An Olympic Caliber Birthday

We normally downplay V's even-numbered birthdays, but because this year was an Olympic year, I just couldn't resist. I figured that by the time she is turning 12 she won't be as excited about a themed party so I'd better celebrate it now.

We invited three girls from her school for a slumber party and two of them accepted. The plan was to award "medals" for a "make your own pizza" competition, so I made each girl an Olympic medal out of Fimo, with the Olympic rings on one side and something that resembled a pizza on the other.

The cake was chocolate with peanut butter cream cheese filling, decorated with fondant. The first cake attempt didn't come out of the pan, but I saved it anyway and used it as the base layer. Even though the corners were crumbling, the fondant does a pretty good job of covering it up. I didn't have enough white fondant to cover the entire cake, so on the long edges I rolled red, white and blue strips together to make stripes.

I made a bunch of international flags on labels and wrapped them around toothpicks.

I used extra ribbon from the medals to make bows to cover up the seams on the top edges. It matched the long edges so I think it looked like I planned it that way.

We actually ate this cake with the neighbors the day before her birthday at our monthly "game night". The cake the girls ate was a Ben & Jerry's ice cream cake decorated similarly.

The girls made their own pizzas for dinner, I quizzed them on their knowledge of Winter Olympic sports, then we watched "Cool Runnings", the story of the Jamaican Bobsled Team. They seemed to really enjoy themselves and it was a nice mellow party.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen...

V's 7th birthday earlier this year was a real Roman feast! Following up the Ancient Egypt 5th birthday 2 years ago, the 7th birthday was an Ancient Roman Goddess party. The idea arose when I showed V how to translate the inscription on the Statue of Liberty's tablet from roman numerals, and also somewhat from our trip to Italy last year. I ran with the idea. V, who didn't have a 6th birthday party, was suitably excited, but did take the opportunity to ask why her parties have themes. (And by that she wasn't referring to plates and cups with Spongebob on them. She meant why is there library research involved, and why do I make costumes and plan thematic games.) I asked her, "How many of your friends' birthday parties do you return from with a complete costume, and having learned something about history?" I think she understood. Our library research included a kid's version of "Julius Caesar", books about Ancient Rome and the Coliseum, and Roman myths. V's birthday (mid-February) is nicely timed so after the Christmas and New Years activity, we can pick a theme in early January and have time to buy related items on E-Bay. This year it was Roman God/Goddess bookmarks for the girls to color while guests arrived, Roman Numeral dice for the goody bags, a Roman Numeral placemat, Roman Numeral candles, and crown supplies. More on the crowns later. For costumes, I made 10 little togas out of white sheets from Goodwill and estate sales. I ended up having enough sheets for my own toga, and for my husband and dad to fashion their own costumes. The togas were trimmed with gold ribbon. The party was on the Friday of a week-long company shutdown, so I had plenty of time to spend on the sewing machine.

I envisioned gold and silver leafy crowns, but couldn't find exactly what I was looking for in my price range, so I bought gold and silver leaves (like the ones used for corsages) with wired stems, and made my own by twisting them around metallic pipe-cleaners.

The cake was an endeavor in itself. I knew it would be a Coliseum cake, and borrowed a tube pan from a neighbor to get the desired shape. I found a recipe for Lemon Grove cake (like a pound cake) in my California Heritage Continues cookbook. At Michael's craft store, I bought a package of fondant containing 4 colors (light flesh tone, tan, dark brown and black), and brown frosting tint. I made buttercream frosting and tinted it brown. The fondant was very easy to work with and by mixing the colors, I had enough to cover the outside of the cake plus extra. I cut out sections with a knife and vegetable peeler to make the windows, and applied it to the buttercream, then added details.

Games were "Roman Numeral Bingo" and "Pin the Rome on the Italy". For Bingo, we used regular cards but I printed the numbers 1-75 in roman numerals on slips of paper. When I drew one out, I wrote the numerals on a big pad of paper and the girls had to help me decipher the number before they could mark it on their card. The winner got a Roman Numeral placemat. "Pin the Rome on the Italy" used a wall map of Europe, a blindfold, and labels with the girls names. Spin them around 3 times and let them at it. Food was an appetizer platter of grapes and cheese cubes (smokey cheddar and havarti), followed by Chicken Caesar salad. The best part was the salad dressing, which I special ordered from our local organic grocer. They don't normally sell it, but they make it for their Chicken Caesar wraps and it is out of this world. Goody bags included a Roman Numeral dice and scrapbook stickers of Italian landmarks. In the thank-you notes, we included a picture of the girls in their costumes as a memento. All in all a terrific party...and we all learned something!

