Simple, Easy Animal Birthday Party

As I type this, we are closer to Katrina's 5th birthday than her 4th but I still haven't blogged about her 4th Birthday party, so here we go! :)

(Now that my hands are doing better and the kids are in school, I'm playing catch-up!)

At the time of her 4th birthday, my hands were not doing well. I love to create fancy birthday parties for my kids, but I knew it wasn't possible this time around, so I went with a less labor-intense plan. I wanted some kind of theme (it just helps me to focus when I'm deciding what kind of plates/food/whatever to choose). So, we went with animals.

She requested a ladybug cake (you know how much she loves ladybugs), so I made this cake for her:



It wasn't too hard for my hands to handle (the squeezing of the icing tubes is the hardest part when my hands are hurting), because most of the icing is just spread on with a knife, so I just had to make it through the border & the dots :) (I love making cakes- I worked as a cake decorator at Baskin Robbins for a while, and it's something I think is really fun, so it was hard to resist trying to make a fancy cake!)We had 3 friends in attendance that were Katrina's age, and invited one of their sisters to be a friend for Talia. We found these cute animal "party hats" at the dollar store which were sent home as part of their goodie bag.



I found some little animal sun catcher crafts at the dollar store which we used as a starter activity when the kids arrived. They painted them and left them to dry during the party, then took them home at the end of the party.



Donkeys are animals, so a dollar store pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game fit right in with our theme, and they loved it! (In the background of the photos, you can see our traditional "Katrina Tree")



And my secret weapon is my mother-in-law ;) She has decided to learn how to face-paint and she has gone all out! She is really good at it, and she came and painted our guests' faces! (I am so happy she did because not only was it fun for them to get their faces painted, but it turned out I didn't even need an activity to take place during the face painting, because they were happy to watch!)





We opened gifts and sang happy birthday and ate ladybug cake! :)



That was it for our simple 4th Birthday party! I don't think I blew up a balloon or hung a streamer. The only thing that I made was the cake, and everything else was purchased at the dollar store. This was an inexpensive, fairly easy party to throw, so if you find yourself in a life situation where you want to throw a party for your child, but you just don't have the time or ability to put a lot of preparation into it (or maybe you just don't want to), you can totally do this! (maybe minus the awesome mother-in-law... but you can get simple face paints at the dollar store and do it yourself- the kids would probably be thrilled to have a heart on their cheek! :)

If you're interested in seeing some of the other birthday parties we've had around here, you can find them here:

A Fairy Princess Tea Party
(Rapunzel) Tangled Birthday Party
Pinkalicious Birthday Party
Teddy Bear's Picnic Party
"A Mess of Balloons" Party
Talia's 7th Birthday Party had a Lalaloopsy theme (I haven't posted it yet, but it's coming! ;)

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