The Party

Clara's birthday was a "Mythical Creatures" party.  Which means she changed her mind about 50 times about the theme and along the way we'd purchased a unicorn piñata and decided on a mermaid cake, so we needed a theme to fit those items  :) It was pretty simple--she invited 4 kids because she was 4 years old (plus their siblings) and we had it at a park just up the street, which I'd highly recommend if you intend to spend most of the morning making frosting and decorating a cake--guests might not have appreciated the kitchen strewn with beaters, bowls, solidified butter cream and edible glitter. Here are the details in case you are inspired to plan a little mythical creatures party of your own!

Clara made her own invitations, pen and watercolor drawings of mermaids.

We played some fun games at the party.  I'd read about a non-competitive game called "Fox and Hen" somewhere, so our adaptation was "Princess and Unicorn".  You could do it with dragon and knight, leprechaun and pot of gold, pretty much anything that might want to catch something else.  Basically you need two beanbags and the kids sit in a circle.  You give the beanbags to children in opposite points on the circle and when you say go, they start passing the beanbags as fast as they can to see if the Princess can catch the Unicorn.  I talked Amy into carving stamps for our beanbags--we used fabric stamp pads on muslin and backed it with Heather Ross' Mendocino mermaid fabric, leftover from the dress I made Clara for her party that she refused to wear under the grounds that she liked it, but intended "to wear something really beautiful." Ahem. But the beanbags were pretty awesome. The unicorn design is Amy's own, and the Rapunzel stamp was inspired by this illustration. 
We used the stamps to make treat bags for the kids to collect their piñata haul, too. I had envisioned these in Far, Far Away unicorn or Princess and the Pea fabric, but, alas, you can't win the lottery if you don't play, so we went with the more economical route and raided our scrap bag. Can't beat free.

I also changed Duck, Duck Goose a little and it ended up being more hilarious, with no tears. Clara does not like to be in the mush pot, so instead of saying "Duck, Duck," as they went around, the kids said "Fairy, Elf, Fairy, Elf" and then when they chose someone they said "Dragon!"  If you made it back to the space safely, great, but if you got tagged then you turned into a dragon and we all got up and followed you for a little dragon parade.  Everyone acted like dragons and roared and clawed their way around a tree and back into the circle before we started all over again.  It was very funny. Here is my friend Ali leading the dragon parade:While we were playing games, the adults hid some "dragon eggs" around the park (our plastic Easter egg collection filled with stickers) and then the kids went on a dragon egg hunt.They went in little groups with baskets to collect all the eggs and then we gathered back together to open them all and divide up the stickers. That turned out to be a good way to do it so they got fairly even amounts of treasures and didn't care if the other group had more eggs in their basket. We did the same thing with the piñata treats--collected them all into baskets and then passed the baskets around in a circle, each child taking one item out each time it came to them. It was much more peaceful than the grabby, chaotic method, particularly for the sensitive preschool age.

Face-painting played a more minor role than I'd planned, but it was a nice thing to have out for any spare moments.We had to scrap the Outwit the Troll obstacle course I'd planned when the balance beam Amy made for Clara's birthday present ended up being a lot nicer than I'd anticipated and we didn't want to take it outdoors.  We wouldn't have had time, anyway, so I'm relieved we didn't try to haul anything but food to our picnic location.  Speaking of food, we had some homemade healthy-ish snacks from The Petit Appetit Party cookbook, watermelon and veggies, yellow-jacket-seducing-agua fresca and 'rosy lemonade' (lemonade watered down with herbal iced tea).  But we know you are most impressed by the cake. Unlike at Clara's first birthday party, it was actually delicious in addition to eye-pleasing, so that's some progress. I finally learned to use a Cook's Illustrated recipe instead of Martha, a lesson it only took me three years to internalize. Amy put her art degree to good use frosting the mermaid. Because my plan had a big smiley face and red licorice hair, folks. Clara loved this one, and I'll have to say that the rest of us did, too. To see more photos of the birthday party--an obscene number of photos probably most interesting to grandparents or party attendees--try this link and click on "view album."  Thanks, party-goers, for a great afternoon in wonderful company!