Our Beautiful Blessings!: Ella's 8th Birthday Party!

With me working, parties are not going to be nearly as awesome as they have been in the past. I just don't have the energy or the time to spend hours on Pinterest and days making fun things for parties. With that said I'm still going to try to make my kids parties fun without spending a ton of money to do it.

Ella's 8th Birthday party was on Saturday, February 17th. It was an all girl party!

The theme I thought would be fun was Karaoke because Ella loves her Frozen and Moana CD's. I didn't want to actually rent a Karaoke machine though. Mostly because all the girls coming are in 1st grade so they are still learning how to read and if I remember right most Karaoke machines just have words they don't show images of the actual movie. I might be wrong though. I think it was my friend Rachael that had the idea to just watch YouTube videos with the words. We have a really long HDMI cord so we were able to bring the videos up on the computer and just basically use the TV as a giant monitor.

To go along with the Karaoke party theme I found these fun pretend microphones on Amazon. They were super glittery and just made it so the girls had something to hold onto while they sang. I also bought a few bags of ring pops for the girls. Of course Ella couldn't have those because of the dye, but she didn't mind

The party was from 2pm - 4pm so we just had light snacks. Fruit, veggies, chips and punch. Michael went to the Dollar Tree and picked up the balloons in the background. Ella actually still has them in her room right now. They just recently started to lose the helium. Not bad for $3 dollars!!!

Here are the girls. Camryn in the front left was the oldest girl there...other than us moms. Samantha is in the very back left....that's Camryn's sister. Ella is in front of Sam and then going to the right is Ebba (friend from school) and then Addison. In front of Ella is Anna and then Kellyn (friend from school) and then Lesly (friend from school). Then right front and center is Logan! Yes...Logan came all the way from Spokane to spend the weekend with Ella. At first we weren't sure if she was going to make it because the pass wasn't looking so good, but Richard decided to try and it was okay. So thankful for wonderful friends willing to drive hours for my girl!!!

Ella did invite another friend from school...actually her best friend from school, Riley, but unfortunately Riley was sick. We were missing a few other girls as well due to scheduling conflicts....Kendra, Lilyann, Reagan, Caitlynn, Grace and Audrey. But that was okay because Ella got to hang out with each of these girls separately at a later date which ended up being blessing really. More on that below.

I started the music and at first the girls were a little nervous!

They did loosen up a bit and I helped by singing along and not caring how silly I looked. During this time of the party Ella wasn't really herself. She was very reserved and wasn't super into it. I'm not sure if she wasn't feeling good or just plain wasn't feeling it...as in the music. She can be super shy! She was sort of off this whole weekend so who knows.

What I have figured out is that Ella really does better in smaller groups. I think for future parties I might just schedule a couple smaller play dates for her. She's okay with having Rachael's girls....Kendra, Lilyann and Reagan over at the same time as Christina's girls...Anna and Addison and Kim's daughter Caitlynn. But then I would probably have a separate play date for Audrey and Grace and then another one for all her school friends and then a separate alone play date for Logan. She's used to seeing all her school friends at the same time, but Logan she gets to see so infrequently it's just nice for the two of them to not have share each other with anyone else. I think we all have friends like this though. Ones we enjoy in bigger groups together and then those few we just want one on one time with and we don't want to share them.

Present time!!!

From Logan Ella got some fun outfit sets for her Journey Girl Doll.

From Anna and Addison Ella got some bling! They definitely know Ella Grace!!!

Ella got two things off her Amazon list from Ga-Ga...pretty frilly headbands and a dress that has the same dress for her Journey Girl Doll.

Lesly got her a cute dress.

Kellyn got her this fun bag filled with these cute bunny ears that were made into a sling shot and the ammo for the sling shot was fluffy bunny tails. It was cute!

Aunt Stephie couldn't be at Ella's party, but she got her something else off her Amazon list....tall brown boots. As you can see she was pretty stoked!

Gifts not pictured...$10 from Camryn and Sam and Ebba's grandma made Ella an outfit and a bean bag chair for her Journey Girl Doll. They were amazing! That's probably why there's no picture of them because I was so busy checking them out! I love handmade things!