Where were we? Drooling over the menu, right.. Soon enough, I caught the smell of roasted suji I left lying on the kitchen counter and came to senses that lady is not gonna give us samplers. Upma now sounded too bland, let’s just say we satisfied our craving by ordering chinese food from a nearby restaurant. Pretty good food even without MSG, I must say.

I had decided to involve D in the party preparations this time. For one, her interest in artsy party stuff. And two, I was carrying over a teeny bit of guilt from not celebrating her third birthday. I had been going through some rough patches, call it PND or whatever you might. I am glad to be out of it, more than happy to leave it behind and move on to meaningful and productive thoughts.

The Theme
I was looking for colors, lots of bright sunny colors. Spent some time surfing http://oreintaltrading.com for theme ideas and craft ideas for the kids. They have a lot of interesting activities that fit into my budget, but outrageous shipping costs. The more you buy, the less the shipping should cost. Wouldn’t you think. Some incentive to buy more?? Guess not!
Some of the activity kits like their sun catcher’s and sand art, I fell in love at the very first instance and was tempted to try them myself. They come as a complete kit, avoiding the chaos of a group activity. I also loved the hand painting and face painting kits, but knew they would get messy.

So, I kind of knew what I wanted but was hell bent on not paying that shipping. Surfed and surfed the net for alternatives, until my eyes popped out, but found nothing that would come close enough to this site. Some were plain shady, with contact numbers that don’t work. Some had no contact information and the check out/credit card forms creeped onto my super suspicious brain. The LH kept saying that I complicate things for no reason by self imposing futile conditions. His point was to look at the shipping cost as a percentage of time spent hunting them and as a percentage of overall party cost. He had a point, but little does he know the woman is just plain adamant. Some confidence that she’ll find what she wants without increasing the stock value of Fedex.

The following day I picked up D from school as usual. She gulped her snack in matter of minutes as soon as she heard we were gonna hit the party shopping store. Our first stop was at Party City. While I was looking around cluelessly, it took D less than 2 minutes to spot and pick up the Dora party set. I frowned and said.. D.. Very nice.. But how about something colorful.. Lots of.. I was amazed when she said okay and let go her Dora plates. Little did I know she had scanned the shop when we entered and had spotted the aisle where they had organised the cutleries in colors. Pink!! She saw Pink!! No wonder!!! She runs to the aisle and picks up pink plates, pink cups, pink spoons, anything and everything pink. See mumma! I got color plates. Pretty cute.. colors.. I should have been more precise in my requirements. Lesson learned! She was just so excited, I did not want to hinder her enthusiasm. Honestly, I was blissfully submerged just watching her, but there was no way in the world I would settle for a pink party. A little talk.. a little convincing.. lots and lots of bribing.. did the trick. Some people around were having a hearty laugh at the debate this mother and daughter were having over why pink is not suited for a party and we should go for one with multiple colors. We then saw a bunch of cutleries and tableware with bright yellow and orange flower. That was it! A bright and colorful flower theme!!

The same shopping strip had a Michael’s store. We decided to check it out before leaving. I enter the store and guess what I see? On Sale!! Make your own Sun catchers and Sand art kits. Individually packed, just perfect for a party. With a grin that I couldn’t get rid of, I picked them up. Michael’s is very addictive, I must add. Instead of walking out, we thought we should make one round of the entire shop just to check them out. At check out we had the following in our cart.

• A tired, exhausted, yet hyper 3 year old holding on to the hand picked items dearly.
• Individual Sand Art kits
  Each kit had 5 different colors of sand pouches. 2 pieces of 3 inch plastic bottles with lid[Various shapes and sizes]. A funnel to pour the sand and pack. Instructions.
• Individual Sun catcher kits.
  Each kit had 2 pieces of the shape. A use and throw 7 color paint kit. A brush. Instructions.
• Moon sand kit.
  This kit had 6 packs of 12 oz moon sand each. And 9 moulds. Packaged so beautifully, it was hard to resist.
• Aprons.
  These were on sale for a dollar each!! Bright red, yellow and blue colors.
• Ready to paint back packs. [Read more like tote bags, just stringed to go over the shoulder]
  Back pack made out of raw fabric, ready to paint and decorate.
• Brushless fabric paint squeezers to paint the back packs.
• 3D Water resistant stickers to decorate the back packs.
• Flower themed self stick foamies to decorate the back packs.
• Some glow-in-the night bracelets
• One roll of doodle paper.
• Crayons and color pens.
• Colorful work bags.

Ta-Da! We were so ready to hit the party table! Oh, wait, we do need the cake, don’t we!

I wanted to make a Pinata at home. It sounded like a fun and easy project to do with D. But, it got pushed to the last minute. Me and SIL finally ended up picking a nice bright purple pinata with the same flower theme design on the center. We then filled them with pens, pencils, crayons, sharpners, flash card sets, some fruit tarts, small memo style notepads, mini shoe shaped bubble blowers and some such adhoc items.

We also picked up some chart sheets to create our own Pin-the-Petal game[inspired by the Pin the tail game] to stay with our theme. We got all the needed materials, and my brother had volunteered to do this along with D. But, for all the fun we had the last three days before the party, we were extremely exhausted and decided to get some sleep instead. We were all already sun burned[read as free natural tan], we did not want to add to the misery of the guests by looking like zombies.. We had enough to entertain the kids, this wasn’t high on our priority list anyways.

to be continued..

PS: Thanks to all you showed interest in the project via comments and emails. It truly means a lot to me and adds to the confidence quo. Will send ya’ll details when the concept in mind takes shape.
And yes, I promise to break the announcement in the next post.

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