What's orange and black and fun all over?? A 6th birthday party!!

We celebrated Simon's sixth birthday last Saturday. 

A few weeks early (his birthday's not until the 25th, but we wanted to take advantage of my mom being in town (Peter was supposed to be on a business trip to Argentina, but the trip was cancelled). When I looked at the calendar and saw that grandma would be here at the end of the month -Halloween!- we convinced Simon that a Halloween/costume party would be WAY COOLER than a Bionicle party.

(Plus, how would one make a Bionicle cake??)

It also meant that we could spend most of the month of October decorating the house for Halloween, then leave the decorations up for the party... and not madly decorate and party-fy the house until the wee hours the night before! Win!

I'm not a fan of the scary/gory/spooky Halloween stuff, so we stuck to orange, black, pumpkins, spiders, and crows. I was really happy with how my minimalist Halloween art turned out (you can see the Superhero versions from last year HERE), and spent far too long making the giant yarn spiderweb and printing out Halloween-y art for our photo wall. The owl s'mores were also a bit time consuming, but so cute and such a big hit.

I'm so glad my mom was here to help with all the planning and prep. Especially since Eloise was a bit more clingy than usual, having broken her finger the day before (in case you start wondering why Little Red Riding Hood is wearing a sock on her hand).

I didn't manage to get too many pictures of the birthday boy on the day of... he was too busy running wild with friends. I'm hoping to get him out for a little photoshoot sometime nearer his actual birthday, though.

I'm sure I put far too much effort into decorating and food and themes and everything else for my kids' birthday parties... but I love it. And love THEM! Is "Party Planning" a Love Language?? If so, it's one of mine! I hope that they feel it and, when they're older, always remember how special their days were.

Love you, Simon.