The Firefly Party

Firefly Party

"Fireflies" by Owl City*

You would not believe your eyes

If ten million fireflies

Lit up the world as I fell asleep...

I confess - I love Fireflies. I love their almost magical blinking,  like fairies flickering in the night.

Growing up we had several acres of meadow behind our house. Fireflies winked in and out of the long grasses all summer long. I remember laying on the lawn with my brother trying to count them. Now fireflies are endangered due to diminishing habitats. Increased use of pesticides and well-manicured lawns give fireflies nowhere to hide during the day (an excuse to stop mowing the lawn in late June!)

In a tribute to the long summer nights of my childhood we've invited some friends over for an informal Firefly Party. We've invited everyone for dusk - about 8:00 PM. We're close to the Central Time Zone and approaching the longest day of the year so true dark isn't until almost 9:00 PM. Pretty late for five year olds! I've suggested that the kids all wear PJs and bug spray.

The party is all about light, but we don't want to flood the yard with artificial light because that will make it hard for the fireflies to signal each other. And they need to signal each other to find a mate.

Decorating will be simple. We'll set up tiki torches and string white lights. Light up balloons and Sky Lanterns from WalMart complete the decorations.We'll pitch a tent on the lawn and light our fire pit.

Since it is an impromptu party we'll keep the food simple: s'mores and bug juice for the kids. We'll have chips, veggies and dip for adults who don't want s'mores. I was happy to discover a true Southern specialty, Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka for the adult drinks! Inspired by a drink I ordered at Disney World, blinking "ice" cubes in every one's drink will add the finishing touch.

We'll give the kids glow sticks and bug jars from Dollar Tree. I even discovered some glow in the dark bubbles! At the end of the party we'll light the Sky lanterns and each family will send one into the night sky with their wish.
 

Kid's Bug Juice Recipe

• 2 10-oz. packages frozen strawberries, defrosted and pureed in a blender
• 1 6-oz. can lemonade concentrate, thawed
• 1 qt. ginger ale or Sprite

Firefly Half and Half
(This is basically an alcoholic Arnold Palmer.)

• 3 oz. Firefly Sweet Tea Flavored Vodka
• 3 oz. Lemonade
• One Lemon Twist

*this song is my ringtone when my husband calls

  

This was our wish lantern lighting from New Year's Eve 2011.

Are there Any Novel Egg Hunt Ideas?

There isn't really too much you can write about an Egg Hunt that everyone doesn't already know. The premise is simple and straightforward - fill plastic eggs with toys and candy, hide them, and let the kids loose to find them.

I looked for ways to vary the process, even searching multiple blogs and websites. The funniest I found had an adult in an Easter Bunny costume getting out of a helicopter. Let's just say that isn't within my budget. Friends offered great suggestions like filling eggs with clues to find a large prize or personalizing eggs with significant events from the guests' lives over the past year. I'm not close friends with everyone we invited so that one might prove tricky. In the end, I decided to stick with the basics. As they say, "why mess with success?"

When I sent out the invitation I was careful to call it an EGG HUNT rather than an Easter Egg Hunt. My brother's family is Jewish and my parents always held a "robin's egg hunt" for his kids so they could have the fun of the hunt without the religious overtones. Since some of our friends are Jewish and Hindu I was hoping they wouldn't think it was a Christian conversion scheme (since I'm not a practicing anything.) I just want to see the kids run around like mad things, fill them up with sugar and send them home hyper.

I know that some people may object to my genericizing the event, however I am not holding it on Easter or even on a Sunday. Having done a little research it appears that there may be pagan origins to the tradition of hunting for eggs in the spring. Also, hard boiled eggs are traditionally part of the Jewish Passover celebration so who am I to say that egg hunts should be limited to little Christian kids? I certainly don't limit my children's friends to only little Christians.

Now, how many plastic eggs do you need for 26 kids? I purchased almost 600. That's roughly 23 eggs per child. How long do you think it will take them all to be a found? A friend commented, " Every Easter egg hunt I've ever been to has lasted about 90 seconds...'" I know things that last less than 90 seconds and are worth doing! (C'mon folks, think....)

We felt that it was important for us to provide the filled eggs as they were the focal point of the party. Filling 600 plastic eggs isn't exactly cheap - figure about 5-10 cents an egg and do the math. Someone suggested that I use the spare change I found around the house to fill the eggs instead of candy. I realized that a better idea would be to use the change to pay for the candy! I came up with almost $20 in change -more than enough to fill the eggs.