5th Birthday Party

V's 5th birthday was a great success. A month before the party, we had been (for some reason I can't recall) talking about the sphinx and pyramids in Egypt. I decided shortly after that to have V's party with an Egyptian theme. We checked out books from the library to keep her interested and found some great museum websites with ancient egyptian games she could play online. I'm not the type to fork out cash to reserve a party room or take a group of kids on an "outing" so we had it at home, and V was allowed to invite 9 people (turned out to be all girls) because we have a 10-person dining room table. One was not able to attend. This was the first real party where we welcomed gifts. Previous years we specified "no gifts please" when we were gathering at a coffee shop or for a play group to celebrate her birthday. Recently I figured that if she didn't receive gifts in a party setting, she wouldn't be able to practice being thankful and gracious. She did a fantastic job and thanked and hugged each girl before moving on to the next gift. She even handwrote her own thank-you notes. I spent most of my prep time finding the right font for the invitations that would look egyptian while still being legible by 4 and 5 year olds, and their parents. Then, for the planned treasure hunt, I needed a simple hieroglyphic font that correlated roughly to the actual heiroglyphic alphabet. I also researched online for appropriate activities that would occupy the two hours I planned for. Because the girls attending are into dressing up in costumes, I bought 10 yards of white broadcloth and made each girl a "kalasiris" or egyptian robe. Also gold rope to tie around their waist, and enough stretchy gold sequin trim to make each girl two "bracelets". I kept the robes simple, and each one took about 20 minutes to sew, even with finishing all seams except the neck hole. I made three on the larger side for the older girls, and one smaller one for the youngest petite girl. Once I made the first one and had a pattern, the rest were cake.

Speaking of cake, I had immediately eliminated the possibility of a Sphinx cake, and settled on a pyramid cake which would be much easier to architect. V wanted something with strawberries, so I found a good strawberry cake recipe and made buttercream frosting with high-quality european butter. I estimated for 5 layers, based on the sizes of pans I had available, with a 9" square bottom layer, decreasing by 1.5" each layer up to a 3" top layer. Using the scraps cut from previous layers, I only needed one 11 x 17 and two 8" square cakes. I intended the frosting to be yellow/tan/sand colored with edible glitter, but I ended up choosing "copper" as my frosting tint. I disliked the color so much (too orange) I used the entire container of coloring and various food colorings to achieve something that was more brown, with edible yellow sparkles. I placed it on a board covered with foil and frosted the foil to look like a desert, complete with blue paper Nile and sushi grass growing along the riverbank, with a bedouin leading two camels across the "sand". One activity was that the girls would color their own neck capes, which they really got into. I only had to buy two packs of highlighters at Staples. After they put those on, we took some pictures (a couple girls, as I had expected, decided they didn't want to wear the kalasiris, or put on a neck cape, or be in a picture, but I think they still had a good time).

After that, we played "Pin the Tail on the Camel" which was a game V came up with, because she really wanted to play "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" but we couldn't incorporate that into Ancient Egypt. I drew a pretty cool camel on newsprint using a grid, and V helped me color it. The morning of the party I felt he looked a tad plain, so I added the pyramids in the background and shadows, etc. He's still pinned on the wall like a piece of artwork.

After cake and presents, we did a treasure hunt for the "goody bags". This part I had a difficult time planning, although I had hidden 8 encoded notes around the house, with each one pointing to the next location. Each girl was given a hieroglyphic decoder sheet in a nice big font and we ran around the house finding them all. The main issues were that the girls that knew the alphabet well and could read were the first to decode the message and run to the next location. Eventually the slower girls felt bad because they never found one first. I tried to give everyone equal opportunity by not starting to decode until we were all in a group and everyone could see the clue. Each goody bag consisted of a sheet of egyptian stickers, authentic egyptian paper money, and an egyptian action figure (all purchased on E-bay) with a short description and a heiroglyphic alphabet key.