It's A Wild Rumpus!

To celebrate Pinky Lee's 4th birthday and Boo Boo Bear's 2nd birthday we decided to throw a Wild Rumpus based on Maurice Sendak's classic children's book "Where The Wild Things Are". Pinky Lee loves this book, especially when we do the wild rumpus!
I spent three weeks planning and crafting for the event, but somehow managed to not get everything done come party day. That is what comes from wanting to do to much. However, all of the kiddos had a great time & most of what I tried to accomplish turned out. Here are some really great websites that I got most of my ideas from. I think I remembered all of them. Thank you to everyone who had great ideas for me to borrow!

My Rumpus - masks, boat & clipart

Metro Baby - magnets (I made these, but didn't get any pictures!)

Toy A Day - again, no pictures. Look for all 3 (Max, Moishe & Sipi) on his site

Caitlin Creer - bubble wrappers (nope, no pictures...but mine were orange with polka dots that resembled bubbles & had the same words as hers)

All of the following websites have great inspiration as well: Hostess with the Mostess, Simply Creative Insanity, Gauhaus, Creative Party Place , Mommy Star, Party Perfect, Skip to My Lou, Se7en, Fantasy Jr., and Story Connection Blog

I'm sure there are plenty of others out there, but these are the ones I found. Please check them out & explore their sites because they've got good stuff!

Here are the things I did:

The King of All Wild Things Tent

Here is my interpretation of the King of All Wild Things tent. I was drawing on the colors from the book & found these gorgeous fabrics. The top is supposed to come up higher, but I was working without a pattern & was off in my measurements. Oh well, still cute, the kids think it's fun & it's about to be a nice addition to the family room.

The Boat
In the story, Max reaches the island of wild things by sailing in his little red sailboat. Without it, this party would have been incomplete. Each of the guests got their picture taken in it. The credit for this project goes to my DH, and he did a great job!

Cupcakes

I was so behind on party day, that I had to frost these as the guests were arriving :0! My plastic bags that I was using to frost both ripped, which has never happened before, so they just got smeared with icing using my giant spatula. Not ideal. However, they were still quite yummy. Knowing I needed to use three cake mixes, I made layered vanilla, strawberry and chocolate cupcakes. The wrappers and the toppers are so cute though. I wish I had better pictures of them. The toppers are various monster faces or "Where the Wild Things Are". The wrappers say "I'll Eat You Up!"

Wild Rumpus Banner

The Thank You Cards

I made these thank you cards THEN realized that I didn't have envelopes that would hold them. So I had to make them by hand. It was more involved than I imagined since I had to make my own template. After completing all the envelopes I felt they were still lacking, so i made a collage of party pictures in black and white to line the inside of the envelope. The thank you cards have two pictures of the party guest, the group photo & one each of Boo Boo and Pinks.

The Invitations

For the invitations, I just used some clip art from the book (courtesy of Nat from My Rumpus), then added my own text, using lines from the story.

Other projects not pictured: magnets, bubble wrappers, personalized treat bag labels, food label cards with cutesy names like Monster Mac n' Cheese, decorate your own crowns & paper toys.

My Wild Things

The first slideshow is of each partygoers pictures in the boat (plus some others). The second slideshow is everything else at the party. There are lots of pictures so be prepared for it to take a while to load. Oh, and look for the cute little "Wild Thing" t-shirts I made for Pinks & Boo!

I hope you enjoyed seeing our Wild Rumpus!

My New Friend

This is my new friend Andrea! She's the owner of the Cents Saved blog. I started visiting her site a while back for her HEB grocery coupon match-ups. She no longer does those :( , but I still visit her site regularly for all her other money saving and making advice. She lives in Colorado, so on our way up to Montana for Christmas, we got together and had breakfast. It was so much fun! I'm sure her husband was relieved that we didn't spend the whole time talking about coupons....just half of it! Her family was delightful and we had a great time. Andrea has fabulous info, so be sure to check her site out.

Lil' Coconut's 8th Birthday!

For Lil' C's 8th birthday, she decided on a bowling party. She's wanted to have one there ever since she was invited to someone else's bowling birthday party. A couple of her friends came, and they all had a great time. They even did a great job bowling! We made personalized cupcake holders and labels for the bubbles & play-dough. Everything was in a blue & white snowflake theme and it was so gorgeous. Even the cupcakes had light blue frosting with white "snow" sugar sprinkled on top! I love kids birthday parties!

Lil' Coconut's 8th Birthday Slideshow

A Series of Unfortunate Events

No, I'm not talking about that fictional young adult book series. This is real life, and pretty good indicators that you're not having such a great week. Refer to Exhibit A:

And Exhibit B:These are the result of an unfortunate early morning encounter with a deer. DH and his friend had just left our house when I recieved the phone call that I needed to come get them because they had hit a deer. It being not yet 6 am, I asked him to repeat that. Yup, that was what happened. I'm sparing you the picture of the deer, although DH took one(because he's a guy...and according to him it was a 6 point buck). Both guys were fine and refused medical treatment (because they're guys), and later went to work. The car and the deer? Not so fine.

Living in south Texas has its moments. We'll count this as one of the low ones. This was the temperature reading when I got in the car the other day:

Exhibit C:

Of course, it wasn't really 111 degrees. It just FELT that way. It finally settled at this much more comfortable temperature:
Exhibit D:

The next day, it was only 100 degrees. Not big deal. Except for this:
Exhibit E:

This was the temperature INSIDE the house!!!!!!!!!!!! Our air conditioner had quit working sometime in the middle of the night, and by 4:00 we had reached 95 degrees inside the house. Thankfully, the air conditioner repair man is a friend from church, so he managed to squeeze us in late in the afternoon. We had finally resorted to driving around in the car to get some cool relief.

Thankfully, all seems to have returned to normal. Now I'm just wondering who's going to take care of the grapefruit, whipped cream, and entire canister of sugar mess that we woke up to.

Report Cards & a Blanket

Report cards are in, and it's good news all around! Lil' Coconut & Bug both made the Honor Roll, plus they had perfect attendance! They got a bunch of coupons to a local fast food place that they can't wait to cash in. I'm not really sure where Bug's ribbon is, but I intend to find out on Monday. We're so proud of our little academics!

Also, I wanted to share the cutsiepoo blankie that our friends Rabin & Kathy made for Boo Boo Bear. They did all that beautiful cross-stitch, and I finally got the batting and back sewn on. They've made gorgeous blankies for each of the kids. Thank you! We love them!

Feel free to leave comments congratulating our smartypants kids!