Our Beautiful Blessings!: Ella's 6th Birthday Party!

Last year we took the kids to see Inside Out at the cheap theater and I knew pretty much the moment we left the theater that Ella's party was going to be an Inside Out theme! My kids loved the movie! I've heard that some people didn't like it because it was sad and a bit negative, but I didn't think so at all. Life is full of challenges that we must overcome and growing up is hard! There are so many emotions that our bodies go through and I felt like the movie did a wonderful job of really showing how a child would feel during a huge change in their life! Plus it was just downright cute!!!

If you don't know the story I'll give you a little description - The movie is based around the different emotions we feel...Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger.

You can pretty much tell who is who by how they are acting. Anyway Riley is their girl. Riley has "Headquarters" where they reside and each of them take control at different times depending on the situation. For example when she's a toddler and they are trying to feed her broccoli Disgust takes the wheel. Over the course of the movie Riley goes through a pretty dramatic change in her young life and thus experiences lots of emotions. It truly is wonderful, you'll laugh, you'll cry and you'll want to watch it again. Go see it if you haven't...even if you don't have kids you'll love it!

We kept Owen's birthday sign up after his party and I just changed the number and the name right before Ella's party.

I used my My Memories program to create the invitations and all the food/activities signs. I tried to use some cute wording that would go along with the movie. The main part of the invite says....'Bring all your different emotions with you as we take a trip inside the mind of a child. Don't Fear!!! We don't want to Anger you! Disgust is not our goal! Sadness is okay for a while, but in the end all we want is a little Joy!'

One thing I love about the movie is all the color and that's what I really ran with in regards to decorating for the party.

I normally never buy special paper products for parties. I just use the generic table cloth, plates, napkins and cups that I can buy in bulk. This time around I just happened to wander down the party aisle at Wal-Mart and they were each just .97! Cheaper than the Dollar Tree people! Plus there were actually better quality!

I used Yellow & Blue for the plates because sometime food can make your Joyful or Sad. I used Red & Green for the napkins because getting messy can make you Angry or Disgusted. I used purple for the utensils since people can be Fearful of knives!

The food was the most fun part of the party! I really got to show off the emotions!

In the movie Riley hates broccoli. She and her mom go out to dinner and try to find some pizza, but the only pizza shop they find sells broccoli pizza...DISGUSTING! I ordered yummy pizzas....I didn't take pictures of the boxes they were just to the left of the broccoli....and then I had a bowl of broccoli with a sign that says, "Broccoli for your pizza....DISGUSTING!"

Next up was "Chinese" takeout. I had these containers left over from Owen's army party and I knew they would be perfect. In the movie Riley and her parents end up eating takeout from these containers on a card table in there house because none of their stuff from moving has shown up yet. The food isn't necessarily disgusting, but in the situation Riley is quite Disgusted with her parents. Inside the takeout containers was Top Ramen and I had Michael stop at Safeway's China Express and ask if we could have a handful of chopsticks for the party.

Onto Sadness! I made blue jello in cups and they were Circles of Sadness....there is a specific reference to this in the movie. My SIL Stephie got the big bowl of Blue Berries....since Sadness is quite blue!

Anger was fun! I got Flamin' 'Mad' Cheetos and then Anger Management Capsules...aka Hot Tamales. In the movie when Anger gets really mad flames shoot out the top of his head. The plush characters I bought off Amazon for only $20 were super cute, but Anger didn't have his flames so Jackson made paper flames for him!

Inside Riley's mind there are workers that clean up memories that she doesn't need anymore. They are in the shape of jelly beans so I got Jelly Bellies to represent them.

Bing Bong is Riley's imaginary friend and when he cries his tears are individually wrapped candies so I had to get a bowl of Bing Bong's Tears.

And of course I couldn't forget Joy.....we served Lemonade as Tears of Joy because she does actually cry in the movie even though she's Joy. In fact Joy actually experiences all 5 of the different emotions during the movie.

Onto the party-goers!

One funny thing was when Kim walked in the door she immediately noticed that we were wearing the same shirt just different colors. I was even wearing my black sweater prior to her coming over, but then I took it off since I got too warm from setting up for the party.

Uncle Ry & Aunt Stephie ready to celebrate the birthday girl!

Daddy, Uncle Ry & Ga-Ga waiting for some grub!

Kim & Micah....Micah ended up spending over an hour in their van at the beginning of the party since Caitlynn fell asleep right before they got to our house!

Christina came all the way up with her three kiddos in tow. It's always nice to get to see her and the kids!

Pa with his Zeke Man!

Jackson, Elsa, Anna & Addison.

Owen & Caleb....Owen was definitely not as interested in this party at all. He was just waiting for everyone to leave so he could play his computer game! He is SO his Daddy!

