Ella's 5th Birthday: Cooking Party

...to continue...

For Jon, most of June was spent finishing up all the reading for his spring semester at RPTS and planning Ella's 5th birthday party. She'd asked for a ballet party, but we talked her into a princesses/knights theme instead since she had 12 boys in her class and only 4 girls. He put a ton of thought and work into it. However, the week of her part soon arrived and I started panicking about the possibility of rain (there was a lot of cardboard involved in the plans), the feasibility, the difficulty of some of the games, and the amount of kids required to play them since only 3 had rsvp'd.

We quickly changed it to a cooking party and it was a hit if I do say so myself! We picked 3 recipes: Pizza Bubbly for lunch, Funfetti cupcakes (we actually made these in advance so they would be ready to decorate) and homemade soft pretzels if we had time (we didn't). The pizza and cupcakes were easy, simple, and safe to sample as we made them.

Making the Pizza: the kids took turns contributing toppings. We picked extra cheese, pineapple, and pepperoni. Sadly none of them wanted tomato slices, black olives, banana peppers or mushrooms.

Pizza Bubbly before it went in the oven

For party favors, we opted for recipe cards, placemats and their pizza and cupcakes. We got plain fabric placemats and markers for fabric and had the kids design their own to take home. I wanted to have them decorate their own mini aprons, but they were much more expensive and the craft store only had a couple.  For the recipe cards I used a bunch of 3.5 x 5 inch blank colored cards, put a small, typed and cut out recipe in the center and then taped the entire thing with packing tape (it looked laminated). Ella had gotten a Princess and the Frog cook book for christmas, so we picked an easy dessert and dinner recipe from there and the third recipe card was for the Pizza Bubbly they made at the party.

Some of the party guests: Ella's preschool buddies

While the food was cooking, we played food related games in the living room. These were some of the ideas we came up with (big thanks to Kristyn on this one!):

*Fill a large bowl filled with malted milk balls and m&ms (although I suggest a pretzel combo, if you want less sugar). The kids sit in a circle. One gets to eat as much of the candy as they can grab while wearing oven mits, while the rest of the children take turns rolling a die. The first one to get a 6 gets the bowl and mits passed to them and it is now their turn. This continues until all the candy is consumed or each kid has had a turn.

*Blindfold the child and have them try a sample of something they would be able to recognize on a
cracker or spoon, such as a piece of chocolate, a strawberry, peanut butter, and other things that a preschooler would easily recognize. They will have to guess what they ate. (Check for no allergies!)

*Have a couple of plates filled with snacks. Kids will have to pick something they want to eat from the plates & either act like the snack or act like something that would eat the snack (you might have to give
them some ideas) in order to get to eat it. On the plates put things like gummy worms, scoobydoo snacks, etc- basically anything that might spike their imagination.

The rest of the time was spent eating, singing happy birthday, opening presents and running around playing with balloons. It took up the 2 hour time slot easily and the kids had a blast! Our first party with Ella's friends went off with a bang. I have to say I'm really relieved. We managed a group of 6  five year olds (+ one 3 year old) with relative ease. Although, we did it with Kristyn's help and both Jon and I present. I'm hoping Lily wants a party like this in a few years, because the leftovers were delicious.

Making a wish

Birthday girl (with gummy bear cupcake)