Mel's seven!

Melody's birthday party was a few weekends ago. If anyone who was there would email me cake pics (dad!!) I'd happily post them. It was pretty spectacular.

Like any January birthday girl, she wanted a beach party. Uh-huh. So I made little suitcase-shaped invitations. From one handle hung a luggage tag with the invitee's name. It opened to reveal party details and was jazzed up a bit with super fancy sea creature stickers. I threw this poem in for fun:

Melody thinks that cold weather's a bummer,
She looks out her window and longs for the summer.
She wishes her friends, on the day she turns seven,
Could splash in the ocean! It would be just like heaven!
But packing our bags isn't really in reach,
So head to our backyard--it will be like the beach!

Melody has magical weather predicting and altering skills, so the January weekend in question was 80 degrees and sunshiny. It had been so cold for so long that eighty degrees was sweltering and they kept running inside to cool off. I told them that life on the beach is supposed to be hot! By the next weekend it was bitter cold again. When it got down to 18 it was hard to believe a few days before had really been 80.

We had a mostly backyard party with the giant trampoline and scooters from Christmas for entertainment. There was some surfer girl dancing and a sand pit where they dug for buried treasure. (Or at least a kiddie pool filled with sand that had shells and chocolate inside). Oh, and a colorful seahorse pinata. The buckets they'd filled with sand treasures and leis got a nice layer of candy added on top. I threw in a few more party favors at the end and called it good.

Inside was a bowl of goldfish (the cracker) and juice boxes (the first grade set rose an eyebrow at juice boxes. Did they expect Mt. Dew and Red Bull?). The cake was four tiers with sand, starfish, seaweed and shells at the bottom; fish, a seahorse and a sea turtle in the middle two tiers and the top tier was a desert island with crumbly sand and a Polly Pocket in a bikini on a lawn chair, drinking something out of a coconut shell under an umbrella. All fondant, except Polly and her ecoutrements. Each layer was a different flavor cake.

There were three girls from school, a girl from church, one from the neighborhood and my friend Mindy's kids as well as a tag along little brother just right for Charlie. My friends Amanda and Fred came, along with my parents and Grandma Jane. I was not sure if the party would be drop-off or hang around, but all the moms stayed. It was nice to get to know them a bit.

I'll tell you tomorrow about what I got her. Promise!