It's no secret that my eldest daughter turned 5 recently... and that she wanted a Fairy tale themed party... well the party was last Sunday, and I'm still recovering!Mimi made a beautiful "snow queen / princess bride" and kept changing her mind throughout the party what she was dressed as. Little Lotti was a cute mini-mermaid princess, while Mummy went as the wicked stepmother and Daddy was Daddy.
The highlight of the party for Mimi was 'putting on fake tattoos,' her little sister Lotti loved 'the beautiful cake' and Happy-Husband enjoyed chatting to the kids' fathers. For me, I loved seeing the kids eyes when they arrived and found all the different 'worlds' that Mimi and I had designed (Pirate Cove, Underwater World, Candy Land, Princess Parlour and so on), I enjoyed watching them crash and thrash the big box knock down tower to bits (what kid wouldn't enjoy breaking something on purpose without getting in trouble!), and of course seeing my daughter play the perfect host to all her friends, showing them where the bathroom was, where the craft table was, where they could play, and why they weren't allowed upstairs.
The most unexpected moment was when I realised that Mimi had taken all the cards off all the presents. Before the party you see I had talked to her about how this year we were going to try something new, and instead of opening-as-we-go, we were going to put all the presents to one side, enjoy our friends company, and then open them at our leisure later. So unbeknownst to me, (until I spotted her do it) what she did was take the presents from her guests as they arrived, say "thank you so much," take the card off the present, open it and say "ohhh it's so pretty," and then put it with her other cards. The guests' parents thought it was very gracious, but of course were all rather perturbed by the fact that we would never be able to match the presents to the guests. It doesn't really matter too much, except that it does make writing thank-you notes a lot easier!
What I did discover is that, as a gift-giver, there are 2 clever ways around this issue:
- put the card and it's envelope in with the present, and then wrap both together, keeping the card and present forever together, or
- on the front of the wrapped present discretely write "to X, Love Y" so that again, if the card gets separated the parents have half a chance of knowing who belongs to what.
My all time favorite moment of the party however, was when a young boy came up and said, "when's the pinata?" I replied, "we're not having one, there's plenty of other things to do." He scowled and said, "but you didn't even have pass-the-parcel." I love how honest kids are without their diplomacy-filters!
I'll post more details on the food, decorations, craft table, and more soon, soon, soon...
Best wishes, and happy birthday to everyone whose birthday is now-ish!
Linda.
