I must have posted about half-birthdays before, yes? My oldest son was due on Christmas Eve, and through the entire pregnancy people vented their pent-up frustration at me. "When are you due?" "Christmas Eve." "Oh, you're kidding, that's the worst day to be born. When I was a kid I never got any birthday presents..." During that pregnancy I started saying, "Well, we'll just have a half-birthday party in June." So we do.
Stella will be 4.5 tomorrow and she is expecting three or four little friends for a princess half-birthday party. They'll be here for two hours. This is my plan:
1. Right when they arrive, I'm going to have them help me mix up ice cream. They can dump and stir and pour it in the machine. It can churn for half an hour and then ripen up for another hour; we'll eat it at the end with sliced strawberries on top.
2. Next we'll make paper plate masks. I have some silver sparkle craft foam from which I will cut out crowns and I'll cut yarn strands for hair in yellow and orange and brown and black. (And maybe pink. Princesses might like pink streaks in their hair, you think?) I also have beads for them to string as earrings. My job is to cut out eyes and draw noses; I'll have them draw eyelashes and brows and a smile (or a scowl, for the Goth princesses), and glue on hair and a crown. I think the earrings and the ribbon fastener can share a hole that will be hidden under the hair, but I'll have to do a test run.
3. When the masks are made-- oh, wait. I was going to have them put the masks on, but that's just asking for a trail of glue-covered yarn across the carpet. Maybe we'll play Pin The Crown On The Princess while the glue dries.
4. Next up: masks on, music on, cue dancing princesses. Any suggestions to encourage gentle princess dancing that will not result in any fan kicks through the French doors?
5. I'm going to have them make popsicle stick princesses: marker-drawn faces, felt dresses and shoes in their choice of pink or purple, little sparkly flower stickers to festoon the dresses, crowns of silver pipe cleaner. I should cut out dresses tonight too.
6. We have a set of wooden castle blocks, so I'll suggest that they build a castle in the living room floor and pretend with their popsicle stick princesses. Do you think the castle-building will give the glue enough time to dry? My boys could build forever with wooden blocks but Stella finds them less compelling.
7. If we haven't hit the 90-minute mark by the time they're done pretending, I'll send them outside to play Your Highness, May I? For past birthdays I've sent kids across the front yard for Mother May I?, but my new herb garden is going to interfere. Probably no one will break an ankle if we do it in the back.
8. I was planning to make an enormous fluffy white cake tonight: my recipe makes three layers, and I was going to split and fill them with raspberry cream in preparation for covering it all with piles of white icing and arranging 4.5 candles atop. That will be a boatload of cake for five little girls, though. Maybe cupcakes are a better bet. Must decide quickly. Ice cream and strawberries will go alongside.
9. If they need additional entertaining (though SURELY NOT), I can unroll butcher paper for drawing while I recruit some boys to tell one-sentence-at-a-time princess stories with each other. These stories are guaranteed to be unconventional (the dragon is more likely to eat the princess than to be vanquished by her beauty and delicacy), but I didn't say it was going to be a conventional princess party, did I?
10. Does anyone else think party favors are kind of a useless convention? I am going to wrap up baby-sized meringues in pink tissue paper and tie them with ribbon. A bag with a sparkly ring or a princess eraser might be more conventional, but what was I just saying about conventional?
11. After they have all been picked up I am going to have a glass of wine. It will not be rosé, because I am going to be totally pinked out.
I have nothing for them to drink except milk. Hm. Perhaps we can pick up some lemonade (Stella calls it lem'ade) tomorrow. And decorations will be limited to crepe paper and balloons. But I think they'll have fun. I hope so, at any rate.
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