Avinash's Candyland Party! - the prep

Avi was beyond excited for days about his parties. 

The crafting started weeks ago with the invitations and birthday banner. 

Then Avi and I made old-fashioned hard candy wall hangings out of paper plates.  I thought I would fill up a large chunk of the afternoon with this craft, but it took us less than an hour.  Avi had so much fun painting the plates, he wants to do it again all the time, but Mommy has not been relishing the idea of cleaning up all that paint again.  He did the face painting himself at the end.  I used my stash of misters and paint dabbers on the plates.  After they were dry I wrapped them in saran wrap and tied off the ends with baker's twine or pompom ribbon.

I also made my own goodie bags.  Not sure if this ended up being economical in the end or not.  I just glued crepe paper across the top, added a punched square of cardstock and some birthday themed stars and stickers.  I also added the first initial of each child's name.  I figured I might as well make some use of the RSVP info I got. 

     I also made balloon lollipops.  The sticks are old wrapping paper tubes, I just taped the balloons inside and to the wall.  These went up during nap time right before the party and were torn down by all the kids within an hour I would say.  They looked really cool at the beginning though, ha!

I taped cardstock down to the floor as well to create the Candyland board.   This took about thirty minutes and I just used masking tape.  It held up pretty well, though the edges did get turned up a little here and there. 

     I made a candyland board outside on the patio in chalk with Avinash as well on Friday.  Of course we had torrential downpour all day Sunday, but we had so much fun playing Candyland outside the day we made it at least.  I wrote at the finish line Avinash is having a party, and he kept proudly reading it and exclaiming every time around the board, 'Avi have a party soon!!'

linked up at the Idea Room.