A First Birthday Party in the Hundred Acre Wood

 

It's hard to believe, but our grandson turned one yesterday, and his mama and daddy threw him a party in his own little Hundred Acre Wood.  The party was in the screened-in porch of their lovely colonial stone farmhouse, and they converted it into a scene from the Winnie the Pooh story books.

 

Branches of trees on their property were cut by his daddy to create his own personal forest on the patio.  His mama painted the signs herself in the morning before guests arrived. 

 

Balloons, streamers, and other brightly colored decorations filled the party room, but the birthday boy most definitely loved the balloons most of all.

 

You can't see them, but the gift table held stuffed Pooh characters, and there were other plush Pooh friends peeking out in other places as well.

 

One of his aunties made these adorable vanilla cupcakes with honey bees on top.

 

While another auntie made him his own little cake to crumble, mash, and destroy.

 

He really wasn't sure what to make of it all at first and was surprisingly neat about eating it.

 

But I would say that other than getting a bit tired once the gift unwrapping was underway, the guest of honor was quite happy with his first birthday.

 

And even though yet another storm was raging outside, we all had a lovely time celebrating such a special day for a special little boy. 

A special thanks to T. Brown for most of the photos in this post.

A Green Chinese Birthday Celebration

 

When I asked our third son what theme he'd like for his eleventh birthday, he said he didn't know.  After many more inquiries, he finally said his favorite color is green, and he'd like for me to make my chicken lo-mein for his birthday dinner.  Oh, and he'd like to celebrate on Sunday since his actual birthday is on a school day this year.  And no party, just family here.  That's all I had to go on.  This is the same child with whom I gained the most weight, and my body never again returned to a size 4.  The same child who kept turning his body into a transverse position in utero and kept me worrying up until the end whether or not I'd be able to have him naturally.  The same child who kept me in labor for two whole days, and I thought he was never coming out.  My only child born with my orange hair and super fair skin and freckles.  The only one of our children born with his dad's stocky body and an intense love affair with food from the very beginning.  He has always been the one to do things a little differently, quite a bit reluctantly, and with a contrary nature.  So I wasn't suprised by his birthday wish list or requests.  The tricky part was trying to come up with an entire party theme based on the color green and Chinese food.  But here's what I came up with.

 

Hubby and I started out at Party City and picked up green and white paper products and these cute treat boxes that resemble Chinese takeout.

 

Then we went around those candy carousels that Party City has and picked out most of the green and white candy---enough for our youngest six children who were here (including a grown one.)

 

 

Then we filled each green box with the exact same amount of candy and put one at each child's spot at the table.  The rock candy sticking out the sides was supposed to resemble chop sticks.  

 

We tossed some green and white glow sticks all over the table.  Not really sure that they fit the Chinese theme, but they were the colors we were looking for, and what kid doesn't like glow sticks?

 

And I put out a plate of crispy Chinese noodles for a snack that we picked up from the supermarket.  I refilled this at least three times.

 

I know this is a little repetitive of  my fruit kabobs at Easter, but the green grapes and kiwi fit with our theme, and instead of marshmallow peeps on the skewers, I placed fortunes.

 

Because you can never have too many good fortunes.

  

Of course, we had to have a bowl of fortune cookies too.  Actually, there were broken fortune cookies scattered all over the table, and whole ones ended up on the cake too.

 

Speaking of the cake...you know I admit my failures and flops on here.  The original birthday cake was a HUGE disaster.  Our son asked for a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting.  Usually our daughter does the cake baking in this house, but she was tired due to a field trip to an amusement park the day before, so I baked the cake.  The double layer triple chocolate super-moist cake that I made from a box that said it even had pudding in the mix came out of the oven perfectly.  But I had a problem with the homemade peanut butter frosting.  I replaced the butter in my favorite butter creme recipe with natural peanut butter.  First it seemed too thick, so I added more milk.  Then it seemed too runny, so I added more powdered sugar.  I ended up adding more peanut butter at the last minute because I didn't think it tasted "peanutty" enough.  By the time the cake cooled, the frosting was very, very thick and stiff.  When I tried to frost the cake, the top layer kept leaning off to one side, and the frosting was almost impossible to spread.  The cake split once, twice, three, then four times.  And it was all over.  I told everybody to come help themselves to whopping large pieces of cake.  Then I made everybody eat it for breakfast the next morning because I needed the empty cake plate. 

 

So on the way home from Church, we stopped at Weis, and the Birthday Boy picked out a Pellman's triple layer chocolate cake with chocolate peanut butter candies.  But it was frozen, and I wasn't sure it would be thawed in time to eat.  Fortunately, we ate later than I had planned and all was well.  You can see from the top photo that we added some green confetti sprinkles and fortune cookies to the top of the cake to keep with our green Chinese theme.

 

We also found big balloons with his name on them at Party City.  Our daughter had the great idea of blowing them up with glow sticks inside.  The problem was the glow sticks tended to jut out the sides and pop the balloons easily.  We also should have had them inflated with helium because we could not get them to stay upright on his chair.

 

On the front porch chalkboard, our daughter wrote Happy Birthday in Chinese with attempts at drawing some Asian flowers.  She decorated with green chalk; although, you can't tell from the photo.  I know I'm freaky about trying to keep our family members' names private, which is why everywhere his name appears, I've blotted it out.  Maybe some of you parents can understand.  We haven't taken any Chinese here, so we looked this up on the Internet and hope it's correct. 

 

I couldn't find any green Chinese birthday banners, so this one had to do from the Dollar Tree. 