Knowing that the kids will all immediately plop down on the grass and eat whatever candy they find in the eggs I assumed that I didn't have to provide much more in the way of food or at least desserts.  Instead of a meal we'll offer drinks and light snacks. Friends generously offered to bring treats to share. 

Valentine's Day Child's Tea Party

Valentine's Day Child's Tea Party

In 2 weeks I'll be hosting my first tea party - for 6 little girls. It was Danielle's idea. It's the first "girly" thing she's ever wanted to do and I am secretly thrilled. I truly want her to be an independent, confident, physically active child. As a result I've made sure that she plays with boys as well as girls, that she can fish, climb trees and build a bird house. I've tried to create a balance with baking and art, but we are not girly girls in this house.

As an impromptu party I really want to keep the plan simple and the budget low. I'm going to have the girls play dress up with Danielle's trunk of dress up clothes (possibly removing the miner's helmet, firefighter uniform and chicken suit first). I found 2 Easter bonnets at Dollar Tree and added some flowers and feathers that we had on hand. If I had found 6 hats I would have used them as a party craft for the girls. I ran past Goodwill and found 3 more hats and several fluffy scarves. I washed the scarves and stuck the hats in a hot dryer for 1/2 an hour to clean them. Total cost for activities $14.

If dress up doesn't occupy enough time I'll have the girls play traditional kids party games: duck, duck goose, musical chairs and clothes pin drop. Maybe we'll sing "I'm A Little Teapot"...

We'll decorate with things we have on hand - pink and white crepe paper streamers, some paper lanterns and table cloths from Dollar Tree and home made heart doilies (instructions below.) I'm looking forward to decorating the table. My china is a modern black and white pattern, but I think I can make it work with enough pink and red paper in the mix.

The Menu (my favorite part!)

• Tea for grown ups and brave little girls & Punch for the less adventurous
• Tiny PB&J Sandwiches, edges dusted with pink sugar
• Fairy Bread (Graham crackers with strawberry cream cheese and sprinkles)
• Chicken Salad with red curry paste sprinkled with almonds on Carr's water crackers
• Mini Egg Free Chocolate Cupcakes
• Egg Free Shortbread cookies with jam

Egg Free Shortbread Thumbprint Cookie recipe
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/3 cup sifted plus 3 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
Strawberry, raspberry or cherry jam

Beat the butter on medium-low speed until smooth, add sugar and vanilla. Sift together flour and salt. Gradually beat into butter mixture on low. Transfer dough onto a piece of plastic. Pat into 8-inch disk. Wrap with plastic; chill 1 hour.
Heat oven to 275 degrees. On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/4 inch thick; cut into 1-to-2 1/2-inch rounds. Reroll until all dough is used. Press each round with your thumb and add a tiny dollop of jam. Chill 15 minutes before baking. Bake 25 to 30 minutes until firm but not brown; let cool. Cookies can be made 2 to 3 days ahead, and stored in an airtight container.

Heart Doilies How-To
This is not as hard as it sounds! Danielle can do it (as long as I help a little...) Once you learn the basic folding technique you can also use it to make lovely six pointed snowflakes. We used snowman napkins for our practice pieces since we had them on hand. I really liked the way they turned out.
1. Position a prefolded square paper napkin so that the closed corner faces you.

2. Fold right corner toward left corner and flatten, forming a triangle.

3. Fold left corner toward triangle's longest side and flatten, forming a narrower triangle.

4. Using scissors, cut a convex arc from triangle to create top of half a heart.

5. Cut off bottom of triangle from left to right to create lower heart half, leaving at least 1/4 inch intact on right edge. The more you cut at this point the more distinct your individual hearts will be. (Left side of triangle will be center of a heart.) Unfold.

6. Repeat with napkins in several colors, varying position of cuts to create doilies in different sizes.

Egg Free Mini Chocolate Cupcakes
aka "Crazy Mixed-Up Cake"
I've posted egg free cupcakes recipes before. This is our favorite easy cake recipe. It can be mixed in one pan and baked as a snack cake if you'd like. It's a great recipe for kids to start baking because its very simple. It came from a cookbook my grandmother gave me when I was first married, Reader's Digest Down Home Cooking.

