my 40th birthday reading party

The much-anticipated event of my year has arrived: I have turned 40. (As Freddie would say: "What!") It's a weird number to apply to oneself - I feel too young for that, but also I've been married for 18 years (!), at my job for 17 years (!), and I have a kid entering middle school in the fall (!), so I guess it makes sense. Whatever I feel, it's an occasion to mark. Life is more fun when we take the chance to do that! I thought about having a joint birthday bash with Peter this summer, but we're both introverts... What I do love though is a good book, so why not make a party of that?!

Thus was born my idea to throw myself a reading party. I invited some ladies to bring their book, have some snacks and drinks (and cake! baked and decorated with a personalized theme by my dad, as always - he outdid himself with this one!), and take advantage of all of the seating areas in my parents' house to sit down and read. There was some time for chatting before and after, but basically we used silent reading time in lieu of any party game or trivia. Because if you can't do the dorkiest but most on-brand thing for your 40th birthday party, when can you?

I used stacks of my favorite summer reads as part of the decor and offered them up for borrowing after the party in case anyone was in the market for one. Other than that, just kept it simple with some colorful plates, these great embossed napkins from Etsy, and some introvert + bookish pencil party favors.

It was super fun to have everyone go around and say a little bit about their current read that they brought, and then of course to read! I thought my selection would be perfect for an evening with some of the ladies in my life: The Life Council: Ten Friends Every Woman Needs. Even more perfect for the occasion? The book that took center display in my tablescape: This Time Tomorrow. I really loved this book a couple summers ago, and I remembered that it takes place on the eve of the protagonist's 40th birthday - exactly when this party was taking place for me. Too perfect not to include.

And finally... in honor of 40 years of reading (or being read to), here are 40 books I have loved in those years.

A chocolate chip cookie tasting 60th birthday party!

You know when you have those moments of realizing you thought one thing was totally normal, and then you find out that the rest of the world thinks a different thing is normal? That was me at some point in elementary school with realizing that stereotypically it's moms who bake - not dads, like at my house. Over the years my dad has gone through lots of baking/pastry phases and new expertises, under his; the cake baking and decorating has been a long-standing one that has featured at a lot of my parties, such as Freddie's recent 2nd... but my earliest memories of his baking was of chocolate chip cookies.

So for his 60th birthday, it seemed fitting to celebrate by baking something for him for once - and chocolate chip cookies seemed like just the thing. My sister and sister-in-law and I decided to make it a tasting of 6 different recipes, 3 homemade by each of us, and 3 bakery selections. We got a cute printable rating card on Etsy, and inspired by it I designed a little placemat of sorts for each participant. We taped these down (it was windy!) and placed 1/4 of each type of cookie so that everyone could taste at their own pace and compare/contrast away. It was fun to see the ratings in the end, and to reveal where each one was from. My dad was a pro at identifying which were homemade vs. baked and even was able to correctly identify with no prompting which bakery they were from. 

As palette cleansers we found some beverages that might pair well with a cookie: "adult" milk (kahlua + cream), a Belgian trippel beer, and an imperial porter (voted best pairing!), which we poured into little shot glasses. The great thing about this tasting party though is that it's all ages friendly - Hendrik and Freddie and their cousin all participated too, minus the adult drinks :)

Also fitting to host a cookie party to celebrate my dad as he's one link in the inherited genetic sweet tooth passed down from my grandma, to him, me, and my kids - see Freddie there trying to sneak some cookies after he had finished his own?

Oh, and if you like the idea of a tasting party, you should also check out how we celebrated our 30th, with cupcake + wine/beer pairings. My dad baked them all as a gift for us that time around, and did the beverage pairings too. It was such a blast!

Freddie's Very Hungry birthday party

Freddie turned two last week (!) and just like with his first birthday, we had a theme ready-made around food... thanks to his love of The Very Hungry Caterpillar (and his own well-known love of eating). You know when the caterpillar eats through "one slice of chocolate cake, one ice cream cone, one pickle, one slice of swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon"? Menu PLANNED.

We had lots of family over to celebrate Freddie's day and lots of fun with the cuteness and tastiness of it all - the piece de resistance of course being the custom cake made by my dad. Thanks to Eric Carle's description of it being a piece of chocolate cake in the book, I got to request Poppy's all-time best cake flavor - chocolate cake with Oreo mousse filling - and then he topped it with the adorable piped chocolate decorations and dots. I was pretty pleased with the rest of my decor too - had considered buying some cute cutouts/clip art like these from Etsy, but then I happened upon a $2 used copy at the library, and I just made the cutouts myself from the book! Used them to make a little banner, food placards for the buffet, and wrap decor for the utensils/pie stand. 

