Month: May 2011

For Gabriel’s third birthday party, we did a Kipper theme. Gabriel loves Kipper ~ Kipper is a British cartoon dog character. He watches the Kipper shows on Netflix, has Kipper books and toys, and now a Kipper t-shirt! So anyway, we had a Kipper party. I did what I could (without wanting to spend the big bucks of ordering supplies from England!) to bring Kipper into our party, and stuck with a color theme of orange, white, and brown (like Kipper!) for everything else. Some of us even dressed according to the color scheme for the party. 🙂

At any rate, the party was a hit. So was the kid-friendly food. And although we didn’t end up playing Pin-The-Tail-On-Kipper, doing the Kipper coloring pages I had, or watching one of the birthday episodes of Kipper… it was still pretty well Kipper-saturated, and Gabriel thought it was peachy. And that’s obviously the point.

This morning while I decorated cupcakes, Gabriel enjoyed a breakfast of chocolate milk and a donut topped with mini m&ms. 🙂

I had a good time planning all the set-up, decorations, and necessities. The birthday banner (birthday #3!), paper circle garlands made from orange & brown scrapbook paper hung here & there, orange & white balloons that were decorated with sharpie & pictures of Kipper, bottles of root beer and orange juice boxes (for brown & orange drinks), orange straws (some striped, some solid), bundles of napkins & utensils packaged together with orange & brown scrapbook paper & topped with a Kipper image, a picture of Kipper on the wall, Kipper’s birthday book & Kipper himself set up on the table, etc. And then of course the orange and brown food: grilled cheese sandwiches (on dark brown bread that I colored with molasses, cocoa, and rye), mac & cheese (from the box! <gasp>), orange fruit salad (mandarin oranges, peaches, and cantaloupe), pretzels & Cheetos, and carrot sticks (leftover from my garden last year).

It rained off & on today, but we were able to have some of the party outside: mostly the present-opening and lots of playing.

When we came inside to eat lunch, the kids were going to eat picnic-style on the floor until Grandpapa brought in the birthday gift he made for our boy ~ his very own little table and chairs! What a hit! Gabriel immediately loved it. Now it’s set up in our family room, and I am envisioning all kinds of eating and playing and coloring and homeschooling adventures at this tabletop.

Finally it was cupcake time, although Gabriel was so immersed in playing with new things that he didn’t even want to eat his cupcake until rather a bit later. 😉 Although I had wanted to make some kind of fancy Kipper cake or specially decorated cupcakes (remember the alligator cake from last year??), this was all I had in me to pull off this year. Thankfully Gabriel loved it, simplicity and all. And I was able to bring orange and brown to the cupcakes, and Kipper to the little toothpick flags I made. Perfect. Our little birthday prince thinks so too. xoxo

More to come, after the actual birthday on Monday…