#1 Star

These silly monkeys helped me with a special project for Clement's first birthday.  After all, our third born kind of got the shaft in terms of blog posts so I ought to have made up for it somehow.  Luke's 5th birthday is coming up soon.  Hopefully he'll forget about the piñata.  First we blew up a balloon and used cereal boxes to construct a frame for the soon-to-be-shattered star.  Luke earned a gold star of his own in the paper ripping event and Augustine bowed out soon after seeing the process was bound to be a bit messy.  We started the project 3 days before the party, I think, but I still cut it close.

 Here's what the star looked like after the paper mache .  I have no idea how many layers of paper  I put on the entire structure.  I tried to make sure every spot was thoroughly covered and it wouldn't rip under it's own weight when hanging.  I wasn't especially strategic in my placing since I had a curious Luke Francis by my side asking somewhere around 1, 342 questions throughout the process.  When I went downstairs to check it after a night of drying I discovered the top side nearly dry but the bottom side quite wet, so I gave it a flip and hoped for the best.

The day before the party, I added a couple extra pages from the phonebook to the main body of the star for reinforcement.  I cut a square shaped flap

about 5 inches across to be able to insert the stuffins' and found that,

 A.) I had used enough layers to make the structure 3/8ths of an inch thick and

 B.) that the inside was not yet dry. I used a hairdryer to help speed up the drying process and let it bake in the sun for a couple hours as well.  Then I added the goodies, used some packing tape to close the hole and did the decorating.

Pete had taken the boys to complete some errands so I could wrestle with the glue and tissue paper.  I cut the tissue paper into strips that were about six inches wide, folded them so a two and a half inch piece hung over the bottom half then cut the bottom layer into 1 inch sections and did the top flap the same way so that it resulted in alternating fringe.  I used traditional Elmer's glue to affix the paper to the frame.  I had to keep reminding myself that the thing was destined to be beat by a bat and therefore tried to ignore my perfectionist tendencies and tried not to worry about the beauty pageant judges.
   The invitations had stars on them and so did the cake.  It was a spice cake with cream cheese frosting.  The rest of the menu consisted of a variety of subs including an Italian, a ham and swiss, a turkey and cheddar, and oversized meatballs in the crock pot (made by Pete) for individual meatball subs and a lovely, colorful summer fruit salad (I can hardly wait until those are back in season!), some chips/munchies and a tray of condiments and other fixins' for the sandwiches.

 

 

We had a nice crowd for the festivities and Aunt Kate and Uncle Andrew joined us via the interwaves.  Clement has been the best of our boys yet in blowing out the candle at the one year mark.  He's also the best at blowing his nose.  He seemed to have a good time despite having a puffy eye from mosquito bites from the previous night.  We spent more time outside with tikki torches adding to the atmosphere and the mosquitoes supped further on Clement's sweet skin and he woke the next day with his eye practically swollen shut but still smiled at everyone  at the family reunion.

 

Even Grandma Schafer took a whack at the piñata determined to spring forth it's bounty after all the younger boys gave it their best shot two times through the order.  (I guess there were enough layers ;-) 

 Uncle Andy conquered the challenge using the handle of a metal shovel & Jacob donned the crown.

We celebrated Augustine's feast day in late August with a spread of food and jello desserts with overly saturated gummy sharks and octopi.  We also entertained the crowd with gigantic bubbles, a water balloon/squirter fight and brought out the tikki torches once again.

 

 And a little over a month later we celebrated Augustine's 3rd birthday by heading back to Arrowhead Orchard and feasting on his apple walnut train cake with oreo wheels and candy as cargo.

We had strawberry shortcake for Luke's feast day in October as well. We didn't do so well in considering the spacing of feast days/birthdays when we chose names for our children resulting in a heavily laden late summer/early fall when it comes to parties.  It can be so fun...

...and yet so exhausting.