Butterfly birthday bash - Happy 4th, Kira!


My days are numbered where I can actually have any input into the themes of my kids' activities. By next year I'm quite sure that like all other kids her age, Kira will be wanting to have princess-themed everything! So, I wanted to try a theme party that was girly but not sponsored by Disney or Nickelodeon. Kira loves butterflies, and it's even part of her preschool's theme song ("Papillon bleu"). I also thought back to last year's beautiful butterfly cupcakes, and immediately thought of putting butterfly wings into each girl's loot bag. Voila, a theme was born!

Now that Kira is starting to make real friends through playgroup and preschool, making a guest list was a real challenge! We wanted to invite everyone, but ended up narrowing it down to just girls. Otherwise, there would have been 20 kids invited for sure! With the 8 girls who arrived, plus their siblings, plus the parents, we had 25 guests in our house. Wow!

The party was scheduled to last only 2 hours (it actually lasted 3), and I wanted it to be action-packed! As the girls arrived, they started up a tissue paper butterfly craft.

Food was served from early on, beginning with simple hors d'oeuvres and ending with a buffet of: lasagna, 4 choices of homemade pizzas, chili, chicken nuggets, mini hot dogs, salad, and drinks. Mark worked on the incredible menu - what would I do without him? This is the only photo of the food I could find, which hardly does the feast any justice:

I hounded our local party store for 2 weeks to make sure I could get a butterfly pinata. Haha, I know you're thinking "psycho party planning woman!" Well, could it be more beautiful and colourful than this? Success! The kids loved it, although it was seemingly impossible to break...


until finally the loot poured out and it was a grab for candy, chocolate, stickers, and confetti! Too slow with the camera... here is the end of the pinata grab. I'm still finding confetti around the house 10 days later.

Have I mentioned my friend Antonietta lately? She designed and made this gorgeous cake, all chocolate inside. Seriously, she is the best cake maker this end of town! Everyone helped blow out the candles.


We rushed through the gift opening and then let everyone hang out and play until they were ready to leave. Here's an impromptu princess parade that made its way up the stairs, led by mom Penny. Gotta love these moments!

Thanks to Ly-na, Karen and Heidi for sending me photos. I didn't manage to snap too many on my own that day. Here's an awesome shot of the gorgeous mommy and daughter pair, Karen & Kailyn.


Hey, would you believe that when I ventured downstairs to clean up after the guests left, the basement playroom was tidy? You moms rock! Thank you!

Whew! Made it through another year. I hear that from the 5th birthday onward, the parents drop the kids off and pick them up at the end of the party! Yikes! Gotta start planning! :)

Comments

tatsuko said…
Wow!!! Looks like a great parteee! Beautiful cake and pinata - definitely worth all the hounding :)