I did have some other good Etsy finds though, with Freddie's party tee, the balloon bouquet (which we broke up to decorate different places including the back yard and lost several to the wind before I got photos, oh well), and the polka dot garlands. Had to get polka dot plates too! Oh, and some easy favors with Jelly Belly and mini M&Ms to mimic all of the dots with on-theme stickers to close up the little baggies. All in all, a colorful and yummy and fun celebration of our sweet and silly boy.

Hendrik's Poké-party

Hendrik's birthday parties since year 1 have basically been little time capsules of what he's like at that age - from his obsession with birds, to his love of Harry Potter, and now... Pokémon. Admittedly this is not something I personally care for (or really have any knowledge of), but after being introduced to it at school he has amassed quite a collection of cards along with an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Pokémon. So of course he wanted this to be his party theme, and I obliged - but tried to at least make it cute ;-)

 

Invites and décor

It's Paperless Post all the way for me these days, and luckily they had a cute Pokémon inspired option! For décor, I'm always tempted to go all-out, but honestly it's more for me than the kids - I mean, do 9 year olds even notice any of this? They were immediately just running around the house, not oohing and aahing over decorations. So I'm glad I kept it fairly simple, since I don't really have time to be doing Pinterest-worthy creations... Ordered some fun balloons, which he LOVED, and a birthday banner, and I got out my cute cake stands to arrange the food. Good enough! Though I did see and think this idea to do a wall of Pokeball designs made out of paper plates was really cute.

Treats

Hendrik helped me plan this part - he thought we'd be on theme if we did Poképuffs (cupcakes) and Pokéberries (fruit tray), and on the day of the party he even came up with making cute little label cards for them. I kept it simple by ordering cupcakes from the grocery store bakery with color-coordinating frosting and grabbing a pre-made fruit tray.

 

 

Activities

This is the biggest "friend party" we've done in years, and I was a bit nervous about having a bunch of 8 and 9 year olds running around my house, so I tried to come up with some good activities - but also was a little nervous they'd think my ideas were cheesy... luckily I came across an idea to do some minute to win it games as "training" for Pokémon trainers. You need your agility and dexterity and such before you go off to catch your Pokémons after all!

Then for the catching of Pokémon, I hid little figurines for a backyard hunt. To make it cost-effective and also a bit of a challenge for these older kids, I got these little Croc charms - quite small so they really had to hunt, but comes in a huge pack so I could hide enough for each kid to find about 6 of them. And then I put little bracelets in the favor bags that they could put their charms onto.

The minute to win it games we did:

• Unwrap it: see how many Hershey's kisses the kids can unwrap in 1 minute while wearing oven mitts (spoiler alert - not many!)
• Balancing act: hold a tongue depressor (or a popsicle stick, I suppose - we have an ENT doctor for a dad here!) in your mouth and see how many dice you can stack on it. Can try it two ways: stack your own (makes the kids go a bit cross-eyed, very funny), or do it with a partner and have them stack on your stick.
• Hands-free transfer: put a pile of mini marshmallows on the table and see how many each kid can transfer into a bowl using just a straw, no hands.
• Marshmallow toss: have pairs of kids stand 4ish feet apart and see how many mini marshmallows they can toss into their partner's cup in a minute. And then have the other kid toss the other way - eats up some more time!

 

Favor bags

The part that I more went all-out on searching/spending a bit because I like to find things that are not too junky and are a bit of a novelty. For starters, who doesn't love office supplies, adult or kid? I found round sticky note pads (reminiscent of a Pokéball...) and put those in along with an eraseable pen (Hendrik is obsessed with these and his friends seemed to love them too) and a Pokémon pencil. Then there was the rubber bracelet for the character charms they collected in the scavenger hunt, and some treats too: Pokémon grahams and monster-themed Hershey's kisses. And everything went into these little bags.

 

It seemed like all of the kids had a great time (and were delighted to meet the baby Pikachu in attendance), and Hendrik thanked me for such a fun party multiple times unprompted, so I'm feeling like it was a success! Also felt like I was ready for bed by like 5pm that day, but that's another story... whew.

a Freddie-cakes first birthday party

I love a good party theme, and when it came to celebrating Freddie's 1st last week, I had a built-in one ready to go: one of his silly nicknames from early on has been Freddie-Cakes, so what better theme than... cake!

It was a casual family gathering, so I kept things pretty simple with Paperless Post invites, a crockpot bbq dinner, and a balloon garland + banner as the main decor, which we set up in the outdoor tent space at our church. The best part of course was the cake display - my dad, our resident family cake baker, made my theme dreams come true by baking 3 different ones for us: chocolate with oreo mousse filling, butter cake with raspberry mouse and nutella frosting, and carrot cake (which might sound less exciting compared to the others, but his carrot cake is good). I don't super go in for the Pinterest-y smash cake thing, but Freddie loves textures of things so I thought he'd probably get a kick out of going at one, so I used a healthy-ish banana bread mix in a mini pan, frosted it up (yes, he got plenty o' sugar there), and let him at it. And yes, he loved it.

