We got pretty crafty with my son's birthday party this year. He chose "camping" for his theme, and his father and I wholeheartedly signed off on his choice. The party itself was at our local park, which provided an excellent backdrop for our campsite decor.

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.

1 Comment

1. Brent on 4/30/2014 08:56:00 AM

   What a nice party!