the crafty birthday party

I can hardly believe it, but Anabelle turned 4 on the last day of Quilt Market last month. We had a little party with family in Pittsburgh, but Anabelle had made it quite clear that she wanted to have her friends over for a birthday party at her house this year. Her birthday usually gets short shrift, since we’re always either at market or just home, so I wanted to do something fun this year. We sent some invites to neighbors and her closest friends at school (I had initially wanted to invite the whole group, until I realized that with siblings and parents, that could top 200 people) and went off to market with no further plans. By the end of the show, I realized I still had no idea what to do with close to 20 kids and 20 adults, and would only have 3 evenings to prepare. Luckily, I complained to the right person! Karen LePage was helping us in our booth that day, and 5 minutes after my “what am I going to do?” moment we had brainstormed and hashed out pretty much everything I needed for a crafty, bubbly birthday party for 4-year-olds.

We picked up 3 Lack coffee tables from Ikea for craft stations, did a run to Michael’s (Warning: not recommended shopping with young children! Waaaay too many sparkly things at eye level!) and found some easy bubble recipes online. By Saturday morning, we had glitter glue, paint, stamps, feathers, jewels, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, paper bags for puppets, clothes pins for dolls, crayons, markers drawing paper, and enough bubble mixture to fill about 36 1/2 pint mason jars. We were set!