mama urchin

It was tonsillitis. Sore throat, high fever, crummy tonsillitis. I think it’s been banished by the mighty z-pack but I’m not claiming total victory just yet. I noticed while working out this morning that my throat is still feeling a bit swollen. Luckily, I had recuperated enough by Saturday to celebrate an upcoming sixth birthday. Our little artist and a whole bunch of her friends gathered at our house to create some art and sing happy birthday. We set up three stations — the kids are so familiar with the station concept from school it was a good way to keep them organized — for the art projects and divided the kids into three groups. We really wanted the kids to use real art materials so at station number one they used watercolor crayons — less messy than watercolor paints and just as fun — to paint on canvas.

This was the painting Katie created. The watercolor crayons are great, the kids draw with them like crayons and then use a wet paint brush to move the color around on the paper. I so wish I took a photo of all the different paintings drying together. At station number two the kids made a sculpture. We used crayola model magic clay for this because it is lightweight, not messy, and only needs to air dry. I did not want to be worrying about baking clay in the oven, especially because station number three was perler beads and that was crazy enough with Tristan repeatedly trying to use the iron.

For the food we had sliders and pigs-in-a-blanket with french fries. We also served a variety of fruits — organized by color on a painter’s palette — with fruit dip. Papa made the cupcakes and we placed them on another palette — I just picked them up at our local art supply store — by color. Today on the way home from kindergarten a mom stopped me and said her son told her it was the best girl birthday party he had ever been to — success!