And then they turned 6 years old on September 13th!
{But I'm posting this in November. It always seems to take me awhile to get these birthday blog posts up!}
Here are my big boys on their special day after Kindergarten...with surprise balloons. You have no idea how much these kiddos like balloons. They mostly use them as weapons, but it was their day. ;)
The boys love "Wild Kratts" (an educational children's animated show on PBS) and wanted that to be their theme. But time is limited and that theme seemed to specific for me and wanting to find easy, fast, and inexpensive decorations, etc.. Plus when I started looking up things to do with that theme, my brain went crazy with seeing so many great ideas. I wanted to do them all and had to tell myself...NO...STOP!!
So....after some begging, I convinced them to just have a WILD ANIMAL theme. (And it was so much easier to find cheap and fun items to go along with this!)
Whew!
Here are the invitations I created on my print shop program on my computer:
It worked out again this year to have their family birthday party on my parent's farm in August before school started. The weather was beautiful and we had a special time celebrating.
I found these adorable animal masks for super cheap online.
Thank you, Amazon Prime, I don't know what I would do without you!!
Cousin fun:
The table:
* The black banner was purchased at Walmart for only $3.
It's chalkboard paper so the letters written with chalk can be erased and the banner can be used over and over!
I hit the jackpot at the Dollar Tree because they had so many "National Geographic" items there that were perfect for wild animals. What a coincidence. I was so excited!
Goodie bags were filled with these goodies I purchased there:
- activity place mats (16 sheets for $2)
- tear off sheet animal activities (40 sheets for $1)
- animal print pads of paper (4 for $1)
- 8 packs of Crayola crayons (3 for $1)
- sheets of animal stickers (4 for $1) (I cut them up.)
- colored pencils (12 for $1)
And the zebra print loot bags were for $1 (20 bags) at Walmart.
So I split them all up and goodies bags were filled very inexpensively:
I used little animal figurines we had at home for decorations on the table:
The cake!
My friend, Shaylah, created their cake this year. Not only was it beautiful, but it was delicious as well. The photo isn't the best but on the tiger print it says, "Eli" and on the zebra print it says, "Will."
Everyone loved it!
She even made the inside cake to be animal print!
I still can't believe they are SIX!
Eli's turn:
Will's turn:
Like I said before, I hit the jackpot when looking at the Dollar Tree and found a bunch of "National Geographic" items including these alphabet animal cards. I purchased 2 packages so they could do a matching game. $2 total. Win - win!
Wild animal placemat worksheets the kids could color and work on during the party:
We had a joint party with their cousin, Ryder as her birthday
is the week before Eli and Will's. She is one year younger.
We tried to get a nice photo of them all together. You can see how well that went...
Ha! Love kids! :)
Happy 5th Birthday, Ryder!
Happy 6th Birthday Will & Eli!
The birthday party guests enjoying lunch:
(I forgot to take a photo of the food spread!
But trust me, it was good!)
Spoiled with gifts:
And......the
FRIEND BIRTHDAY PARTY:
In early September, at our home we had a friend birthday party for the twins. I used all the same decorations, etc.
Although I made cupcakes instead of doing another cake. I found smaller plastic animals at a party store in my town for $2, so we put those on the cupcakes and then each child took one home.
The table:
The punch:
We already had an animal game where you match the mommy with the baby. So, we did timed team races to see who could do it the fastest!
And the animal alphabet card matching game again:
Another game: a different version of "I Spy" with little animals.
And there you have it. The "Wild Animals" theme!
I just love planning themed parties. I wish I had time to do more but this keeps me happy for now. :) You can do so much with a little creativity and finding inexpensive items.
I think all the kids had a blast. I sure did too.
Mission accomplished! :)
