Ahoy, Mates!

BabyBoy and Dr. Daddy are spending the night in the backyard in a tent. BabyGirl and I (I swear we are the only ones in this house with good sense) chose to spend the evening inside watching Matilda and eating popcorn. At any rate, she fell asleep which has given me a little extra blogging time.

Historically, I'm a big party planner. We usually have a huge blowout party for each of the kids on their birthday. This year, however, BabyBoy decided to have his party at the pool and we went with a lowkey pirate theme. We started with these invitations. I know they're a bit preppy and not really in keeping with the pirate theme but I had them left over from something else and we used a really fun "piratelike' font.

BabyBoy wore this swimsuit from Mini Boden (the one on the left) It's great because of the long sleeves and legs. He has issues with sunscreen. We'll just leave it at that. http://www.bodenusa.com/

Of course, no party would be complete without a pinana, as BabyGirl calls them. We filled this one with fake gold coins, bouncy balls, pirate tatoos and candy. A special shout out to Dr. Daddy who raced to Target after work on a Friday afternoon to secure the LAST treasure chest pinana in stock.

Since I didn't want the party to be TOO themish I shied away from the Pirates of the Carribbean hoopla. I found these generic pirate balloons on Ebay http://www.ebay.com/ and had a local party store fill them for me.

This pirate banner was a big hit. Well, maybe not with my brother who was forced to hang it, but everyone else loved it! I'm completely in love with PBK's http://www.potterybarnkids.com/ new birthday themes and really pissed I didn't think of this myself. When we move to our new house we will hang this in BabyBoy's room, which has a travel theme.

As a college student I baked birthday cakes to make a little extra cash. As a result I am proud to say that I acquired some amateur cake decorating skills. That's right...I got skills. Unfortunately, the icing on this cake began to melt under the heat. The effect was good, though, and BabyBoy was thrilled that he got to keep the action figures. (nevermind the hours Mommy spent toiling in the kitchen over this f*&^kin cake) We also used the PBK pirate's treasure table cloth on the table that held the cake and party favors.

Overall, I think the party was a great success. The parents certainly couldn't complain as they sipped margaritas and beer from the bar that was conveniently positioned directly behind the party spot. The kids loved playing in the water and the weather cooperated beautifully. And most importantly, the clean up was minimal.

Stay tuned for next year. I think we're doing a Camp Fake Out theme.