Birthday planning...

[This post is written by Tharini of Winkie's Way.]

We are about 2 weeks away from Akhil's 4th birthday. And it didn't require much of thinking on our parts on how to celebrate it. He was having a grand time at his classes in My Gym, and that's where he would have his friends over to help him commemorate the occasion. We decided to call all his friends from school, and some of our personal friends with kids. I think that would total about 18-20 kids in all. The date of the party is June 16th, just the day after his actual birthday. So once the venue was decided and booked, we turned our attention to the rest of the stuff.

Starting with the invitations. I thought it would be a neat craft idea for Winkie to do all the invites himself. It would give him some involvement in planning for the occasion and we could constructively spend some time together. We started off in good earnest. I wanted to make hand painted invites (like what you see in the picture) for all his young friends. We made about 7 in the course of 2 days. I drew a rough outline in pencil and he painted inside it. After the 7, he bailed out on me and refused to do anymore. That's a boy's attention span for you!!!

So to make it complete, I added little inserts on the inside of the card as to place, time, agenda etc. Phew!! It took up quite a bit of time to do manually. After that I took stock of things again and decided I cudn't quite repeat this for another 13 more invites and decided to scan his best work in, and email it to the rest to my friends. Good choice! I was done inviting within the next 24 hours.

Now the next thing to decide on is the cake....but we already know what we want and who is going to make it, so not much work there either. Rajesh has been charged with the task of buying for the goody bags. Now I have to think about how to celebrate the occasion in school on the 15th. Last year I did pizza and cupcakes and that was that. This time, we already have pizza on the 16th, with proper cake. Should I do a repeat one on the 15th? No clear thoughts on this yet. I would welcome your suggestions. As far as I know, all the kids are coming for the party.

Also, since it is mainly a kiddy party, the kids will have pizza and juice. What about the adults then? We were thinking to order extra pizza for them. I don't think it would be feasible to get any other type of refreshment there, as in any typical Indian snacks.

I would love to have some of your ideas on this. Please help me out if any ideas come your way. Thanks!