VACATION!!! This week is Thanksgiving! I am very excited that my siblings and their families are coming to visit! This is the first year I’m hosting people at my house for the holiday week, so we’re working to get everything ready – places to sleep and food to eat. Julius is very excited to see his cousins and has been talking about it for weeks. Since this week feels like a party I wanted to kick off the festive air and share what we did for Julius’ birthday party! A few months ago when I asked what theme he wanted for his party he told me “Wallace and Gromit” which was his favorite movie at the time. So I planned this awesome Wallace and Gromit party for Julius and a week before the party he broke down crying, “I want a CARS party with Lighting McQueen”. Despite the near drama over the theme he was super excited by everything and had a great time.
Wallace and Gromit 4th Birthday
Theme
Julius loves “A Grand Day Out”, the first Wallace and Gromit short, which was one of the first movies he ever saw. If you are unaware, Wallace and Gromit are a British human-dog inventor duo who get up to all sorts of trouble. In “A Grand Day Out” they run out of cheese, and decide to build a rocket ship to get to the universe’s foremost supply of free cheese, the moon. Since Julius’s birthday is in November it was too chilly for a Grand Day Out so instead we did “A Grand Day In”
Wallace & Gromit
Give Away
I just cannot help myself making up goody bags for the kids so this time the give-aways included Home Depot aprons that I personalized with names names cut with my cricut from heat transfer vinyl. The aprons were polypropylene, So I could only iron at 265 degrees Farenheit. It took a lot longer to fuse at this temp. In addition to the aprons I gave everyone a pair of kids’ s afety goggles, peg dolls of Wallace and Gromit and a rocket wood working kit.
Each bag contained a rocket project, Wallace & Gromit pegdolls, a personalized apron and safety goggles.
Activities
Much like Wallace and Gromit, Julius loves to build things. We have done every single Home Depot Kids’ Workshop kit since the start of the pandemic. At this point Julius can put them together with little help from me. I wanted to make a Wallace and Gromit themed wood working kit, so I decided on a wooden rocket ship. The kids would have to glue, hammer and screw the ship together. Afterwards they could paint it in the color of their choice. I did the woodworking craft in my work shop and set out little hammers and screwdrivers for the kids. On the far side of the work shop I set up a little table with paint. I think both kids really enjoyed the craft, and Caleb, who I pre-built a rocket for, seemed to like painting it.
Paint setup
Wood working setup with wood glue, paper towels, hammers, screwdrivers and sandpaper.
Kids hard at work on their rocket wood working project.
The kiddos hard at work painting.
Caleb is doing a fabulous time decorating.
I also made a giant cardboard rocket ship out of the refrigerator box from our new fridge. It took up a lot of space – so we pushed the furniture aside in the basement and set it up downstairs. It was very difficult to get the fridge box into the basement, but afterwards the rest was easy! I’ll post an update on this part at some point in the future. The kids ended up eating lunch inside the ship too.
Julius eyeing the rocket ship.
Playing with the cardboard rocket.
Lunch
A Grand Day Out is basically a picnic on the moon. To emulate this I had lots of delicious picnic foods, including – of course – cheese and crackers. The fun part though was that I bought tiny picnic baskets at Michaels, and let the kids pack their lunch into the baskets. Then they got to have a picnic in the rocket ship.
Picnic baskets for the kiddos.
The picnic spread, clockwise from bottom left: PB&J sandwiches, olives, egg salad and chicken salad sandwiches, veggie platter, grapes, juice boxes, cheese platter, pepperoni, crackers
Kiddos having a picnic in the rocket.
Cake
Since it was a small party I made a half batch of cake and cupcakes. I used the same vanilla cake recipe as last year and this time I really didn’t like the recipe. For whatever reason it came out really dense. I thought I could attribute that to my crazy round cake attempt, but even the cupcakes were dense. It’s almost like I overmixed it – but I followed the recipe to a tee! (Maybe that was the problem?) The cake was a rainbow inside and shaped like… the moon. For the cupcakes I experimented with the airbrush machine my mother in law got me a few years back. I thought they looked pretty cute but they dyed everyone purple! Yikes!
Moon cake with rocket landing and purple star cupcakes.
The kids look so happy for cake. Look at the twinkle in Julius’ eyes!
