a Never Never Land party

We have been too busy to blog for the past while and it all started with S’s birthday party.   The theme was Peter Pan’s Never Never Land.  M was a super fun Captain Hook.  I was Wendy.  S was Peter Pan.  J was overwhelmed.  AJ didn’t wear feetie jammies, but he did carry around a teddybear and was Michael.  Most of the guest came as pixies and there was another Captain Hook and one Lost Boy.

M was in costume when AJ woke up from his nap and he didn't want anything to do with this scary black mustachioed man!

We had sunny 80 degree weather the day before and sunny 70 degree weather the day after.  So all the activities had been planned for outside, but on the day of the party it was freezing and windy.  We sprinkled the guests with pixie dust (glitter) at the door so that they could enter Never Never Land.  Sticking with the glitter pixie dust idea was a bit foolish once the festivities got moved inside.  Still magically fun, but we are going to be vacuuming up glitter for months.

I’d made a map of Never Never Land and they had to follow the dashed line to each spot and play a game and finally get to the pirates hidden treasure.  (Again, this was going to be FABULOUS in our adventurous yard. Boo.)  First stop was the Mermaid Lagoon where everyone’s legs got tied together down to the knees and we played something like musical chairs, only you had to get in bubbles (i.e. hula hoops) and instead of eliminating a kid each time, we just took out a bubble and in the end everyone was getting in the same hula hoop.  We tried this one outside,but it was just too cold.

Next location was the Indian Camp and we had a bit of target practice with a really old family favorite, crokinoles.  (Oh and we just scored ourselves the sage green vintage sectional which I didn't crop out of the photo below, so now we can finally start decorating the basement!)

Then it was to Pixie Hollow to learn to fly!  We took paper cut-outs of all the Peter Pan characters, each were taped on to about 1/3 of a drinking straw and strung on to their own fishing line that was tied to the banister across the room.  Then each kid blew up a balloon and taped it to the bottom of the character’s straw, and while holding the fishing line taut, let go of the balloon.  It was hilarious funny, when it worked, but there were quite a few challenged flyers in our group.  Not enough happy thoughts?

Peter Pan’s hideout was next up.  We played Peter Says (instead of Simon Says.)

Finally at Pirate’s Cove, we distributed eye patches, divided up into boys vs. girls teams, rearranged the furniture to make "ships" and use plastic balls to bomb each other.  (Prediction: next big trend will be Pirate Pixies.  All those girls sporting eye patches and sparkly wings were so cute!) 

Eventually the battle shifted to hand to hand combat with balloon swords.  Seriously, we will probably never have another party, no matter what the theme is, that doesn't involve a balloon sword battle.

The treasure was in a fancy gold, nautically decorated tin that J couldn't pass up at the thrift store a while ago and it was hidden in "Skull Rock"; otherwise known as the deep spooky storage closet in my bedroom.

The cake is always a place that I like to expend a lot of my pent up creative energy.  This time I sort of cheated.  I bought a cake at Walmart and scraped off all the hideous decorations so we had a plain white backdrop for a black paper cut out of Never Never Land and the children flying.  I’ve been doodling some pirate map-ish images for a while for something big I have planned for the kids’ bedroom, so I didn’t have to draw too much more and then I sent it through my nifty Silhouette Cameo.  I think it turned out pretty cool even if it wasn’t all edible.  I wonder if I could cut some fondant or frosting sheets with the Silhouette. . . ?

I don’t think I've been as tired as I was after that party for a long time!  Whew!