Off to Neverland!

As many of you know, another year older at our home equals another crazy Hoskins' birthday party--and Emma's second birthday party was no exception. Although I usually shy away from spotlighting specific characters at our birthday parties, and instead focus on a more general theme, (i.e. having a cowboy party instead of a "Woody" party) Emma's second birthday party became the first exception to this rule. You see, we really struggled with coming up with a theme for her party. Emma is such a crazy little woman, that we originally were going to go for a "wild animal" theme, or maybe even do a "Where the Wild Things Are" party. After much consideration; however, we decided to try and pick something that would at least encourage some amount of feminine sanity in our daughter. As a result, we settled upon the theme of fairies. A problem arose, however, because the children that are her age and her friends are both little girls and little boys. As a result, we needed to neutralize our fairy theme a little bit. So, we just plain broke down and made it an all out Disney Peter Pan Party. Peter Pan and Tinkerbell, that is. The catch phrase for the party would be "Off to Never-land" and the children attending the party would all become either Peter Pan or Tinkerbell. The invitations beckoned the children to "join us for a one of a kind adventure mingling with mermaids, pow-wowing with the Indians, and battling pirates aboard their pirate ship to reclaim the lost boys treasure!" They even included little pouches of "pixie dust" so the guests could appropriately "fly" to the party.

Here is a picture of some of the party goodies including: one of the invitations, fairy wings and hand-made Peter Pan hats for the little guests to wear during the party, and Peter Pan books and Tinkerbell puzzles for Party Favors.



And what would a Hoskins' birthday party be without a homemade, themed birthday cake? I have to confess that I have recently realized that I really don't like making birthday cakes all that much; but, once you do it the first time, then you're bound for life. So, after scouring over a hundred fairy cake images online, we finally settled upon a little fairy mushroom house. Here's a picture of the culinary creation.



And here's a picture of our own little TinkerBell and Peter Pan as we waited for the guests to arrive.



The first order of business upon arriving at the party was to color pictures over in the Mermaid Lagoon. Afterwards, we gathered the children around the Indian camp and participated in our faithful second birthday party game--a cake-walk. Here is a picture of the kids parading around to the music of "We're Following the Leader" right from the Peter Pan movie.



After the cake walk, we distributed treasure maps to the children and went on a treasure hunt aided by color coded arrows placed throughout the house. At the end of the treasure hunt we arrived in Cannibal Cove where the "pirate ship" awaited us. We battled the pirates and finally recovered the lost boys sweet treasure. (The kids seemed amused by the activity; however, it was an adult who had to ultimately defeat the pirate ship!)



After we had games, we ate cake,



made a joyful noise,



and watched our little fairy open her birthday presents.



The party was a great success, and I think the look on Tinkerbell's face says it all!



Thanks Grandma and Grandpa McArthur for the Tinkerbell outfit! And Happy Birthday little one! We love you so much!