So to begin...we have the invitation brought to you by MarysPartyDesgins on Etsy:
Jett originally wanted to go laser tagging for his birthday party, but he also wanted to invite his entire class and 4 neighbor friends as well...totaling 15 children. I can't afford laser tagging for 15 children. Which meant I would have to do a party at home, which is not my favorite since I have to not only set up, but clean up afterwards. So I thought I had this one in the bag when I said, "You can invite 4 friends and do laser tag, or you can invite everyone and have a party at home." I really thought he'd choose laser tag. In fact, I would've bet money on it, but apparently the kid just can't not invite everyone. So, a home party it was!
I started the cake on Wednesday, making the modeling chocolate and fondant. Thursday I worked on the sculptures of Marshmallow Man and Slimer. Hot dang those things were difficult! I kept trying and trying and trying. And finally, after three tries, I finished Slimer. Then I went to work on Marshmallow Man, and tried, and tried and tried until he came together as well. Halfway through I was really wishing I had taken a sculpting class in college. That stuff is no joke! And I'm just working in chocolate and fondant!
On Friday after dropping Cruise off to school, I got started on the cake part.
Jett wanted a pumpkin cake so I found a great recipe with a cinnamon cream cheese frosting recipe along with it. I made three 9-inch rounds and two 6" rounds and a dozen cupcakes with the leftover batter, which were gone within hours. I put the cream cheese frosting in-between layers and used buttercream to ice the outside. I've come to learn the cream cheese frosting tends to make the fondant slide off the cake. I covered the tiers in white fondant, made buildings out of grey fondant and used a black food marker to crudely draw on windows and doors. Then I made the slime. I mixed green piping gel, some neon green food coloring, and corn syrup and then drizzled it all over the cake to make a slime effect. Next came the sculptures. I was so afraid these things would fall off, but surprsingly they stayed on, even overnight! Then I finished it off with writing 'Jett' and '5' on the cake with green piping gel and voila! The cake was done!
Saturday was the day! The day Jett has been bugging me about for months. We had 7 kids show up, so that was pretty good. I was secretly hoping not everyone would come because honestly, there really is no space in my house for 15 children. Random tangent: In my last therapy session, we discussed the upcoming birthday party and my anxieties about it because I had never done a birthday party where we invited kids whose parents don't know me and where the kids were all typically developing. In Autism Land, parents ALWAYS stay. You don't drop your kid off. You stay. Even if you know the family. You. Stay. So I was surprised to find out by my therapist that parents just drop their kids off and say, "Have fun!" Wow! That would be nice. It was equally surprising to me that I didn't have to constantly be worrying about other kids' sensory problems, or helping them return to the group, or constantly be giving them directions one step at a time. So man! This was not too shabby!
Okay, back to the party...so I had 2 hours planned out, but things seemed to go a bit faster than expected. But I did what my therapist told me to, and expected things to not work out how I planned and to remember the whole point of the party was to celebrate Jett and to make sure he had fun. So that made things a lot easier. I had a table set up to make slime aka "Ectoplasm",
another table to make marshmallow men,
and in the playroom I had a shooting range set up for the kids to shoot silly string at ghosts. Jett was particularly excited about this one. I found these awesome silly string guns online (which are surprisingly very hard to find) and thought that would be a nice way to make up for the lack of laser tag in the party. I got some foam board and drew Slimer and Marshmallow man, and then hit up the party store after Halloween to get a ghost 50% off, so that was cool. Each kid had ten seconds to shoot the "flying" ghosts which were actually tied to the hooks in the ceiling that we use for the sensory swings. So the rule was you had to shoot them in the front, which required the kids to run around. It made a mess, but it was fun.
We still had a ton of time left, so we had musical chairs to the Ghostbusters song about three times. The first two times, Jett's friend Dylan won, on the 3rd Jett one. Cruise had a really tough time with losing and went and hid to cry because he didn't win and we were transitioning to the cake. So his awesome Dad set up a musical chairs for just the two of them and they played and of course, Cruise won and we finally got a smile out of him.
Then we went to cake! We sang, we ate, and the kids went nuts playing in the playroom while we waited to do presents.
Jett got a lot of fun gifts that included a big batman, a couple Nerf guns, and some cars. Afterwards, Jett wanted to put on Ghostbusters since we had about a half hour left (all while praying I wouldn't scar someone's child for life) and those who wanted to, made more slime.
Luckily my sister Abby was able to come and help out, which was awesome because I don't think Dave and I would've been able to do it very well on our own. So thanks Shmoopie!
Jett was such a sweet heart and thanked me for his cake and his birthday party. He had such a great day and that is all I wanted to hear. Whew! Now I can start stressing about Thanksgiving dinner!
1 comment:
You sure know how to throw a party! That looks like it was AWESOME!!! Good Job Em!
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