 1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup cocoa powder, sifted
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 Tablespoon white vinegar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup low-fat milk

Preheat oven to 350. Grease & flour pan or use cupcake liners.
Sift together dry ingredients (you can stir them in the pan if you are using an 8-inch square pan).
Pour in all of the wet ingredients and mix with a fork.
Bake mini cupcakes 10-12 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. bake an 8x8 pan for 28-30 minutes. I typically frost the cupcakes with a simple chocolate butter cream frosting.

Camping Baby Shower

A friend and I just hosted a Camping Themed Baby Shower. I know its not traditional, but she's an outdoors girl expecting her third little boy. What could be more perfect?

I had a great time pulling together things we already had around the house and finding fun outdoorsy accessories. The trick to working on a budget is thinking outside the box.

I hit a 80% clearance at Michael's and picked up some adorable rustic decorations.

I'm really proud of these letter blocks that I made out of wood I found in our garage and some scrap booking paper. Kevin cut the wood into "rustic" pieces. I sanded them, cut decorative papers to fit then added some stickers and glue. About a half hour project with great results! I may add a few more embellishments if I find anything interesting around the house. I made them two-sided: one side is outdoorsy to go with my theme, the other is more babyish for his nursery if she wants to use them to decorate.

You know I love a theme so I couldn't help myself. I made some camping themed desserts - Smores brownies and a super easy campfire cake that doesn't require any baking - just assembly.

I do NOT like baby shower games. Sorry, guys, no adult should have to eat baby food or pass around a diaper filled with pretend chocolate poop. This might be funny when you're ten; at my age its just weird.  So, I pressed for a group craft instead. We decided to decorate onesies. Of course you can scribble all over them with puffy fabric paint and they will be cute. The parents may never put the baby in them, but that's beside the point.

If you want to try to make onesies the kid might actually wear here are two simple systems. I've included photos of my demonstrations projects. I promise, they took no actual artistic talent - just some time and a little patience. For detailed DIY instructions on either project just google "decorate a onesie" (that's what I did!) You can apply the same techniques to T-shirts, etc.

 Fabric Appliqué Process

• draw a simple design on cardboard (I used an old cereal box)
• cut your template out
• trace template onto the fabric
• cut out the design
• apply permanent fabric glue to back of the design (I used Aleene's Fabric Fusion)
• stick it to the onesie
• let dry completely overnight 

Freezer Paper Stencil

• cut out a stencil from freezer paper using an exacto knife
• iron it onto a onesie (takes about 1 min. with dry heat)
• dab on fabric paint using a brush
• let dry completely overnight
  
  



The finished product!

I did get a little over-the-top cute with my camping concept. I named the craft center "Camp Wannamaka Onesie." I made tiny tents from scrap burlap and folded cardboard for table decorations. I used small evergreen trees to create "woods." Okay, I confess - I have my tacky days.

Carnival Birthday Party - Part 3: The Food

Suddenly my little backyard birthday party has almost 40 guests!

It's time for a reality check. This is a 5 year old's party.

I don't know why I thought I could get away with a few homemade cupcakes and a game or two.  After all, its not the 1970s anymore. I guess even my budget was "retro". I love this YouTube 70s birthday party clip.  This was what I mentally had in mind - very Brady Bunch. For that era this was probably a lavish party: they had themed plates & cups and a bakery cake. My mom baked all of our cakes and we ate off of plain white paper plates as far as I remember.

We've been to several spectacular birthday parties this month - one with pony rides and a petting zoo!  Another hired a costumed character to entertain and rented an inflatable bounce house. I am having the kids play simple party games.  I'm not interested in "keeping up" with anybody but I do realize that with kids come adults and siblings, all of whom need to eat at least a little something. When one of us goes to a party with Danielle we want to have a snack, some cake, a cold drink... 

I've given up on my $100 budget and am just trying to figure out how to keep it from getting wildly out of hand. This site cracked me up - its sort of a Party Planners Anonymous for over-the top party planning parents (which I suppose I now am.) I also found this site enlightening for average costs. Now I'm hoping to keep the budget under $200 since I have so many guests.

