In a few days my son will turn 4 years old! I have no idea where the last four years have gone. The good news is he has grown into a very charismatic boy but still loves his cuddles! His birthday typically falls around President’s Day which means we are on school vacation. We hosted his birthday party yesterday at our apartment. I try to be a good DIYer and create an amazing party at home, but the truth is you need some help too. Here is how I managed a 4-year-old’s birthday party while staying (mostly) sane and keeping my apartment from getting destroyed!
By the time your child turns four they have a lot of opinions about everything, especially their birthday. Once we decided on where to have the party (at home), we started working on the guest list. As I mentioned previously, my son is pretty fun. His teachers last year described him as a charismatic playmate. I wasn’t surprised that his guest list was long. Knowing it was a school vacation made it a bit more reasonable as a lot of families travel during the break. But I knew if I was going to keep everything in order, I was going to need some outside ‘entertainment’. I wanted to do something different and when I found the Karma Kids Yoga website it seemed like the perfect activity. Shari came to our home with all of the yoga mats and supplies to keep the kids busy for about an hour. Did I mention the party was a Sea Creature/Beach theme with snow (because it is the middle of winter)? Shari did a great job incorporating our theme and keeping the kids’ attention.
Next up was lunch and while I typically prefer to cook, I knew that it wasn’t realistic to be in the kitchen and be able to enjoy the party. We ordered pizza, mozzarella sticks, pasta and salad. To make it a bit home-made I created a Shark Watermelon Bowl (thank you Pinterest)! Keeping with the theme we also had sand buckets filled with pretzels and crackers set out for the kids to snack on. Everyone enjoyed their meal and the leftovers went to the office with my husband where his team enjoyed a nice afternoon snack! Dessert was ice cream cone cupcakes. I find cupcakes are much easier for a kid’s party since there isn’t any waiting for the cake to be cut. While it might seem fun to have different flavors to satisfy different tastes, it is actually better to keep them all the same. Then no one gets upset that they didn’t get the flavor/color/icing that they wanted. We had a 4 shaped candle and my son had a huge smile on his face.
After cupcakes, it was time for everyone to go home. I find if you put some thought into the goody bags for just a few more $$ you can get something useful. Our goody bags were shark shaped and had a beach towel rolled up inside. Clean up isn’t always fun but we used disposable everything so a few garbage bags later the apartment looked pretty good. A quick run of the vacuum and the place looked pretty much as it does every afternoon.
To sum it all up, to make the most of your child’s birthday party be sure to have some help but put a little home-made love into it by creating a few of your own pieces. If the birthday boy or girl is happy, you’ll be happy too. Now I’m off to make the real birthday cake we’ll have on his birthday. I’ll be sure to share it on Instagram so follow us there.
Happy Friday,
Julie
