Lion Birthday Party

In the time of COVID, outdoor birthday parties are still a thing (especially for my youngest, who still isn’t eligible for the vaccine). So we had to get creative again this year (and also pray for good weather!). We decided to use the outdoor pavilion at Chinquapin Park in Alexandria, so that in case of bad weather, we still had some cover :)

She’d asked for a lion theme. Not Lion King. Not Lion Guard. Just plain old “Lion.” So I, too, got to be a bit creative! We decided to go for a jungle theme - I got some very fun jungle leaves on Amazon to play with, and bought a variety of colors of items for our outdoor breakfast (bagels and coffee - I think the parents were very happy!). We had yellow, orange, green and pink items and balloons and streamers.

The most fun part was we bought all the kids lion ears to play with at the party and take home. We also did some face painting! I DIY’d a lion cub bean bag toss which ended up working out quiet well for some outdoor activities. And I also DIY’d the lion cub cupcake toppers which were super fun and cute!

So overall - a success I think. Outdoor parties can be tough, but keeping things simple and fun (and keeping in mind back up plans for bad weather!) makes it fairly easy.

I think it was a roaring success ;)

A Winter Wonderland Kids Birthday Party

My daughter approached me with a seemingly impossible task as we started to discuss her birthday plans.

My almost 5 year old: “Mom, I want an ice skating party”

Me: “Oh, ok, great! But you’ve never gone ice skating before. Do you think we should give it a try before we have a whole party?”

5 year old: “No, I don’t want a party with ice skating. I want an ice skating party at home.”

Me: …

So… she had me really stumped. My husband was convinced we could do it - “just buy ice skating party stuff.” But the planner in me really couldn’t embrace such a strange theme without coming up with some sort of activity that could go along with it (how else to entertain a bunch of 5 year olds in your home?!!). I was starting to wish she’d gone with her original desire to have a “flying cheetah” party (no, I don’t know what flying cheetahs are, but at this point I was excited by the idea of cheetah print instead of an ice skating party with no ice skating).

Pinterest came to my rescue. After brainstorming a bit, I - along with my daughter’s approval - settled on a Winter Wonderland theme. We could have indoor ice skating (on contact paper stuck to the rug…and socks), have a hot cocoa bar, make edible snowmen out of marshmallows, and thanks to a random Target find, have a “snowball” toss game.

It ended up being a lot of fun for the kids (and the adults - yay mimosas!) and I’m pretty proud that I pulled it off! Just thought I’d share to remind you all that parties can still be at home, and with a little creativity (and Pinterest, who am I kidding?), can be fun!

p.s. mad props to my husband who baked a 4-tier chocolate cake from scratch (now THAT seems like a truly impossible task to me!)