Celebrating the Birthday Boy

This is the first year that I felt I managed to give Trevor an extraordinary birthday celebration. He always begs for a party, but most years I've just been too exhausted to think about having a party for him. This year, I promised that he could invite six kids. He invited half boys and half girls. I think this was a mistake because none of the girls attended and thus his party was kind of small. However, I didn't mind the small size. It turned out to be a lot of fun and only moments of stress.

Trevor wanted this skull and crossbones cake that he saw on-line:


(photo taken from the coolest cakes site).

As you can see, mine didn't quite make the grade. For starters, I failed to cut the skull portion of the cake to reflect skull shape (left it mostly round). Then, I decided to use wax paper beneath the cake (as seen on so many tutorials). Alas, I used large pieces and when I went to remove them, they shifted the cake so that the fragile bone sections and the right portion of the face shifted, creating a landslide of frosting (a frosting-slide?):

The two boys who came brought presents that were perfect for Trevor. One boy brought a gross zombie drink kit and the other boy brought a ton of drawing supplies (paper, clipboard, colored pencils).

The boys seemed to enjoy the simple games we planned as well. We started with a bean bag toss which we called "Haunt the Ship" (since we used the ghost bean bags we had made for his Kindergarten Halloween party last year). Trevor drew the ship on foam board.

Then, the boys played "Sink the Ships," attempting to get the most ping pong balls in two pirate ships.


I think their favorite game of all (and the one that led to some stress because the boys got pretty wound up) was the target practice game. We lined stuffed animals up on the book bar and had the boys take turns trying to shoot them down with a dart gun. Eventually, we realized that the game was far easier when we used the ghost bean bags. I think they may have beaned each other a time or two, as well.


We finished with a treasure hunt for the goodie bags.

Trevor loved the gifts he received from us, as well. It seemed like they were a bunch of little things (some even thrift store finds), but all things he loved. He was especially thrilled by the black book he received from his dad. He has shifted his artistic development from drawing skulls and monsters to a dedicated focus on graffiti writing. He watches endless You Tube videos of graffiti artists who draw in these special black books.

My gift was also extra special. I responded to a Vistaprint ad and secured 250 business cards with his blog name on them. I also purchased a pen which says "Monsters and Art - by Trev." He was thrilled to take them to school to pass them out this morning.

Finally, he's super thrilled with the Halloween door curtain:

All in all, it was a very special birthday for a very special boy!