Ella's Birthday party was originally scheduled for February 23rd, but then we had sickness run through our house so I decided to postpone it until March 9th.
When it comes to a birthday party for Ella I always have the hardest time. In the past few years Ella has not had that much fun at her parties. Either she's just not that into it or she doesn't know how to act when there is that many of her friends together or something. It feels like this slippery slope and I don't really have any idea how to manage it. I thought about having just a playdate with her school friends and then a party with her family friends, but that just seemed like too much trouble. Ella really wanted to have a princess tea party and she wanted all her friends both family and friends from school to come. Anything for my precious girl!
At first I was just going to have the girls sit at the dining room table and then the mom's would stand and socialize in the kitchen, but the closer it got to the party I realized that didn't sound like much fun. I decided that we needed to have the tea party in the garage like we did the last time she had a tea party. I knew I didn't want it to be as elaborate as the first party though....that was exhausting to plan! Also I didn't want us to freeze being out in the garage. That's when I asked our neighbor Lance if he would cut a hole in our furnace so we could heat our garage like they heat theirs. He was all for it so a couple days before the party he came over and took care of that for us. It was so nice to have the garage all warm for the party.
Ga-Ga & Pa brought over the tables and chairs for us. We had 2 rectangle tables and 6 chairs at each table. I also had the food table set up out in the garage as well.
The best part of Ella's party was that her teacher Ms. Castle came!!! I was floored when she said she wanted to come. I mean so sweet right!!!! She even went up into Ella's room and socialized with all the girls.
Auntie Stephie, Ga-Ga & Ms. Kim were there as well.
There were a few of Ella's family friends that couldn't come due to various reasons, but it really ended up being a great number of girls. There were 5 girls including Ella and then Ms. Castle so they were able to fit at one table together. Ella's on the left in the front, behind her is Riley, Olivia is at the head of the table, Ms. Castle, Helena and then Caitlynn is on the front right.
To make it easier on myself I used paper/plastic everything except the tea cups. Everyone had their own ceramic tea cup.
Here's the food table...we had strawberries, grapes, scones with raspberry jam and lemon curd, lemon bars, mini donuts, carrot & celery with ranch, BBQ little smokies and 4 kinds of tea sandwiches. The girls also got raspberry sorbet in cute little containers....you can see them in the picture above with all the girls at the table. To drink they had the option of English Breakfast tea or Raspberry Lemonade...which was dye free...yahoo!!!
My cute birthday girl!
Cute girls enjoying their tea! Ga-Ga, Aunt Stephie, Ms. Kim and I sat at the other table. After the girls went up to play Ms. Castle came over and joined us! It was so nice visiting with her!
Ready to open presents!
LOL Doll.....yay!!!
Another fuzzy ball!!!
LOL fashion plates! I was so excited about these...I loved fashion plates growing up!
Ella asked Ms. Castle for teacher markers...aka Dry Eraser markers. She was so excited!!!
The hit of the party...a 3lb bucket of SLIME courtesy of Olivia!!!
I found Ella this cool drawing pads at Costco. It was s two pack and it's like those drawing pads we had when we were kids where you take the plastic pencil and write on it and then lift up the page and it erases so you can write on it again. This one is an electronic version....you draw on it and then hit a button and it erases it. So cool!
Auntie Stephie got Ella her ABC mat for her clubhouse so it will be more comfortable to sit in and the she also got her this amazingly soft pink throw blanket!
Ms. Kim & Caitlynn got Ella a Lisa Frank coloring book and an LOL doll like the one we got Logan. As you can tell she was super stoked!
More LOL dolls and Squishies!
Her card from Ga-Ga & Pa had $9 in it of course!
Then it was out to the deck to open her present from Ga-Ga & Pa. She was having trouble getting the BBQ cover off it so we had to help and we had her close her eyes!
I love her reaction and Helena's as well. She was so excited to have a bigger girl bike. The first thing she said was....it has one of these things and she pointed to the kick stand! Official big girls status when your bike has a kick stand!
Loving her bike!!!
Pictures with the partygoers!
Ella & Ms. Castle...seriously she is just the sweetest teacher ever! I so appreciate her taking time out of her day to make Ella's birthday really special.
These girls are all so sweet!
Kim and I with our sweet girls!
Let the slime playing commence!
Aunt Stephie with Ella Bean!
In regards to parties this was definitely one of Ella's best! The amount of girls there was perfect for Ella...enough to make her feel special, but not too many that she felt overwhelmed. Also the party itself was perfectly simple for her. The only thing we did was eat! After that the girls just went off and played...no special activities, no games...none of that. Just simply played and it was amazing! It was a huge eye opening thing to me since I usually try so hard to have things for the kids to do, but now I think I'm just going to let the kids play and not fuss so much about planning.
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