polar bear birthday!

 Claire's birthday party was actually back in February, but I'm just getting around to posting about it now. 

She insisted on a polar bear themed party. WHY can't she choose easy party themes??  Last years party was a giraffe themed one. Anyway, it doesn't really matter, I love planning parties. I had lots of fun thinking of polar bear things that we could do and decorate with.

I have no idea why it never occurred to me to string balloons on fishing line and then hang them up. That's what I did here, and it worked so well. Then Mom and I twisted lengths of streams to go behind the food table.

Our party was quite small, so I don't make too much food.

I had some Hershey's Kisses that I added a few stickers to the bottom of. I used the 4th of July ones found here. Obviously I just used the blue ones, and saved the rest of the sheet for another project. That I haven't created yet.

I made homemade timbits mostly so that we could play a game with them. I will post the recipe for these shortly- they are so good!

In an attempt to stick with the polar bear theme, I made an igloo using blue jello and some icing. I think that I used 4 packages of jello, and half of the required water (so that they were more like jello jigglers). Then my sister lovingly piped the white lines on the igloo.

I wrapped the juice packs that I picked up with a sheet of white paper. I added googly eyes, and a small heart that I had cut out with my heart punch from a piece of black paper. I used a black pen to draw the mouth, and then added the ears that I had punched using my circle punch.

I baked these graham crackers on sticks, because everything is so much more fun to eat on sticks!

And here's the cake. I was so excited to see that Martha Stewart had created a bear template for a cake. I have used Martha's template in the past to make Claire's giraffe cake. I used a board that I had in my house, leftover from a craft project. It wasn't quite long enough, so I did end up making the arms a little bit shorter so that they would fit on the board. I also used a butter cream recipe, so that I wouldn't have to try to refrigerate it.

My sister in law cut these polar bears out with her cricut. (I love my cricut, but I still have the old school one, so it only cuts 6x12 paper! She cut these ones to be much larger.) I taped a string along the back of them and hung them over the streamers.

This was my sad attempt at drawing a pin the mitten on the polar bear game. My sister and I drew it, and Claire decorated the bear. 

We also played another game, but I can't seem to find any pictures from it. I used my homemade timbits, and strung them on a long piece of string. My sister did this ten times, one for each party guest. When all of the timbits were on the strings, we hung them from a broom handle. The kids had to try to eat the timbits snowballs without using their hands. It's a fun game, the kids always love it. 

This was one of my favorite parts of the party. For the party hats (and doubling as the party favors) my Mom knit a polar bear hat for each child. Mom used the free pattern found here.

I can't believe that she's 5!! She starts school this year! Happy Birthday my little big Clairity Boo!

Linking up with: Six Sister's Stuff &  Skip to my Lou & Tip Junkie & Weekly Kids Co-op& Tatertots and Jello