The Art Party

Thrown for: Petra
Age: 5
Location: home
Number of guests: 9

The basics: Petra is a passionate artist, so no wonder she chose this theme for her 5th birthday. We brainstormed ideas together by looking through Pinterest. We then made our materials list for the couple of craft projects and hit Michaels. She invited a few neighbors, a few friends from school and of course, her big bro Beckett.

Activities included: 

• Birdhouse Decorating: Each guest painted and bedazzled a wooden birdhouse.
• Tote Bag Decorating: After choosing the color tote bag, each guest was handed foam letters to spell out their names across the bag. They then used puffy paint & more foam stickers to complete.
• Freeze Dance: The kids gathered downstairs to burn off some energy.

What I loved about this party: Petra wanted to fully participate in the entire process. The night before, Petra helped me set up the projects, hang the tissue paper flowers and rainbow we made during one of our many snow days, and of course, she set up the cake table. The craft projects were a hit- you could hear a pin drop as the girls decorated with paint, glitter glue and stickers. They were fully engrossed.

Suggestions from the hostess: As my invite stated, drop off was optional. At this age, you never know how parents feel, especially since many of them I had never met before, so it's good to give them a choice in that case. Also- clearly stated on the invite was "please wear play clothes as we will be painting". This relieved some stress on my part as the glitter and glue flowed. I also encourage a good music mix. I stayed up the night before and downloaded all of Petra's current favorites from Lorde, One Direction, Katy Perry, Beyonce and Rihanna. Thank goodness, since the girls were so eerily quiet while crafting.