I still want to keep the food simple. I have to deal with a number of food allergies- dairy, gluten, egg & soy as well as one diabetic child and one vegetarian! In a weird way the food allergies are a blessing. Instead of having to provide a full meal we'll serve snacks: Ian's turkey corn dog nuggets and regular corn dogs, potato chips, veggies and dip, as well as  individual bags of cotton candy and popcorn. The little bags work out great for the kids, but cotton candy was expensive at nearly $1/bag. I'll make large batches of popcorn on the stove so the house will be filled with the scent of fresh, hot popcorn. I had lollipops left over from my birthday party a few months ago. Since candy stays fresh for 6 months I'll be able to set them out again for Danielle's party -add two gumballs machines from Dollar Tree and I have a buffet.

Then there's the birthday cake controversy. Danielle asked for cupcakes and that is something I can easily do at home. A dear friend taught me that frosting makes excellent spackle when your cakes lean and kids love it.

I'll bake egg free vanilla cupcakes (recipe follows). I had several failed attempts before I realized that gluten free, sugar free and egg free cupcakes were an impossibility for someone with my culinary ability.  See the photo...this is NOT the final batch based on the recipe I've included, I promise! I bought a few gluten free cupcakes from Whole Foods after this disaster.

I purchased 4 frozen gluten free cupcakes for less than the cost of the ingredients to bake my own. I've got cute circus animal cupcake toppers (leftover from a previous party) to insert in these to differentiate them from the others. I figure that the kids will never know who is eating the allergy-free cupcakes once they all have one on their plates.

Being from New England, I associate carnivals with Dels' frozen lemonade. I wanted to serve homemade frozen lemonade.  After trying several recipes I gave up (again) and bought Minute Maid frozen lemonades. We'll also provide small bottles of water. Since I'm feeling particularly fancy I've printed out some super cute, free water bottle labels , thanks to Hostess with the Mostess.

While I am having fun making and baking things for the party I can see how this could easily get out of control. Somebody stop me!

Egg-Free (Vegan) Vanilla Cupcakes*

• 1/2 cup butter (or coconut oil)
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 cups milk (or almond milk)
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 3 cups cake flour

Preheat oven to 350. Sift dry ingredients together, set aside. In mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add vanilla to the measured out milk and add milk and flour in alternate batches beginning and ending with the flour. After ingredients are combined beat for about 1 minute on medium speed. Fill cupcake liners about 2/3 full and bake for approx. 20 minutes until centers are set and toothpick comes out clean.

* make this recipe sugar-free by using Splenda for Baking instead of sugar.

Carnival Birthday Party -Part 1: The Planning

Danielle has asked for a "Fall Festival" for her birthday party this year. I love carnivals so I'm totally on board. I enjoy having birthday parties at home because I like to create things for my kids. I consider it my gift to them. In fact, we typically don't buy them a present if they have a party.

For inspiration I've been reading "carnival birthday blogs."  I was stunned at the effort and expense some parents go to for their children's "at home" birthday parties. I'm not going to deny that I devote a fair amount of time to making things while the girls are asleep.

However, I don't have unlimited time to devote to this project.  One blogger claimed," ...my son’s second birthday; a Carnival Extraordinaire... took me a little more than six months of planning to coordinate everything..." Seriously?!?! That's a quarter of the little guy's life that she could have spent enjoying time with her child. My friends teased me for starting the planning six weeks in advance!

There are so many Carnival Party blogs out there it seems a bit silly to create another one. Unless, of course, you don't want to spend the equivalent of a small wedding on your child's birthday. In which case, read on! My favorite carnival party blog was called "Over the (Big) Top" - a party for a one year old with 54 children and a budget which had to have been in the thousands of dollars. WOW! What did she do for when he turned two?

Other blogging advice included tips such as "pick your child's outfit in advance so it doesn't clash with the decorations". A friend thought that was hysterical - so do I! I'll be lucky if Danielle's clothes match and she's got her shoes on the right feet.

I think many of these moms and dads might have forgotten that a birthday party should be fun for the kid. Worrying about their clothes for the photos seems a bit sad to me. I want to live in the moment, not just look at the photos afterward. I remember some wonderful birthday parties my mom pulled together for us - even though there are no pictures of them anywhere.

I don't want to spend a fortune. I'm not going to hire a caterer, a clown or even a professional photographer. Not having the money to rent a miniature train, build a ticket booth or rent a cotton candy machine, my options are more limited than most bloggers, but also more realistic.

