Selah's Seventh Birthday - Frozen!

Every year, our kids get a choice on whether they want presents from Mom and Dad or a birthday party. If they choose presents, I may do a special birthday dinner and a dessert, but no big party. If they choose party, we have a cake and friends and we give them just one little something to unwrap.

This year, Selah chose a Frozen party!

The cake was a simple white cake with pale blue buttery cream cheese frosting, white fondant snowflakes and a white chocolate "Selah". 

I used blue Jell-O on the inside to make it pretty.

Kaity sculpted Olaf from white fondant, and we made his arms, legs, and features out of chocolate. His nose is a sculpted candy corn.

The party favors were baggies of marshmallows, pretzel sticks, chocolate chips and a candy corn, so that guests could build their own snowmen at home.

I kept the food pretty simple.

The punch was just blended blue Hawaiian Punch and Sprite with "snowballs" of vanilla ice cream. The ice cubes are just blue Jell-O, and that's a dish of Olaf's Warm (Hershey's) Hugs!

A little nod to Hans and Anna's duet here!

I certainly didn't plan it that way, but it worked out really well to be able to recycle a lot of the decorations and accessories from Kaity's party to use for Selah's.

The beautiful birthday girl! Our little Selah. It's hard to believe she's 7 already.

Of course, Lauryn had to wear her Anna dress!

As a very special treat, we hired a friend of Kaity's to be Queen Elsa! Alyssa does various characters for events in our area and she was amazing! Here, she is blindfolding Selah to play Pin the Nose on Olaf.

After the game, Elsa sang a song with everyone - "Let It Go!" and later, "Do You Wanna Build A Snowman?"

The girls made bracelets with the beads Elsa brought from Arendelle. The boys made snowmen with googly eyes and cotton balls.

Singing "Happy Birthday!"

Queen Elsa and Princess Selah!

...and little princess Anna, too!

Kaity and her friend ...

And we made Joe do it, too.

Bookworm Birthday Party, Take Two

When Kaity and I started talking about plans for her 16th birthday party, there was only one theme that kept rising to the top - books! I did a book-themed party for her second birthday, and wrote about that on Barefoot in the Kitchen.

Be prepared for lots of pictures! As always, you can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

Kaitlyn sweet-talked the librarians into giving her some library checkout cards to use for party invitations:

Kaity and I were especially excited about the sign we made for the door!

(Tolkien reference, for those who aren't familiar.)

Kaity wrote out all the signs for the dishes we served. She looked up fonts specific to each story so that they would match.

References, left to right, top to bottom: Lord of the Rings, Strawberry Girl, The Grapes of Wrath, I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato, James and the Giant Peach, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Anne of Green Gables, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Kaity's favorite birthday cake, Aunt Jan's Chocolate Cappuccino Cheesecake! It is rich and decadent and worth every minute, every penny, every calorie. I topped it with whipped cream, fondant flowers, chocolate-covered espresso beans and Sixlets.

We decorated the hallway with floating candles, just like the Great Hall at Hogwarts! They're made with fishing line, toilet paper/paper towel rolls, tape, and battery-powered tea lights.

And speaking of Hogwarts... Kaity dressed up as Bellatrix Lestrange! She wore two of my dresses, and I braided her hair the night before so it would be kinky and wild. Add in some dark make-up and she was spot-on!

She was cracking herself up trying to channel her inner Bellatrix. I told her to pretend like she was annoyed with Joe.

We played a few games, one of which was to guess which book matched the first lines Kaity had written out.

Here you can see a few girls dressed as characters from the Narnia series, Percy Jackson, and Harry Potter.

The food! (In the background, you can see two girls wearing "robes" - they're Gandalf the Grey and Gandalf the White.)

The butterbeer was delicious! By the time I took pictures, it was all gone. I mixed a jar of butterscotch ice cream topping with vanilla ice cream and cream soda. It was tooth-achingly sweet!

Another game the girls played was to write a story. Kaity wrote the first line, then passed it to the next girl and wrote the next line, and so on until it made its way around the circle. Another party guest started a story, too, so we had two going around. They were quite silly!

Party decorations ... It's hard to tell, but this is Kaity's initials - KGP.

(Man, my wall really looks yellow, here! But as you can see above, it's gray.) The banner is a cheap one I picked up at Target, and we embellished it with book page triangles, curly ribbon and twine.

Opening presents!

Our gift to Kaity was a scavenger hunt for little gifts, leading up to a card with cash inside. Her first clue led her to "the Dalek shelf" where she found a Whovian bookmark, a Doctor Who calendar, and these, which I couldn't resist buying!

Tom Baker is my favorite "classic" Doctor - and the first one I remember watching. He was known for offering people Jelly Babies.

In this picture, the girls are trying to solve a word search to find the clue to the next gift.

That led her to the cupboard under the stairs, where she found Bertie Botts' Every Flavor Beans (another Harry Potter reference), and a riddle ...

 ... which led her outside to Gandalf, where she found a puzzle book and another clue.

Back up the stairs! It felt a little like the movie Clue, with Tim Curry.

This clue led her to a Pride and Prejudice themed gift and some jumbled Scrabble tiles which (when arranged) spelled out ...

And Kaity recognized that immediately as a reference to the TV show, Psych, and found her card with cash in between the DVD sets.

Birthday Cake! 

In the basket in the background of this picture are the party favors. Kaity made bookmarks for each girl and we filled the bags with aqua and gold candies and a traditional party noisemaker.

All told, it was a lovely, fun, tasty 16th birthday party for our little Kaity-Kaity.

Graveyard Walking

Several weeks ago, Jeff was studying Google Maps, like he does, and he saw an interesting area in Athens that he'd never noticed before. It turned out to be Oconee Hill Cemetery and we decided to drive over to check it out.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, but I'll give you a hint: It was awesome.