Today is Leo’s third birthday, making three the biggest number in the world.
Today I will just post pretty pictures of his party. Tomorrow I will tell you the truth about his party. Hopefully the next day I will have time to get all slobbery about my three-year-old baby who has shed all signs of sweetness for a a new skin of pure silliness dotted with some fits of pure rage.
Since Leo considers himself a dog, we had to throw a dog party. Actually, he asked for a zombie party but I just couldn’t get into blood-stained tablecloths and brain-themed foods in February, so dogs it was. My friend had recently hosted a puppy adoption party so I stole all her ideas and ran off with them, stealing a bunch more from a little mom-and-pop establishment called The Internet on the way.
The decorations became an obsession of mine—I could not stop making these, and once I was done making them I couldn’t stop taking pictures of them!
You can find plenty of tutorials on-line so I won’t bore you with instructions here.
I painted a couple canvases to decorate the mantel:
We had a few cardboard dog houses for the kids to play in as well.
For the main activity I bought a bunch of Webkinz dogs, then went to the dollar store and stocked up on collars, leashes, plastic bowls, balls, etc. The kids each got to choose their own dog, then went to the four stations (pet store, vet, party hat, and grooming station) and once they completed all the stations they went to the adoption agency to fill out paperwork and get a house for their dog.
I had the older kids at the party work at the adoption agency (they were too old for Webkinz, so they got to adopt their own bags of king-sized candy bars.)
Due to a tragic mathematical error on my part, we ran out of puppies and two of my nephews were standing there with a look I hope to never see on a child’s face again. It broke my heart! Fortunately we have about 100 stuffed animals in the house so we were able to fix the situation by giving them one of those. Hopefully I ended up more traumatized than my nephews did, because I am pretty traumatized from seeing them puppy-less and heartbroken.
It did cheer me up to see puppies being worn as accessories, though. (Why isn’t this a real thing?!)
Food was, of course, hot dogs, along with bone shaped biscuits, Cheez-It mix rebranded as “Puppy Chow,” pretzel rods for Fetching Sticks, and “pupcorn,” which I totally hated myself for labeling as such but how could I not?
The cake:
After all that, we headed outside for the pinata. Here’s the birthday boy at bat:
Here’s the hit that actually broke the pinata (great picture, Shel!)
Holy kibbles, there were a lot of kids there!
And finally, doggie bags for the pinata—I would have loved to use dog-poo bags but thought better of it.
So that was Leo’s party! 100 hours of prep, 3 hours of fun. Tune in tomorrow as we go behind the scenes to take a closer look into the makings of an almost-perfect birthday Puppy Adoption Party.
WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
(Dog) biscuits and gravy
Fried rice with pork
Fresh fruit and veggies
Triple layer white cake with orange filling
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