Serenity's party was a success

We have been pushing and pushing and pushing to get things done around the house for Serenity's party and it really did pay off. The weather app on skip's phone was still calling for rain but the radar wasn't showing any,but we decided to play it safe and go ahead and set up her party in the shop. I know Skip really isn't a big fan of having parties out there but he was a trooper and helped get it all set up. Serenity was an awesome helper this year and actually told me how she wanted some things decorated and since most of her ideas were close to what i had in my head i didn't have to pretend to like her ideas ;) Skip finished 16 complete birdhouses for the kids to paint. he had the pieces to do more but we decided unless we had more RSVP's (which people kill me with not knowing what that actually means, but that's an entirely different post) even though we held the party out in the shop the weather was nice and it held off until just about the end when we started opening presents. the kids all seemed to have a really great time and thankfully my mom had my camera in tow so there were lots of pictures to choose from :)Serenity was very pleased with her party and that alone made me very happy. the one thing i was super sad about was that we didn't get our annual picture of Serenity and 2 of her friends. one of them had their party the same day :( but even without the picture it was a great time
The kids started off by picking out an apron and then designing it to look how ever they wanted. once they were done with this they had a little food and then were off in the yard chasing each other which left a great opening for me to start clearing the tables for their next craft,painting birdhouses. I'm so thankful to my hubby for building these birdhouses. not only was it very budget friendly since we had everything already in the shop, but they were very cute and much sturdier than some kits we could have purchased. we poured the paint then placed a birdhouse at the seats for the kids then called them in to get started. once they were done we moved them to another table to dry and they were off again. it's so great that they enjoy running around so much because it made the transitions between crafts so much easier. cleaned up,well fake cleaned, i smeared the paint all over the table cloth we were using (which was just brown paper at the suggestion of my hubby, that they could also draw on as they sat) and then got the cupcakes set up. Serenity's request was tie dyed cupcakes but i decided that as a kind of "craft" i would just frost them with white icing and let them each go to town decorating their own and boy did they. especially my daughter. with the cupcakes we served homemade strawberry ice cream, another request of Serenity's. after the cupcakes we went onto the presents where she received lots of wonderful things and then that wrapped it up for the day. well at least for the fun part, next was just the clean up but luckily Serenity was entertained with one of her new presents so she stayed out of the way while we got that done :)thanks so much to nana for her new bike. to see more pictures of her party make sure to go to our photo page