a polar bear party.

What better way to celebrate a birthday in the middle of winter than with a polar bear party!  The weather cooperated perfectly and produced a giant snowstorm the evening Andy and Jimmy delivered the invitations.  Andy loved delivering them in a winter wonderland!  And I think it's safe to say that Andy likes paper projects as much as I do, so you can imagine the fun we had making the invitations.

Since all of the invitations were being hand delivered, we decided to put the guests first initial on the front in "snow" (written with glue and filled in with sugar.)

The night before the party, Jimmy and I turned the kitchen area into a magical little snowland with silver glittery string strung about, along with strings of snowballs and silver snowflakes.  One of the best parts of Andy's birth date is that all wintery stuff is on clearance after Christmas!  A white, silver or blue balloon was tied to each chair and a big bunch outside the front door.  I usually cover my table with wrapping paper to 1. add to the festivity and 2. make for an easy clean-up, and one of our Christmas wrapping papers was perfect--white with silver stars. 

As each guest arrived they got a container of white playdoh to build snowmen or snowballs or an igloo from.  After all his friends arrived, we played musical snowballs (big white circles taped to the floor, cut from white posterboard) and had a snowball toss (we used jumbo marshmellows and threw them into a big white bin.)

We got the idea for this party from one of Andy's favorite story books, called Snow Bear.  (And incidentally, if you are having a hard time deciding what kind of party to throw your little one, a great idea is to use their favorite story book as a starting point.)  Next up, I gave them a big pile of blankets and told them to build a giant snow fort.  Oh boy.  They loved this.  After it was completed we sat in that magnificent fort and read Snow Bear.

Whenever I ask the kids what their favorite part of their birthday is, they say the scavenger hunts.  So in keeping with tradition, right as we finished the book, the doorbell rang! The kids raced to answer it and found a very mysterious message asking for help in locating some missing fish--which were meant for a little polar bears dinner.  Typically, the party favor is the thing they are searching for, and this time it was a bag of swedish fish and white lifesavers.  I would have done a bag of snowballs (a bag of big white gumballs), but I have given gumballs out for quite awhile, so it was time for something new!

For Andy's birthday cake, I just baked a regular cake mix cake in a 9x12 pan, turned it upside down and cut a polar bear shape from it, frosted it with some yummy vanilla frosting, added a black gel frosting nose and sprinkled coconut carefully (so it didn't get on the actual cake--does a child exist that actually likes the taste of coconut?) along the bottom.

With the few remaining minutes they made a string a paper snowflakes to take home.  And then they each told me their biggest wish and we wrote it down and stapled it to their balloon.  Balloon string, that is.  Obviously.

Their wishes?  To fly. A puppy. A dog. A chihuahua. A puppy.  There seemed to be a little theme going on!  My personal favorite was the flying one though.  We took them outside in the frosty air and watched them float up, up and away.

And then the big birthday party was over.  I pulled the yummy mess off the table and threw it away.  Andy, Cam, Ashlyn and Ava played and played with Andy's nice presents and Jimmy and I had a {little} winter's nap...

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