To conclude Ethan's week-long birthday celebrating, we had a party for him and NINE of his closest friends from church!! Ahhhh... Nothing like a house full of 4-6 year olds!! :)
Clear back in January or February sometime, Ethan decided on a construction-themed party and he stuck to his guns... Right up until sometime in March when I opened my big-fat-mouth and mentioned an army/camouflage party might be kinda cool! Or maybe trains... Even though I'd already been working on the construction idea. Eventually we decided to keep the construction theme - especially after we found inspiration for the cake! [Thank you Pinterest!]
The day of the party I still hadn't made the cake... I know, I know! Luckily the party didn't start until 1pm, so I had a little time. I got the cakes made in the morning and then sent Sean and Ethan on a couple errands to get a prize for the goody bags and pick-up the pizza. {Side story: See, I'd been eyeing these 5-pack mini construction trucks that I'd seen at both Target and Walmart, but when I'd been at Target earlier that week they only had one pack, so I figured I'd wait and get both at Walmart but then didn't make it over to Walmart. So I sent Sean on a wild goose chase since Walmart only ended up having one-pack, too! Sean had to go back to Target to get the last pack that they had too! What does all that translate into?? Ethan was about 20+ minutes late for his own party! Ooops! But the kids had fun playing with his toys and running around outside.}
So Ethan and Sean got home with the pizzas just as the party kids and I were finishing up a construction-themed matching game {that Ethan had poo-pooed earlier, so I knew he wouldn't be sad about missing it}.
After that the kids ate their pizza and apple slices and drank juice from their personalized (party favor) cups and then we played the classic children's party game: "pin-the-scoop-on-the-excavator"!! But you may know it better as "pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey". Obviously, we changed it to match our theme!
Next I had Sean take the kids outside to play while I busted my butt calmly worked on frosting/decorating Ethan's cake.
Last three things on the agenda were pinata, presents and cake... We barely squeezed them all in! In fact, I got pictures of the pinata, but went back to finishing the cake while Sean oversaw the present-opening - so we don't have pictures of that. But Ethan got some great presents!! [Construction trucks, Nerf gun, CARS 2 cars, money for movie date with Mom and Dad, Transformer legos, Zhu Zhu pet "ninja" hamster, baseball/bat]
I finished up the cake just in time!! And this is the only picture I got before it was devoured!! Not sure if you can really tell, but the excavator is supposed to be actually digging into the cake - I ripped some of it off to give it that look. Then there's chocolate rocks on the site... There's more I wanted to do with it (crushed Oreo dirt, etc.) but just ran out of time. Ethan was pleased, though, and that's all that matters! Oh, and it was a triple-layer silver-white (homemade) and strawberry (box cake mix) cake - per Ethan's request. It worked out well that Ethan has 5 letters in his name because I didn't have time to try to write on this cake with icing!
Oh, and check out the birthday banner I made:
Quick tutorial: I took 12x12" cardstock and cut it down to 4x6" {I just recently bought a paper cutter and I love it!!} so you get 6 pieces per sheet. In a Word document, change your paper size to 4x6", adjust margins as needs, pick your font and make it as big/bold as possible. Put one letter per page and then print by putting your cut cardstock in the photo slot of your printer. Two hole punches across the top and some ribbon, twine or string and you've got your banner! For minimal twine showing, go in from the front on the left side and come back out through the back on the right side. Make sense? From there you can "fancy it up" a bit by cutting out part of the bottom, using special scissors, etc. For Ethan's I just made a mark in the bottom middle, an inch up and then cut from the corners to that point. The construction cones I did by hand. I was pretty happy with how it turned out - particularly because it was an easy and inexpensive decoration that showed the party theme well.
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