What fun - even if kind of mindblowing - to celebrate our Freddie's first! Didn't manage to get everything into a photo, but here's all of the supplies I used - plus cakes courtesy of my dad of course. Oh, and the tablecloth I actually dug up from Hendrik's first birthday party, where - surprise, surprise - the theme was pie.

invitations: Paperless Post

here for the cake tee: Stormy Ray on Etsy

banner: DIYed with Target garland + Squeakily Stickers decals

high-chair balloon garland: Glamfetti Co on Etsy

tassel banner: Glamfetti Co on Etsy

cake stands: Target (similar)

cake plates: Meri Meri

1 candle: Meri Meri

confetti napkins: Target

backyard science birthday party

My big kid turned 8 last week! And while unfortunately he's on "pandemic birthday" year 2, I really wanted to find a way for him to be able to celebrate with some friends, which we didn't get to do last year. Enter the backyard science birthday gathering - works perfectly because scientists in labs wear masks a lot anyway, and also I didn't have to worry about any indoor cleanup. Ha! Most importantly, it was lots of fun for our science-loving birthday boy and his neighborhood friends.

Since we were in the backyard, there was minimal decorating - just found this fun themed banner on Amazon (though realized after the photos that the thing has a typo in it - did you spot it?) and covered up our patio table + a folding table with disposable tablecloths for our activities, and Hendrik was very excited to set out everyone's supplies on them beforehand, including some safety goggles and ID badge/lanyards to dress the part of scientist. And Hendrik of course had to wear his full Halloween costume, complete with lab coat.

My grandpa, a retired chemistry professor, was so kind to bring supplies and do some demonstrations for everyone with explanations of the science behind it, including the classic mentos + coke explosion, the non-newtonian fluid oobleck, and a quick + easy but really fun trick with surface tension where you put water on a plate, sprinkle in some pepper, and then dip in a toothpick that has a little dishsoap on the end. You should try it and see what happens... The kids loved them all!

And then I had fun with putting together the favor bags with some more scientist supplies and some treats - little notebooks and mechanical pencils, a science-themed pin that I put on a little thank-you card, some mini mentos packs as a souvenir of that fun activity, and some flask-shaped cookies that we made (so everyone could stay masked, we just did the treats to go!). They really make a cookie cutter for everything. Oh, and as a bonus, everyone got to go home with a baggie of the oobleck. 

making lately: Zoom birthday party packs

As various family members' birthdays came over the spring, summer, and fall we would jokingly say, "everyone gets a Covid birthday!" - but it's just reality now. We're down to one family member not yet marking the occasion - and he'll be having his quarentimes birthday next week. (Now the main thing is to limit how many people have to have two of them!!) So we've all done plenty of Zoom celebrations over the last year, but to take things up a notch for my grandpa's 80th last weekend, my mom had the idea to deliver a party pack to each household's porch, so that we could all celebrate with the same decorations in our Zoom background, and enjoy the same snacks and treats while we gathered virtually. 

 

With Target curbside pickup + a little session with my kitchen helper and our birthday-themed cookie cutters, here's what I came up with for the execution of said party packs. Each household received:

• a birthday banner for everyone to hang up behind them
• party hats to wear during the call
• festive napkins
  
• a beverage to cheers with: either my grandpa's favorite beer, or a cream soda for the underage participants
• a bag of colorfully iced + sprinkled cookies (classic family recipe great for all occasions!) made with birthday-themed cookie cutters
• 4 baggies of chips, labeled with numbers: we did a chip tasting, with everyone sampling the different numbers and ranking what they liked, before I revealed the brand of each (people were good at identifying the classic Lays, and everyone landed on one of the kettle chip options as their fave)
  

This was a fun way to make a Zoom gathering more festive to mark a big milestone - adds something special but also a little bit of an activity to enjoy together. A great way to celebrate safely with local family and friends that you would have otherwise had over in person. 

There are lots of other fun ideas for tastings you could do too! Of course there's the kind of stuff you might think to do for an in-person gathering that you can just do in porch delivery + Zoom format instead: beer or wine would be enjoyable for a gathering of adults, or a selection of cheeses or cupcakes/cake slices. Or you could go with various flavored chips (bbq, jalepeno, etc.) and have people guess the flavor. We even did a jelly bean flavor guessing game for Hendrik's Harry Potter Zoom party in October.

Happy and safe celebrating out there... Hopefully back to regular party programming soon though!