Put the ART back in PARTY!

My little Xochitl is FIVE! Crazy, right? I thought I felt old when my first kid was starting kindergarten... I feel three times older now that my THIRD kid is starting kindergarten! Yikes!

But kids growing up has its perks... for example, now I can do super awesome birthday parties!  This year, Xochitl had so many different ideas about her birthday that I just picked the one I thought would be most fun and ran with it!

The kids arrived and straightaway went to work! Every artist needs a good apron, so each kid chose the color they wanted and drew/stenciled their name and anything else they wanted on it:

 The silver sharpie worked well on all the colors of the aprons. These aprons were a lot of fun for the kids to decorate and wear! 

After finishing the aprons, the kids made a colorful sweet necklace of Froot Loops!

Our pARTy fun begins!!!

Once all were decked out with aprons and necklaces, we were on our our biggest project: Painters tape shape mosaics!

In this art project, you get a canvas and put painters tape of varying widths and sizes all the way across and wrap the tape around the back.   Press all the tape down very firmly! Then choose a color for each section of the canvas and paint every bit! 

 The coolest thing about this project is that any pattern, any tape design, any color selection is unique and cool!

When the paint dries, you remove the painters tape and viola! A beautiful shape mosaic! Sadly, I didn't get pictures of all of the finished products, but here's the ones my kids made:

(Dawna was an amazing helper for this project! She helped the kids paint and mixed new colors for them and got paintbrushes and made sure all the white space was covered!  After the party was over, she finally sat down and made her own!)

While we waited for our mosaics to dry, we headed outside to create some Pop-It art :) Earlier that day, I blew up some eighty-something water balloons with about a teaspoon of paint and water mixed (it was quite an adventure preparing this activity.  I used condiment bottles with the skinny top to fill them...and I accidentally popped a couple in my face... whoops...anyway...). 

 We taped the little balloons with paint onto two big posters...

 ... and sang "Pop Goes the Weasel" while passing around a skewer...

 ...and when it got to "Pop!" whoever was holding the skewer got to pop a balloon! --

 creating two beautiful pieces of modern splatter art! ---not to mention ten adorably splattered kids!

Bespeckled from head to toe with paint!  But look at the awesome art we created!

After all that fun, we had a baby wipe wash down before heading inside for some snacks! I overlooked one small problem: the large mosaics were drying on the table... so we didn't have a place to sit and eat... so out came a big blanket and we enjoyed birthday cupcakes and rainbow goldfish and veggie and fruit rainbows picnic style:

And for one last sweet activity, we created art palette cookies!

...which the kids didn't have time to eat, so they were the take-home treat! I also had model magic clay (but we ran out of time for that activity) and set out other "filler" activities like sidewalk chalk and our white board easel since all the kids finished their projects at different times (which worked great for keeping everyone entertained and happy...).

All in all, it was a great birthday party! One of my favorites! Partly because I love doing little art projects, but rarely take the time to do so unless there's a purpose... I was having at least as much fun as the kids! 

Jade was a good sport and slept through almost the whole party... but woke in time for some snacks and to score her own special box of crayons, which she was very proud of!

WHEW! And that, my friends, is how we put the ART back in pARTy! Hope you feel artistically inspired :) Thanks for turning five, Xochitl love, so I could make this party!