Just Craft

Despite what the title implies, this post has nothing to do with crafts. Nope, it's all about Shaylyn's birthday party.

The last thing I wanted to do was plan a birthday party, but knew it was important to Shaylyn that she have one. She made her own invitations and came up with her own theme. She wanted to have a Minecraft/Just Dance party, so she threw the two names together and came up with Just Craft.

We had to discuss the amount of people invited. She had a whole list of people and because of what she wanted to do I had to tell her that she could probably only do x amount so that people weren't too bored sitting around. She also wanted to have a sleepover, but with a young baby in the house I didn't want a bunch of girls up all night keeping him awake. So we opted for a party that ended a bit later.

She wanted to invite one of her guy friends and I told her she needed to invite at least one other guy so that the first guy wasn't alone and feeling out of place. She knew just who else to invite.

As it turned out only one of her friends wasn't able to make it as her family left for Disneyland that day. Otherwise she had a great turn out and was extremely happy that all of her best friends could make it.

We go to order the cake and well, Walmart doesn't have a Minecraft or Just Dance themed cake. There were a few other options that we could sort of make work and Shaylyn chose the following:

She chose the horses because, "There are horses in Minecraft." She insisted we buy some fondant so that she could add a few more Minecraft type flairs. I left her to her own devices and she created that cave with a waterfall and if you look closely, you can see the creeper in the cave.

Her cookies were fairly simple, I just chose to do creeper faces.

Here's the whole table full of yummy goodness...

...Yes, she chose tootsie pops and tootsie rolls - she has a thing for chocolate...

We brought in the Just Dance part of the theme with zebra patterned plates, colorful cups, napkins and balloons.

I let Shaylyn call the shots of the night and in the beginning they played Minecraft for a bit and then Shaylyn decided she was ready for the goodies. Which also meant singing Happy Birthday!

After everyone had sufficiently stuffed their faces, it was dance time. I couldn't believe how much fun these kids had - even the boys. With the version of Just Dance that they were having, they have the lyrics along the side of the screen as well so that you can get extra points if you sing along. One song had edited out some lyrics and just had the ellipses in it's place, so one of Shaylyn's guy friends starts singing along and instead of just staying quiet for those lyrics he sings, "(lyrics) dot, dot, dot." That even made me crack up. Look how much fun these kids had.

...Hahaha, LOVE this pose...

...Let the hair fly, sadly it has no effect for the boys...

What's a party without presents? Well, Shaylyn made sure we made time for that too.

...She really was excited about this gift, she has a thing for duct tape...

...This is the weirdest thing ever. It's a long zipper. When it's all unzipped it's just this long thing...

...One of the guys who came had ordered Shaylyn's gift but it hadn't come yet. He didn't want to come empty handed, so he brought her some candy and wrapped it in yes, a red solo cup...

...The old gift within a gift trick...

Then came the gift from Gavin. Gavin's had a crush on Shaylyn since they moved here in kindergarten. It hasn't always been a huge crush, but she's always been on his 'list' of girls that he likes. His mom told me that he was getting so excited for Shaylyn's birthday and he wanted to get her a ring. But then after his Dad (good friends with Eric) and Gavin talked about it for a minute they said, "Can you just imagine the look on Eric's face?" And yeah, Eric wouldn't have been happy. So instead he gave her the following:

...KISSES - hahaha (Eric still wasn't impressed)...

...And bracelets...

However, Shaylyn's favorite gift of the night came in this form...

...A best friend for a gift? Works for me...

Shaylyn has some seriously good friends. While it was a little boring sitting around supervising the party while Eric hid (he wasn't feeling well), it was also kind of fun. I got to know her friends a little bit better and I got to see the kind of people she surrounds herself with. So far she's making some awesome choices in friends. I hope that continues.

Happy #12, Shaylynnie. Welcome to the world of pre-teen.