In our area it costs an average of $300-400 to host a birthday party for 10-12 children and their parents at a location such as an indoor playground, a museum or the zoo. That's without the "extras" like balloons, goodie bags and cake - things most kids consider necessities. I want to host a party for half that - and for 17 kids and their parents. I also want goodie bags, balloons and food.

Needless to say, "do it yourself" is the key. There will be lots of photos of the various things I make throughout this blog!

Stay tuned for recipes and menu ideas as well as party decorations!

Preview of things to come...

Candy Buffet on a $50 Budget

I decided to create a rainbow candy buffet for an upcoming midsummer party. Despite being called crazy by a few friends, creating a candy buffet was fun. One friend actually understood my silly obsession with this project. As she said,"You have a goal, a timeline and a budget - its like being back at work!" The things a stay-at-home Mom will do to keep her mind active...

You can buy everything you need at Party City in the Wedding Section, but costs add up quickly. Candy runs about $6.00 for a ½ pound bag. Containers start at $3.00 and go up to $20.00. To my amazement you can even hire a Candy Caterer to create a buffet for you. I have a self-imposed budget of $50.00. That seems like a lot for candy. However, I'm considering it my main  decoration and as well as the party food.  I hope that there will be some left for favors for the kids.  

There are great candies online, but since you pay by weight, shipping can easily add 50% to your candy total. I realized that online candy costs about $15-$20/pound when you add shipping. Online sites recommend at least ½ pound of candy per person! I guess that’s if you’re not serving them anything else. We had 24 guests, but I just couldn’t imagine buying 12 pounds of candy at those prices ($180.00 - $240.00).

 

I bought most of the candy at the Dollar Store. I even got some cute glass containers there. I also scrounged the grocery store, WalMart and Target for the colors I needed. Our local Target has a good selection of bulk candy including jellybeans sorted by color, at $6.00/pound. I combined individually wrapped items like lollipops and with unwrapped candies like gummies, candy corn, gumballs etc.

I needed the six colors of the rainbow for my buffet. I didn’t realize that blue and green candies would be hard to find.  I had to buy light blue Sixlets (chocolates) at Party City at $5.99 for an 8 ounce bag. The green came from Mint 3 Musketeer minis.  If I do this again I will pick a single color as my theme. The are a lot of red candies (Twizzlers, Clark bars, Fireballs, etc.) or orange (Reeses Peanut butter cups, Orange Slices, Candy Corn, etc.) You can keep candy for 6 months so you can stock up during a holiday if you plan ahead.

The next trick was finding the right size container to fit the various candies without the containers looking empty. I discovered that if you chose large containers you’ll have to buy A LOT of candy. For a visual reference a typical 8 ounce glass holds a 1/2 pound of most candies. Since mine was a small buffet I was able to use kitchen glasses, bowls, martini glasses and clean vases & votive candle holders.

Most sites recommend that you use clear containers so guests can see the candy. That’s great if you have a lot of money to spend on the candy. I didn’t so I got much of my color from the actual containers, as you can see. I used a mix of glass and plastic containers.

Being compulsive about this stuff, I did a trial run before the party - okay, two test runs. I filled the containers & played around with the arrangement. I realized that because it was a small buffet I needed to add height to create impact. I made a lollipop display by pushing the sticks into floral foam in a vase. I covered the foam with the paper crinkles used in gift baskets. I stuffed a clear vase with colored tissue. I stuck books under the table cloth to raise some of the containers.

You can also use anything for color accents.  You could use stuffed animals or toys for a kids’ party. For a SpongeBob party you could go with all yellow candies and scatter toys on the table.

Next I had to address the question of what guests should put the candy in. I had twelve roughly 8 ounce containers of candy. If I gave each guest a 6 ounce plastic wine glass, I wouldn't have enough for everyone. I had to add some inexpensive bulk items like Tootsie Pops, gumballs and pixie sticks (added another $4 to the total). I set out spoons and a gravy ladle to scoop unwrapped candies. I picked up small white wedding favor boxes to use as goody bags for the kidsif there are any leftovers.

To continue the rainbow theme I used solid color paper lanterns from Target that I already had on hand for decorations. My grand total came in just over $40.  That's about $1.70 per person. Not bad ~ especially since I had so much fun putting it together. Compared to the last party we had where I ordered 6 pizzas at $15 each it was really a good deal.  Now, if only the other Moms don't kill me for sending their kids home on a sugar high!