Time for food!!!

My brother got a hold of the camera during this time so I guess there is a picture of all the pizza boxes.

As well as a selfie!!!

He tried to get a funny shot of me, but I'm lightning fast when it comes to be ready for a picture. Nice try Ry!

Helping all the kids get their yummies! There was a lot of candy and sugar at this party and all the kids were loving it. The parents....I don't know so much! :)

Zeke will actually eat pizza so that's a plus!

Andrew & Josiah thinking about trying the hot foods!

Just like always we set up the tables in the garage. When we came out it was funny to see that girls all sat at one table....

and the boys all sat at the other!

After eating the kids went off to play for a bit so us adults could visit and then I was going to start the activities. It wasn't very long before we heard crying. Loud crying! One of Ella's top teeth had been pretty loose for a while and we thought it was going to fall out and then it re-solidified itself, but it was sticking out....we lovingly called it her Nanny McPhee tooth. When the kids were playing Ella ended up hitting herself in the mouth with a Nerf Gun. She gave herself a fat lip on top and bottom and her tooth was bleeding like crazy and most definitely loose again! She was a mess as you can imagine. Michael tried to pull it out, but it still wouldn't budge. After we got the bleeding under control we asked her if she wanted to open her presents to get her mind off it. She did, but at the same time she was still quite preoccupied with her tooth so she wasn't her normal self after that.

Ella with her presents!

First present was from Ms Rachael, Kendra, Lily and Reagan. She got a cute track outfit with a shirt and shorts. So cute and perfect since Ella will be starting track at school soon! Ella wore the shirt the next day and was so proud of it!

The next gift was from Ms. Christina, Caleb, Anna & Addison. Ella got a bead set to make bracelets and necklaces...

and a cute Doc McStuffin's lip gloss set with a heart shaped mirror! She loves her lip gloss and mirror....we haven't opened the beads yet, but I'm sure she's going to make all sorts of necklaces for her friends.

From Ms. Kim, Andrew, Josiah & Caitlynn she got a Drawing Princess book and a Disney Eye Spy Card set. She has loved drawing with her Princess book....we haven't played the cards yet though.

From Uncle Ry & Aunt Stephie she got her new horsey bed set. She was quite happy with it and she loves sleeping with it at night.

Ga-Ga & Pa got her an Elsa card that sings and of course 6 one dollar bills.

They also got her an Elsa doll...I see a theme here!

There was also a new Elsa blanket covering a box!

With an Elsa bike in it....she was so excited she jumped out of the picture!

Happy girl!

Now onto the activities!

In Riley's brain she has different 'Islands' things that are particularly important to her. Family Island, Friendship Island, Goofball Island, Honesty Island and Hockey Island.

For Friendship Island I had printed out coloring pages for the kids to color together.

I figured that friends love to do things together and coloring was fun and easy!

I also found a 'find the differences' page so that maybe the older kiddos would enjoy that instead of coloring.

Ella LOVES to color and she made Joy look just like the movie!

For Family Island I got this idea from Pinterest.....in the movie all Riley's memories are stored in Memory Orbs. When I sent out the invitations I let the moms know that if they wanted their kiddos to make a Memory Orb they would need to print out 2 pictures of the same memory.

I had the table all set and ready to go. We used my Big Shot to help cut the pictures into circles. They weren't exactly small enough so we had to trim them a little still, but at least the circle shape gave us something to go with.

I had ordered these plastic ornaments from Amazon and they worked out perfectly. It was definitely an activity that the parents were highly involved in, but I think that was great since it was Family Island!

The finished product was a happy memory saved in the Memory Orb. Since we glued the same picture back to back you can see the same memory on both sides. They really did turn out cute! Zeke picked this memory of Daddy holding him last summer at the water park in Ritzville.

I had a Goofball/Honestly Island all set up, but the kids really just wanted to play by this time so we just scratched it and let them play. I had printed out all sorts of emotions and they were going to have to act like that emotion and see if the other kids could guess.

Time for cupcakes. I make funfetti cake since it had all the fun colors throughout and then I just made 3 different colors for the frosting. I figured you didn't want to be Fearful or Disgusted by your cupcake so I didn't make purple or green.

At first I wasn't sure how to set up the cupcakes so I didn't have any rhyme or reason to it, but then I decided to make it in the shape of a 6.

Let's just say I'm good at a lot of things, but making cupcakes in the shape of a number is not one of them. Micah came to the rescue and figured it out though!

Happy 6th Birthday to my girl!

All the kids had fun picking the color they wanted!

Reagan was loving her sweets!

I had put one Sixxlet on each cupcake that was the same color as the frosting. I had extras so I put them in a bowl. Some of the kids decided that one Sixxlet was not nearly enough!