the evening of an older brother’s Very Important Hockey Game.  Restaurant meal at location of birthday boy’s choice, followed by a dash to the rink.

Then, because both sides of the family could not gather on the same day to celebrate four-dom, there were two separate family parties the weekend after the birthday day.  Two more alligator cakes, two more sets of loot bags for the cousins, two more sets of kids playing and having fun for hours.

And one mother who is now suffering from alligator cake burn-out.  (Carol, you may recognize these cupcakes….)  Poor alligators look more and more washed out as I get to the third.  I was pretty green, too, by the time we’d shared three of them.