Our house is a wreck and neither one of us can move, but the party was wonderful!  There were so many things I didn’t get done, but in the end it didn’t matter.  Lots of family and friends came to help us celebrate the girl’s 5th birthday.   Typically we have a small family get together to celebrate the day, but I threw them a huge bash when they turned one and I told Chris the next one would be when they turned 5 — well after the party I remember why I waited so long to do this again – we could barely walk when we got home Saturday night.  The next bash — who knows — I am not even naming an age at this point for the next party. 

A lot of people have asked for details so I am going to do them all here in the blog —  the invitations were designed by me and I am quite proud of them.  I knew I wanted some type of treasure map, but then I saw the “message in a bottle” invites on the net and couldn’t resist.  We bought our bottles from a SandArt company (if you want the link just email me — I can look it up) and then added sand and small shells.  The invites were printed by Select Graphics & Printing in Coeburn, Virginia and she did an OUTSTANDING job on them.

The decorations at the party were bought from various vendors and then some made by me.  The wall decorations were made from foam board purchased at Lowes and then cut out, painted and glittered.  Much, much cheaper than buying — but definitely takes some time.  The chandeliers and lanterns were found on Ebay.

The wands, crowns and pirate swords given out at the party came from — Oriental Trading of course.  The tablecloths, plates, etc. came from a very reasonable on-line store called Partypro.

Lisa Lawson from Nails by Lisa located in Wise came to the party and provided all the fair princesses with a manicure, make-up and glittered their hair.  All the fearless pirates could get their hair colored as well.  We then had Birthday Table cloths set up for everyone to sign and place their hand-print on for each one of the girls.

We tried to do a Pirate food table and a Princess food table.  The pirate food table had barbecue, corn-on-the-cob, potato salad, cole slaw, pb & j sandwiches and an island cheese-ball.  The Princess table had chicken salad on croissants and in phylo cups, fruit, meatballs, little smokies, spinach dip, tortilla pinwheels, chocolate dipped strawberries and pina colada punch.  The reasoning behind this was I wanted Chicken salad and Chris wanted barbecue but I didn’t think the two items mixed so we dividied the tables up so we could both have the menus we wanted — now I have a stomach ache from the eclectic mixture of food that we have eaten since Saturday!!

The cakes were done by a lady in Pound.  The castle cake was white with raspberry filling and the pirate cake was pineapple with pineapple filling.  She does a wonderful job and her cakes are always delicious!

Games included — Kiss the Frog (a version of pin the tale on the donkey) and a Pirate Ship Ring Toss — which I don’t think anyone ever got around to playing with — one of those things I forgot.  We ended the evening with Pinatas — one we had to actually hit with the stick (which I will never do again) and the other was the pull string. 

After the party we arrived home and could barely get in the door from all the stuff we had to cart back from the party.  The girls were dying to open the rest of their gifts but I told them to give me a few minutes so I could change clothes and get a path cleared out for them to open up the rest of their presents.  While I was upstairs I heard Gracie start crying (really loudly) and Olivia immediately started apologizing.  I knew something was up so I ran down the steps into the living room to see Grace and my couch covered in blood.  Olivia had gotten the Pinata stick and was playing and ended up hitting Grace in the nose.   Grace’s nose started swelling and I couldn’t believe the amount of blood.  We didn’t know if it was broke or not so we decided to go on to the Emergency Room.

After waiting an hour and a half at the ER and still no Doctor or any visible hope of even seeing a Doctor — I woke Chris and Olivia who were sleeping and had him check her nose again.  He touched it and moved it and she didn’t scream.  She then also informed me she was hungry — so we packed up and came back home.  Needless to say the stick has been trashed.  Her nose is still swollen but she seems to be fine — Olivia on the other hand — is definitely guilt ridden and Grace is working it to her advantage!

Enough Rambling –  Thanks to everyone for coming out to the party!!!