Huck's Star Wars Birthday Party

This weekend we celebrated Huck's 4th birthday party with a Star Wars theme. There were about 20 kids, give or take, and a 7 foot tall Darth Vader to boot. I have to say, in the future I think I need to plan all of my parties around themes that my husband will really get into. He was awesome at helping me pull this off-he made the Death Star pinata, bought the food, and was totally in charge of the Jedi Training session. In fact, the whole thing was a major group effort. I did the planning, and then everyone around me took the reigns and executed the ideas to party perfection. Steve's brother, Tony, and friend, David, were great in getting the Darth Vader costume together and setting up the music. I didn't even have to do the cake! My friend Maureen and her husband Dave took care of that for me (which was an incredible relief to not have to deal with constructing a crazy cake the night before the party). My in-laws generously opened up their home, and so I was left with mostly making capes for our young guests, costumes for Steve and myself, and throwing together a few small details. So thank you to everyone who helped and to everyone who came! Huck had such a great time and I think every detail lived up to his (and my very high) expectations!
Onward to pictures!

I made capes for every kid, big and small. They were very easy to construct, and I used t-shirt material that did not need hemming. I also found these awesome inflatable light sabers in eBay for less than a buck a piece. The kids had a blast whacking each other with them.

Our costumes. Can you believe I threw these together the day before the party? Again, t-shirt jersey knit fabric, so I didn't have to hem anything. The Leia dress is basically a sack that is cinched at the waist with a belt I found at Ross.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a great close up shot of my hair buns, but I wanted to share how I made them because I was so proud of myself. After a fruitless search (and a terrifying trip to a Halloween Superstore for the boys) for a Leia wig, I decided that I had to either pay big bucks for expedited shipping for a bad, itchy, hot wig, or I'd have to come up with something on my own. So I took two styrofoam circles and cut holes in the centers to make donuts. Then, using hot glue and a staple gun to secure along the way, I wrapped the styrofoam donuts with hair from a cheap wig hair. I made small buns out of my own hair and shoved those through the donut holes, and secured everything in place with bobby pins. They worked like a charm and really looked like my real hair!

Jedi Master Sil Ee'Gooz hopelessly trying to get a bunch of 2 to 4 year-olds to partake in his training session. The little silver balloons are weighted down with washers and are "training targets" for the kids to practice using their light saber moves. More stuff to hit! Yay!

Darth Vader came out in this incredible costume. David, the man behind the mask, is 6'7" tall to begin with, and with the boots and helmet, he stands over 7 feet. It takes 20 minutes and two people to get him into costume. Why does he even have this costume, you ask? Let's just say Dave's a *little bit* of a Star Wars enthusiast.
Look at how brave Huck was! Some of the kids went right up to him and attacked. Others screamed their heads off. It was a pretty good show of fight or flight!

 

Here's a family portrait, to give you an idea of how HUGE this guy was. Milo was completely freaked out.

 

The Death Star pinata! Apparently, this is a staple at Star Wars parties. I think this one came out beautifully, if not a little wrinkled. Steve used a punch balloon to form the paper mache around, and topped the newspaper with gray tissue paper. He was going to paint it, but the gray tissue gave it a nice texture. Then he cut out a small circle to make the little concave bit, and drew lines over the whole thing.

 

It was really hard to break! Steve said that if he'd thought about it, he would have cut a few little holes in it first so it wasn't so airtight.

The Death Star destroyed! The evil empire defeated! Let's have candy!

And, finally, the birthday boy blowing out his candle. I found a really cute Darth Vader shaped cake topper-he holds a red candle lightsaber in his hands. Super cute.

And that's it! Sorry to put up so many pictures. I would send you over to Flickr to see them all, but I am getting more paranoid in my old age and I'm making more of my pictures private for my contacts only (especially those of other peoples' children).

Neptune

Hiya hiya hiya! I thought I should check in since it has been a loooong time since my last post. I have a computer virus that is driving me crazy and only seems to really affect me when I am online. So I've been *mostly* offline for a couple of weeks now! I actually read a book. Kind of nice.
Huck's 4th birthday party is on Saturday, so of course I am going overboard and am stressing about it. He really wanted a Star Wars theme, and surprise surprise, Steve is really involved with the party planning this time around. He's working on a Death Star pinata and organizing the Jedi Training Session, and I am making Jedi capes for all 20-something kids that are coming, I'll post pics off the whole thing next week. It should be a blast.
I'm hoping we can hold out on a full blown house of sickies until after the party. Milo has had a runny nose for the past couple of days, and Huck is complaining of a sore throat today. Their energy levels are still high, though, the snot is clear, and I'm hoping it is just a mild cold or maybe allergies.
I've also started on my swap items and have pics to share of what I received from my Craftster swap. And I am in the final stages of my first official pattern, a hobby horse head, that I hope to have available for sale by the end of the month. Plus, I have a HUGE giveaway event that I'm planning for next month. Things are buzzing!
Of course, there is a slightest little scratchy tickle at the back of my throat and my husband leaves on Sunday for a week to a bike convention, so we'll see if I can muster up the gusto to go, go go! Or if I'll end up curled in a ball watching Veronica Mars on Netflix for a week.

Capes for Huck's Preschool

Huck started preschool today. And Milo is napping. So here I am, with a full two and a half hours all to myself!
His preschool is not the one we were originally going to go with, but we ended up with an offer we couldn't refuse. My husband's cousin works for Autism Partnership in their Social Skills program. The program is designed to help children with autism develop social skills in a school environment-sharing, taking turns, but mostly socializing and playing with other kids. They invite one or two kids without autism to join the class to help simulate a regular preschool environment, act as models-that sort of thing-and Huck was invited to join the summer preschool program as a Peer (Huck isn't autistic). He really enjoyed the summer school, and they liked him (how could they not?!), so he was invited to stay on for the fall semester.
Since Huck is a Peer, his tuition is waived, and I wanted to give the classroom a little thank you gift for inviting us to participate in the program. Each week during the summer program, they focused on a different theme, and one of Huck's favorites was Super Hero week. So for the class gift, I made 10 capes for the kids to wear during that week, or for any play time. If you count, though, only 9 capes made it to the classroom. I had Huck try one on for sizing, and he claimed it for himself.