 

This old farmhouse definitely does not have enough counter space, so I made use of the coal stove and turned it into a mini bar to make our first vodka tonics of the season for the big people.

 

Our Birthday Boy insisted on helping decorate, so he designed his own chalk dragon on our indoor chalkboard.

 

Finally it was time for dinner.  Our adult son and his fiancee arrived with homemade egg rolls, something I've never made, and I was thoroughly impressed.  Everyone loved them so I'll have to get the recipe to share.

 

At our son's request, my husband and I cooked up some chicken lo-mein.  Lots and lots of lo-mein.  We'll be eating it for days.  This is one of the few Asian dishes I create, but it's one most of us love (I have a few non-lovers in the family who were less than thrilled about dinner yesterday.)

Chicken Lo-Mein

Marinate a pound of thinly sliced boneless chicken breasts in 1 Tablespoon corn starch, salt, 1 Tablespoon water, 1 Tablespoon soy sauce, and powdered ginger.  Refrigerate for 30 minutes-several hours.  Cook a pound of vermicelli and drain.  Add the cooked vermicelli to heated oil in a skillet, and sprinkle in 1 Tablespoon soy sauce (enough to turn noodles slightly brown,) and salt to taste.  Stir-fry until heated through, then remove to a pot or plate to keep warm.  I mix in a tiny bit of oil to prevent it from sticking.  Stir-fry the marinated chicken in the same oil in skillet.  Add a little more soy sauce, salt, and ginger if you like.  Once cooked through, remove and keep warm.  Add 1/2 cup each of thinly sliced carrots, broccoli, cabbage, and mushrooms.  Stir-fry until tender crisp. Add 1-2 cups chicken broth, and bring to a boil.  Add the cooked chicken and 2 shredded scallions or chopped onions.  Bring to a boil.  Stir in mixture of 2 Tablespoons cornstarch, 2 teaspoons soy sauce, and 2 Tablespoons water.  Cook until thickened, stirring constantly.  Spoon over vermicelli, and serve immediately.  Of course, feel free to use any vegetables you like.  I also don't measure soy sauce or ginger; I just sprinkle it in as I go along until it tastes the way we like it.  We doubled this recipe and cooked it in a wok since it was too much for any of our skillets.

 

After dinner and cake, it was time to open a few gifts.  The Lego Creator set was put together in less than an hour.

 

But the pocket knife from his older brother is going to get hours and hours of use, I can tell.

 

He was already working on a walking stick or spear or something I maybe don't want to know about last night as it was turning dark.  Perhaps whittling wood will replace Lego building as his new hobby now that he's become a middle-schooler.  Regardless, I'm sure he'll continue to surprise us with his uniqueness as he enters this next stage of his life.

 

It's a Lego Party!

Our 9 year old son is having a birthday this coming week and loves Legos more than any other toy.  Actually, so does his 10 year old brother, but he didn't want me to throw him a Lego party back in May when it was his birthday.  There are so many cool things you can do with Legos, so I was excited to prepare for this party for school-aged boys.

Part of the fun of preparing for this party was that our son got to help with the preparations.  He built the Lego structures to hold the plasticware and the napkins, which were then set on the food table.

One of the activities was guessing how many Legos were in the Mason jar.  I rummaged through the large Lego bin the day before and tried to find a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors and then refused to give any hints as to how many there were.  The prize was a bag of Skittles because I was trying to find something inexpensive that still had Lego primary colors.  It ended up that the birthday boy had the closest guess.

The Lego slime was a huge hit, and everyone got a ziplock bag of their own.

The only ingredients I used were 2 bottles of Elmer's blue glitter glue and half a cup of liquid laundry starch.  The starch was added 1 tablespoon at a time until it was the desired consistency.

Then we added a bunch of little Lego pieces, including Lego people heads and hair and helmets.  I have to admit, it was pretty awesome, and I was the first one to get my hands in there to squish it around.  For more tips on how to make this, go to http://lemonlimeadventures.com/simple-lego-slime/

The food was colorful, but definitely not all healthy.  We had the favorites of our son: pizza rolls, Doritos, fruit and vegetables, and cupcakes.  There was also soda, which I concede to on birthdays.

We placed the carrots, strawberries, canteloupe, and maraschino cherries on my serving tray (handmade by my father) in the shapes of LEGO.  I'd like to say I came up with this idea on my own, but I actually saw it on Pinterest first.

My son requested strawberry cupcakes with white frosting, which was easy to accommodate.  My 13 year old daughter frosted them and added the Lego brick candy and confetti.  She considered stuffing them with more Lego candy, but I decided they would be too crunchy and just kept them on top instead.

The Birthday Boy was being rather stubborn and didn't want me to post any pictures of him on my blog.

We finished off snacking with these Wonka ice cream novelties.  The Poppin' Pops were a hit with the little boys. 

Out of curiosity, I had to try them.  Once you hit the center of each color, they really do pop and crackle in your mouth and throat---which is a rather bizarre feeling, but definitely interesting.

Party favors were little Lego mini figures.  I had no idea what HALO was because we don't play that here, but the boys thought the Lego figures were cool.  The Littlest Pet Shop packets were for the girls.  Our younger boys helped pick these out when we went to Target because they knew what their classmates were into.

This party was so much fun to prepare for and participate in!  The only thing we would do differently is have it a different month of the year because this poor guy always seems to have a birthday party when most of his friends are on vacation or are otherwise disposed. Those of us present, however, had a great time, and for the first Saturday in weeks, the weather was beautiful!