Birthday for a 5 year old

Our sweet Balin turns 5 (!) on Friday. We share this week full of birthday with many friends so in the planning stages we realized we needed a unique theme with a less than usual time slot. While pondering themes I came across some Curious George themes and was reminded of one of the boy's favorite little books Curious George Makes Pancakes. In the book George goes to a carnival that raises money for the local childrens hospital. While there he takes over the pancake griddle and becomes the best ever pancake maker. Pancakes. BINGO. A Breakfast pancake party, to which we decided to add pajamas to make it even better. Here are some photos and details in case you want to throw your own!

Invitation: I scanned the book I was using into my computer. Then using Paint shop and Power Point I covered all the words and then added the info for the party in a similar style as the book lettering. As this is art and published it is copyrighted. This was for personal use only and I have no sponsors on this blog. Just FYI. I also purchased 9 copies which you can do here.

 

Food: The pancake theme was the easiest ever and inexpensive. We bought a large bag of pancake mix, grapes, strawberries and bananas at Sams. We also had leftover blueberries from blueberry fest in the freezer. Next to the fruit we served syrup and whipped cream. Cocktail sausages in the crock pot provided some protein and we were set. I served two types of juices, milk, coffee and water. We set up a griddle station in the kitchen and my sweet husband spent the entire party flipping pancakes.

Decor: I wanted to go with the carnival theme as much as I could, and surprisingly there was very little in the way of curious George merchandise available. We used red and white streamers from the dollar store to cover a wall in red and white stripes. I then (thanks to agirlandaboy.com)added a string of blue balloons across the wall. We lined two tables up so they would center Balin against the balloon wall and covered them with dollar store picnic themed plastic covers. I also found yellow paper tickets there which i tore apart and scattered around the table. I set the places with a yellow paper plate and yellow cup turned upside down. A Black piece of construction paper turned it magically into a yellow hat! In the center of the table I placed a banana hanger basket and filled it with bananas. Along the length of the table I placed Curious George Books and voila! Table and background done.

Along another wall I made a string of lights fancy with cupcake wrappers and hung another string of balloons. The way they hung around a white Adirondack chair made a perfect photo corner so we staged the presents there.

Favors: To thank our guests I packaged up easy, sweet little cupcakes in dollar store favor boxes (from the wedding section). These got dropped into a carnival striped cello bag and finished with a George Sticker. The guests (each family) also received a copy of the book Curious George Makes Pancakes That I added a special cover to. I used the same blank template as the invitations but the type read "Here is a book for you to read that says Thank You for celebrating my birthday with me!" This got printed the same size as the book and double sided tape holds it on, but can be removed if the family wants.

All in all we had a great time! The birthday boy was happy, the guests left smiling and there were no major faux pas. We did forget to hang/ decided to hang the little carnival pinata we bought a little too late and some guests already had left, but it was not a very exciting pinata so I forgive myself that one, ha! We are now happily enjoying a quiet afternoon playing with his loot and not having to clean cake crumbs off the floor. I can not wait to show you the cake I made for our friends party this evening! See you later!