Dakota did most of the projects, honestly, although I helped out where I could. My primary contribution was the campfire cake, adapted from one I saw on Pinterest (of course). It's a regular cake, but I melted red, orange and yellow lifesavers to make candy "flames" and then used chocolate cookie sticks (Pocky) to make the logs. I am not a very adept cake decorator, but this technique was easy enough for me to master.
Dakota made some simple wood A-frame tents, and I attached flat sheets with sewed-on elastic loops. They turned out very cute, although I admit that the kids spent most of their time playing inside Dakota's old blue boy scout tent.
You can also see a cardboard "campfire" to the right there. Several of our partygoers had a fun time adding real sticks to the fire and adorably sitting around it on camping chairs.
And we combined our talents to make a bean bag toss game. Dakota built the wood part and I made the beanbags on the sewing machine. They're full of split peas.
So, overall, it was a successfully home made party, not counting the pinata. While I could have attempted to make one myself, I elected to head down to Los Angeles' Pinata District (Downtown just past the Flower District) to let my son pick one from the thousands available. That was a fun excursion of its own, and it reminded me of when I was a kid and my dad would take us down to the local pinata store before our birthday parties every year.
