I'll Eat You Up, I Love You So!

 After I wrote part 1 we headed out for a little family vacation and since getting back we have gone nonstop. I will finish part 2 with a possible part 3 more than likely next week but for now I am going to post something I had already started writing.

Summer has zoomed past for us with lots of playtime, projects and fun, but one of my favorite times was celebrating Gavin's fifth birthday. He picked a Wild Things theme over a Super Hero party although I have a feeling there will be a Super Hero theme in the future.

At first I was not very inspired about a Wild Things theme. I kept getting lost in a forest. You'll understand if you have read the book. But once I perused Pinterest for an embarrassing amount of time, I started to pull it together. You can go here to see my Pinterest Wild Things board. I love being able to use the creativity of others and add in my own ideas. I might as well not recreate the wheel in the process.

Here's some pics of the birthday boy and his Wild Crew. I was so impressed that even the grown-up Wild Things participated.

 

 

 

I reused the banner from birthdays past and added the Wild Things cut outs. I am not ashamed of the fact that I took current pictures frames, and filled them with print outs of quotes from the book. I figure the print outs are only used for a few hours. There is no sense in buying frames just for that time frame. I bought one cheap table cloth for the Wild Thing making station but other than that I tried to use what we had on hand. It helped that Gavin's Me Me gave him three stuffed characters from the book in Christmas' past, we already owned two copies of the book (one for guests to sign), and my husband had the Wild Things figurines in the attic.

 

 

I keep being reminded that I don't need to feed everyone anything beside cake and something to wash it down with especially when the party is at  three in the afternoon, but I just can't help myself to serve something to nibble on particularly when the food can be part of the decor. We had Peanut Butter and Jelly crowns, red jello boats, and a dirt cake. My favorite part where the palm trees on the cake made with fruit slices and pirouette cookies. I also added fruit skewers and a new recipe for Reese's Peanut Butter fudge which was so stinkin' good.

 

For activities, the kids dressed up as Kings of the Wild Things, created their own paper Wild Things, and played pin the tail on Max.

 

 

 

 

I also read to them the story and on the second read gave each kid a Wild Thing Mask and whistle to let the Wild Rumpus start. The kids had fun roaring their terrible roars and gnashing their terrible teeth.

 

 

We sent each kid home with a Wild Things bag (scored these for 10 cents a while back) with Wild Things pencils and stickers (also on clearance) and a monster rubber ducky for the littlest Wild Things while the older ones received a pack of candy (I went easy on the sweets) and a Wild Things sticker scene.

Gavin had a pretty sweet wild birthday with some pretty sweet wild friends and family.