Little Artists Birthday Party

A Boy, A Candy Buffet, you know what happens next...

My little man is turning six. I know that's still little, but I cant figure out where the time has gone. It seems like Little P has always been five. But then again, we have accomplished in just one year what some people manage in a whole lifetime; picking up, moving twice, adjusting to living in a new land. In the middle of all this, my two little boys got shortchanged in the typical-american-lifestyle department. We threw something together quick for holidays and such, but the birthdays were relatively quiet.

We soooooo made up for that yesterday. A while ago I started cruising for cool birthday ideas that would be more than just your pre-fab, pre-printed, cartoon-themed fest. When I saw people were doing 'little picasso' and 'little artist rainbow' fetes, I might have danced in my seat just a little. We have a great open space. Great January weather (for a change!). Great age to have good messy creative fun. And a great city to source for raw supplies.

So the first plan of attack was decorations, and LOTS of them to cover our neighborhood and make it delightfully bright. I picked up some basics like streamers at Pinata Party Place off Sukhumvit 39, and ordered canisters for party favors from Oriental Trading, then set off to Chinatown's messy crowded fabulous Sampeng Lane for the details.

There I found colored pencil sets to put in the favors, brightly colored bolts of felt to make into bunting, and sequins and jewels for our craft stations. I bought packs of cheap face- and hand-towels and sewed them together with ribbon to make smocks! Oh, I was on a roll!  (FYI: finding pretzel rods for the 'paint brush pretzels' and lemonade mix for the 'Creative Juice' nearly stressed me out. Nearly.)

So now we get to the artist projects. And I am realllly proud of myself for these-starting with the spot where I armed people's children with squirt guns filled with PAINT. Oh yes I did. And told them to go crazy on a white cloth curtain. And then added fingerpaints to smear on it like a Jackson Pollock adventure!

I have been excited for weeks about this because its something you can NEVER everevereverever do at home. Don't worry, the paint was diluted washable crayola fingerpaints. It was a bit tricky to fill the little squirtguns, but I thought arming sugar-laden five year olds with supersoakers would be a bad idea.



 Turns out, graffiti is a lot of fun. And I really like the smiles all over the place.











Station two was tricky, but it made a really good party favor to display if they had the patience to finish it. My wonderful husband acquired these blocks of wood for me, and I painted them in the party colors and hammered little nails in them. For days.

But a little bit of cheap thin yarn, and we had a string art station. Some kids really showed their mathematical chops, I was stunned! Others filled their block with colors and dimensions. All of them were really creative. I must also admit we recruited a few of the neighborhood older kids to help out the little ones, which was KEY. They
were fantastic, and I am so grateful we have such a close community.

Speaking of, there's one of them keeping the kids in order at the spin art station. I picked up two machines from Amazon for cheap, bought extra paints and cut many extra cards because I knew this would be popular.







Then we had the kids hang up their designs to dry. Haha, art project meets party favor meets party decor! I am brilliant! maniacal laugh!

Then we get to my FAVORITE project, decorating your own party hat. Alright, I know they are usually cones with pompoms and such, but I'm just not crazy about putting a cone on my kid's head with an elastic. And I must have some traumatic memory I have pushed way down involving the pain of that elastic when it snaps, because I HATE them.  So we had soft, comfy, colorful crowns made from felt, of which I made about thirty. It took a while, but the kids had so much fun decorating them to match their outfits, personalities, age.



They dried fast, and looked so cute, like we had
a neighborhood full of little royalty. Which, lets face it, we all feel that way about our little bugs. And I have to say, Little P's friends are all EXTREMELY precious. I just we had another excuse to throw them a party.

I'm not exactly sure how Little P feels about that, but I know he loved getting crazy with the paint!