We had a fun time in Nashville visiting Will’s family. Patricia and Julius entertained themselves (mostly) without getting into trouble. This lead to many adorable conversations between the two of them. Patricia is always delighted to follow Julius around and will mimic his every move (sometimes to Julius’ chagrin). In the long front hall bathroom they have a slightly hidden shower in the back hidden behind a curtain. Julius and Patricia discovered this and played in the shower for hours. One day the front hall bathroom was closed all day long, and I kept thinking someone was in there, but when Patricia had to use the bathroom I finally knocked, got no response and went in. In the back they had brought two little chairs into the shower and seated across from the chairs were giant monkey and cow stuffed animals who were seated as if having a conversation. I remarked to Patricia, “What are those guys doing here?!” To which she responded, “ummm, taking a shower!”
We drove to Knoxville one day to see Will’s grandfather, and it was quite a long drive but Julius, Will and I entertained ourselves by telling “jokes” about ghosts. (Julius’ idea.) Julius has not exactly mastered the art of joke telling, probably because he really doesn’t understand the concept of a joke. His understanding is that a joke is when you ask a question, respond with an outlandish answer that is usually not on topic and then laugh hysterically. Probably the best “joke” he told all day was “What is a ghost’s favorite food?” The answer is obviously “ch-ooo-cken”. At least he was starting to grasp the concept.
The day after Thanksgiving we celebrated Patricia’s birthday with Will’s family. Patricia had asked a couple times “where’s Patricia’s party” since she got to celebrate Julius’s pirate party with his friends. We decided to cut out the friend portion, but we did throw her quite a fun little party! I don’t know what I’m going to do when they understand calendars and time a bit more, and I won’t be able to discretely hold Patricia’s party 3 weeks after her actual birthday. I guess I’ll worry about that next year.
Woodland Fairy Party
Theme
Obviously I’ve been very into fairies this year based on all the fantasy novels I’ve been reading. Since Patricia and Julius are basically woodland sprites themselves I decided to just lean in on the fairy idea. (Side note: did you know fairy core is a new style thing?!) I had originally planned to make some kind of mushroom house for them to play in, but obviously that wouldn’t be portable for Nashville. Instead we ended up bringing the princess playhouse that Sugar and Daddy O got Patricia for her birthday. (It folds up small enough to easily fit in a suitcase.)
If these napkins don’t scream “fairy party” to you, then you can just stop reading now!
Ready to party
Note the fairy house in the distance
Food
Cake
Patricia is obsessed with sweets. It’s kind of concerning, so we really try to limit her sugar intake. That said I did make cupcakes for her party, dipped in red frosting with fondant dots to look like mushrooms. I arranged them on a slice of wood stump that I got from my new neighbors (they cut down a bunch of trees in their yard while landscaping, they may have thought I was crazy when I asked them for a stump, but they hid it well). Patricia liked the fondant dots more than the cupcakes. Admittedly the cupcakes were boxed cake mix and frosting was from a tub, whereas the fondant was homemade so maybe she just has good taste.
I’m obsessed with mushrooms, Patricia’s obsessed with sweets, win-win.
She ate the fondant off the cupcake, you’ll get a better view in a later shot.
Wand Making
I was originally going to have the kids decorate a felt wand or something of the sort, but at the last minute pivoted and decided it would be cute to do a cookie wand instead. I eventually realized a cookie wand would be more effort to create than I desired so I had (what I thought was) a genius idea to make wands out of rice Krispie treats. I’ll show you how I did it in a future post, and the entire thing is edible! The kids (and Will) happily decorated theirs with a boatload of frosting and different sprinkles.
Wand decorating station
Wands ready to be decorated
Kids working on their wands
Patricia devouring her creation
Will also made and ate a wand.
Julius won the award for most artsy
Lunch
In addition to the cupcakes and fairy wands Will had the great idea to have Patricia’s favorite foods for lunch – appetizers! Mary Elizabeth picked up some great apps from Trader Joe’s that were quickly devoured!
Nom! What a spread! (Credit to Mary Elizabeth for the organization.)
Activities
Crown Making
A month ago I picked up some discount Halloween crafts at Michael’s at like 75% off. One of the “Halloween” crafts was a DIY paper crown covered in sticker jewels. I grabbed some discount fall leaf stickers too and let the kids make their own crowns. This activity would be super easy to make for a group using the cricut, so I’ll probably post my own version in the coming weeks. Both kids seems to really enjoy the craft (stickers of any kind are a home run right now for Patricia).
Patricia and Julius decorate their crowns
Face Painting
After Halloween I also nabbed some face paint at 75% off. I bought the crayon kind, but now wish I’d bought the actual paint kind because the crayons were difficult to apply. Everyone at the party had their face adorned with fairy-ish motifs by the end.
My first victim model
What ears? Those are 100% natural. (Yes I did wear those all day.)
Mushroom House and Peg Fairy Dolls
I am obsessed with the peg dolls. You may remember that I made Winnie the Pooh character peg dolls for Julius’s 3rd birthday and Wallace and Gromit peg dolls for Julius’s 4th birthday. This year I made fairy peg dolls for Patricia’s party! Julius’ peg dolls frequently become passengers in his magna-tile creations, so hopefully these fairies get a ride in one of his rocket ships. Patricia seemed delighted with them. Her reaction when she saw them was “Peoples!” then “little peoples!” and then “little peoples have wings!” These peg dolls also have their own mushroom house and little mushrooms that I made from cast off items I’ve been saving.
The little peoples with wings’ village. Yes that one fairy does have bat wings, and, now that you mention it, looks an awful lot like someone from a book I once read…
Playing with the fairies.
Fairy Free Play
As I mentioned we brought Patricia’s princess castle for some fairy free play (and our bubble maker) and fairy free play wouldn’t be complete without wings and fairy skirts! Patricia and Julius wore their wings, skirts and crowns all day! And Julius even wore his outfit the entire next day!
My little fairy.
My other, slightly bigger, little fairy
This is later that night after he’s changed into PJs.
Overall it was a great party and the kids had a lot of fun. Just a reminder – don’t forget to enter the contest for a pirate hat package for your kiddos… or yourself (no judgement here)! And now in the words of Patricia… “byebye, see you later!”
Bye bye, see you later!
To be more explicit, the fairy book series that Lexi is obsessed with is A Court of Thorns and Roses.
Thank you Will – we were really frustrated with the ambiguity.
Hahahhaha. Will clearly was!