camping birthday party: the festivities!

We ended up with about 40 people at the party. We thought it would be fun to invite Elsa's friends and their families and get some good use out of our fire pit. The weather could not have been better. Delightful temperatures and few mosquitoes. And our first firefly sighting of the season! We're looking forward to more s'more parties this summer.

Amelia hid about 150 plastic bugs (and some wrapped gummy bugs) around the yard for the kids to find and collect in their jars. We're still finding them.

We bought several bags of the jumbo size marshmallows and had the kids divide into two teams. Each side started with the same amount of marshmallows and threw them at the other team for a designated period of time and the team with the cleanest side won. This was Elsa's favorite part. I think we should have played a second round with the adults. It was quite fun to throw marshmallows. The younger kids were eager to stuff their faces with the puffy projectiles.

This might have been one of the happiest days of Oliver's life. He spent the evening wandering freely, picking up whatever food he could find. And there was plenty. Lots of half-eaten hot dogs left lying around. And cake. And marshmallows. He was a complete mess by the end of the night. A happy mess. And surprisingly didn't show signs of sickness the next day. We even found him eating a bagel towards the end of the night. And we didn't even have bagels at the party.

I love how excited all of the kids get during the gift opening.

S'mores!

Ben attempted a peanut butter cup s'more with cookie butter. Extreme. 

Pure awesomeness.

 

Elsa was not happy that there were four candles in the cake since her actual birthday wasn't for two more days.

 

 

 

I did a lively reading of "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" and had the kids go on a hunt around the yard. The bear (Ben) was hiding behind the fence and chased all of the kids. They loved it. 

The wall of adults amuses me:

 

I'm glad my friend Jessica captured this amusing moment. When I asked Ben to get me some utensils to cut the cake, he returned with a butter knife and wooden spatula. And wondered why I was laughing.

After everyone had been sufficiently loaded with sugar, the kids had fun hanging out in the tent and watching Elsa's movie selection, Fantastic Mr. Fox.

A big shout-out to my friend Jessica who took several of these photos while I was busy going on bear hunts and playing hostess.

camping birthday party: put a bear on it!

Elsa loves finding worms and bugs and being outside. I thought a camping theme would be fun for her fourth birthday party and she was immediately excited about the idea. I didn't think we could compete with the fun we had creating her cardboard box party last year but the camping theme turned out to be super fun. Plus, it gave us an excuse to finally build a fire pit in our backyard!  

I created a bear roasting a marshmallow for the invitation and then had fun developing the theme from there. Lots of burlap and tree stumps and bears. And cake. Lots of cake.

I finally attempted to cut fabric with my Silhouette machine. I was so impressed with the results and had fun making various burlap banners. I also found out that you can print right on burlap. I actually fed a piece of burlap through my printer and it worked! I didn't end up using it for the party, but I'm excited about the possibilities.

Of course I had to cut a bear out too.

I used the same graphics from the invite to create these signs for the tables. Ben cut the little pieces of wood and then drilled holes for the sticks.

We had to include Elsa's favorite food, nutella. I made the Greek yogurt and nutella dip to have with strawberries, her other favorite food. 

 

And some salads the adults would appreciate.

The kids used the red baskets for their hot dogs and the adults used foil pie plates.

We had a drink bar where people could make their own sodas in mason jars. I knew the kids would lose track of their jars easily so I put chalkboard paint on the lids and wrote their names and then punched a hole through the lid for the straw.

 

 

I had fun with the desserts. Even though we were having s'mores, a birthday party isn't complete without cake. I made cupcakes for the kids. I wasn't sure if one cake would be enough to feed all the adults (it was) so I ended up making two cakes. Which was fine because there were a few recipes I wanted to try. 

 

Chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream. Some with sprinkles and some with graham cracker crumbs, and a chocolate bar on top.

The s'mores cake had brown butter graham cracker crust baked into two of the chocolate cake layers and a chocolate ganache between cake layers and on the outside. I followed this recipe but used my own recipe for the chocolate cake. I ran out of time for the meringue top so I just used leftover marshmallow frosting from the other cake. Then sprinkled graham cracker crumbs over the whole thing.

  Ben cut me some nice wood slices with a chainsaw and then I used wood glue to make cake stands.

I really loved the graham cracker layers and the ganache on this cake.

   

The second cake was a little more intimidating. A six-layer rich chocolate malted and toasted-marshmallow cake. I found the recipe here. (I used my own recipe for the chocolate cake again.) I was really concerned about this thing toppling over. But it didn't! Until we had cut half of the cake. The toasted-marshmallow frosting was so yummy. It had bits of actual toasted marshmallows in it. Making the cake turned out to be pretty easy compared to slicing it.

 

We ate cake for three days straight.

And of course the s'more fixin's. It's hard to beat a classic s'more. But I must say nutella was pretty awesome. So was cookie butter. We also tried peanut butter cups. So delicious. I'm pretty sure everyone went home in a sugar coma.

 

I made personalized labels for the bug hunt jars. We hid plastic bugs and gummy bugs for the kids to find.

I had fun screen printing little favor bags. We filled them with pop rocks, gummy bears, glow sticks, a mini flash light, and a small camping activity book. I also screen printed shirts for Elsa, Amelia, and Oliver.

And now that I've indulged myself with party details, stay tuned for another post that will contain pictures of actual people at the party, not just bears.


(If you don't get the "put a bear on it" reference, you better watch this clip from Portlandia.)