An Artist Party

A few months ago I asked Peanut what kind of party she wanted for her birthday. After a little discussion she settled on an artist party. She wants to be an artist when she grows up. The idea was planted by her preschool teacher a couple of years ago and she’s really grown attached to it. It makes me happy to hear her talk about it. This is the picture she drew to show at the party. It’s a picture of her, a paint pallet, some flowers, and the number 6.

Her party was last weekend and it went really well. We started everyone off with a little canvas and some paint so their artwork would be dry by the time the party was over.

ODD picked up some pizza (Peanut’s choice) for lunch and we ate it as a picnic. After lunch we moved on to sculpting clay. I forgot how hard it is at first so it took some time to get it all to the point it could be molded but even so I think it was the favorite activity for most of the kids.

While the clay baked we had cake and opened presents. I made a layered rainbow cake. While not perfect by any stretch it was still a huge improvement over the cake wreck from last year’s party. Since Peanut wants to be an artist I had the idea to cover the cake with fondant (marshmallow so it was actually palatable) and let her “paint” it with food coloring the night before. It took a bit of trial and error and still wasn’t quite what I envisioned in my head but it worked out and Peanut had fun. As I put the cake out I noticed some small brush hairs in the purple bits. The paintbrush Peanut used for the purple icing was shedding apparently. Oh, well. Live and learn. It still looked cool and I was proud of my sweet girl’s work. The cake tasted pretty yummy, too.

After cake and presents the kids colored some Starry Night outlined printables I’d found on Pinterest. Of course they didn’t really know what it was aside from a cool swirly picture but it made me happy to see.

The kids went home with their baked sculptures, (mostly) dry paintings, and a goody bag with a sketch book, colored pencils, a rainbow sucker, and a little easel for their little canvases to sit on.

We had her family celebration on her actual birthday, had her favorite pasta for dinner, and she opened her gifts from us. I think her favorite gift was a new scooter. We spent most of the night watching her and Wingnut ride around on their scooters.