Kaylin's Butterfly Birthday Party

We celebrated Kaylin's 4th birthday with some of her friends this morning. Months ago, she told me she wanted a butterfly party, so I kept my eyes open for fun ideas.

I had to begin the party at 9am to get everyone out of here in time to take Ryan to his last basketball game at 11:30. As the kids arrived, they painted butterfly, flower and dragonfly suncatchers. (PS - the stain is called that for a reason. My white shirt escaped unharmed, but my kitchen counter did not. What was I thinking?!?!)


Then the kids played "pass the present," where the kid holding the present when the music stopped got to unwrap a layer of tissue. The prize was butterfly sunglasses, of course!


For snacks, we had butterflies made out of apple slices and pretzel rods (with peanut butter as "glue" - you can use cream cheese if there are allergy issues), butterflies made out of celery stalks and mini pretzels with raisin heads, and veggie straw "worms," too. I saw a fun idea to put grapes in a snack sized Ziplock and tie the middle with pipe cleaners, but I ran out of time, so I threw all the grapes in a big bowl. Everything can't be butterfly themed, right???




After snacks, the kids colored on white coffee filters with markers. We sprayed them with water, let them dry, and wrapped pipe cleaners around the middle to make more butterflies. I had magnet tape to adhere to the back, but just realized that I completely forgot about it. Oops...




Before everyone left, we loaded them up with sugar. (I hated giving them cake at 10:30am, but it was unavoidable!) The butterfly cake was a hit, but the drippy red frosting on the ladybugs was yet another huge mess. This was the messiest party I've ever been to and I was the one who created all of the drama!


Party favors consisted of pink butterfly headbands and wands for the girls and bug catchers for the boys. (This was one benefit of knowing the theme early...I found these back in June and haven't seen anything nearly as appropriate since then.)


The most important detail was the Kaylin had a ball. Last night at dinner, she prayed, "Dear Jesus...thank you for my birthday party tomorrow and that it's going to be all about me. I can't wait. Amen."

Happy birthday, my sweet girl!