Friend Party

And this begins the series of posts for Banany's 8th birthday week. I don't know about you, but I don't remember celebrating my birthday for days on end! These kids are so lucky!

This past Friday night, we hosted Banany's first "friend" birthday party. In the past, we've celebrated with just one friend or family (which is a party in and of itself with lots of cousins her age, when some out-of-towners are here for Thanksgiving). But we'd decided a while back that this was the year to have a friend party.

After some deliberation, we decided it would be best to invite all of the girls in Banany's class, plus a couple of special friends from past years. In the end, nine little ladies showed up for our "Under the Sea" mermaid party. 

It was a fun, though sometimes utterly insane, 2 1/2 hours. There were points in the night where I had no control whatsoever. Complete mayhem. Have you ever heard ten girls scream at the same time?  Banany declared it a success, so that is all that matters to me. I can get more eardrums later.

I searched for a few different colors of blues to look a little "oceany" and then hung two strips of green to be seaweed. Throw in some silver curly ribbon and a bunch of balloons for bubbles and you've got yourself a mermaid party.

Thanks to the dollar store and fabric store, I found stones, silver "starfish" (we'll see those again at Christmas), shells and blues/greens glass beads to decorate the table.

A cooler that we were getting rid of made a great treasure chest with a coat of gold spray paint.

I filled a goodie bag for each girl with chocolate coins, a ring pop, costume jewelry, some plastic ocean critters etc.

I drew a mermaid from a picture I saw online and attempted to copy. One evening, lots of crayons and some hand cramps later, I had a mermaid cut-out. I took a picture of each girl in the cut-out and sent them with Banany's thank-you note.

Don't they look calm and sweet?

Fool.

We're revving up.

They really were adorable.

I love, love, love that they were ALL into doing silly pictures.

A few of the girls, could probably have struck about 100 poses with different silly faces.

Banany's pose in this one makes me laugh out loud.

I wrote up a treasure hunt for the girls to go on. J, the pirate, went along to keep the peace. Can nine 8-year-old girls do a treasure hunt without screaming, running or squabbling?

Ah, no.  Pirate needed.

So glad I did this. Cupcake decorating. The girls lu-huved this activity.

All it took was a simple box cupcake mix with canned frosting that I colored different colors. Add to that all of my sprinkles, plus a few fun new colors and it kept them busy for quite a while.

They did a few impromptu rounds of "Circle the Zero" which is an adorable game/song that they learned in music at school. Actually,this was my favorite part of the night. I wish I had it on video.

More "Circle the Zero." 

J, I mean Banany, excited about the new Barbie!

This is crazy Abby.

She brought a bit-o-life to the party.

Can you tell?

Banany kickin' off the limbo!