The past few days have been spent celebrating multiple birthdays around here. Time is in short supply right now, so I found it necessary to condense the birthday celebrations into one or two main events. Fortunately, only one small child was involved; the two adults didn't mind taking a back seat to our seven year-old's Shopkins birthday wishes. However, I still wanted to recognize the individual personalities and interests of my husband, who has been sharing a birthday with our youngest for seven years now, and also our son's fiancee who turned 23 a few days ago. I'm afraid the whole Shopkins theme by far took over the festivities, but if you look closely, there's a little bit of elephant and farm love in the pictures too. And if you are unfamiliar with Shopkins, you'll know way more than you'd care to by the end of this post.
For our first celebratory dinner in a local restaurant Sunday evening, my 13 year-old daughter and I baked chocolate cupcakes with butter creme frosting to bring along. Our birthday girl kindly donated a birthday cake Shopkin and an asparagus shopkin to place atop her cupcake and her farmer dad's cupcake. For our future daughter-in-law, we found a cute elephant candle at Party City.
We exchanged a few gifts while waiting for our dinner, after finding elephant picture frames at Party City, elephant gift tags at Target, and Shopkins everything at Party City. I couldn't find a single roll of farm-related wrapping paper though. Sorry, Hubby.
After exchanging gifts, eating dinner, singing Happy Birthday and blowing out candles on cupcakes, it was time to go home and get some sleep before preparing for the next day's events with grandparents. I only had time to decorate the kitchen for a very informal birthday dinner Monday evening. The birthday girl wanted a Shopkins pinata. I really didn't expect to find one, but there they were at Party City.
Out came the paisley tablecloth because I really don't care for those plastic disposable cloths you get for a couple of dollars. Plus, our table is too big to fit any of them, and there is just no way I'd pay for a fabric Shopkins tablecloth anyway because as my husband noted, we don't care to see any more Shopkins decor for a long, long time....if ever.
I tried really hard to make sure my husband didn't feel that his birthday doesn't even exist anymore by buying non-Shopkins birthday plates and napkins for him and the men of the family. Besides, my boys would have eaten off the floor before they'd use a Shopkins plate.
But overall, the Shopkins theme definitely dominated the table.
And Shopkins took over the ceiling and walls and doorways.
Even every cupcake at each person's spot at the table held a different Shopkin to match that individual's personality. The boys couldn't wait to get rid of theirs, and they all ended up on the birthday girl's cupcake before dinner was finished. Did you know that there is even a toilet Shopkin?
Some of the gifts had already been exchanged the day before, and we kept a gift for our youngest on her actual birthday morning, but this was the gift corner. The only farm-related thing in the room was the metal watering can that my husband requested as his birthday gift. We're a rather low-consumer family here. The things my husband and I want for ourselves usually can't be bought and wrapped (like more free time, a new kitchen floor, to have Alice from the Brady Bunch living here, or a bumper crop in the garden.)
Dinner requests were made by our daughter with the surprise addition of pounds and pounds of morel mushrooms we found in the woods this weekend that were breaded and fried up to go with the specialty burgers, Doritos, and tossed salad. The one exception was that my husband got to choose his favorite ice cream flavor to go with the Shopkins cupcakes. He chose coconut chip from a local dairy. I had no idea that was his favorite. No one else in my family likes coconut, so he gets a lot of ice cream to himself for once.
Along with a sleeping bag, most of the birthday gifts for our 7 year-old consisted of...can you guess? That's right...Shopkins! But I won't subject you to any more pictures of those. Fortunately, the pinata was not filled with them.
Another batch of cupcakes were baked and decorated to share with the first grade class today, but our birthday girl is suffering from some spring allergies right now and didn't make it to school. So they'll go in with her tomorrow, and she'll get to celebrate some more. She now has counted 36 Shopkins in her collection, and trading them at school seems to be a favorite past time. I'll have to inspect her backpack before she goes out the door or she'll be toting all of them along.
My work is over now for a few more weeks until the next round of birthdays occurs. Most everyone in our family was either born or married between May and August, so along with graduations, Mother's and Father's Day, summer holidays, and First Communions and Confirmations, these next few months seem to always be spent celebrating something. Looking over this blog post, I'm feeling really guilty that I didn't come up with more farm and elephant themes. Hubby is soon approaching one of the BIG birthdays though, so maybe an entire farm party will be in the makings for the near future. Do you think Party City would grant a request to fill an aisle with party supplies devoted to goats and sheep, chickens and vegetables, seeds and hoes, and maybe even a watering can or two?
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