Pretty Bitty Bugs: Birthday Party Planning

I am in the process of planning Eden's 5^th birthday party. (I honestly cannot believe that on June 8^th my little Eden Mae will be five years old!) After seeing the movie Gnomeo & Juliet a couple of months ago, she decided that she wanted to use that as the theme for her party. So I’m giving it my all.

Let me first say that I love birthdays. They are such a big deal to me. They are the only day that belongs to just one person in the family. (Unless you’re one of those unlucky people who are ~~cursed~~ blessed enough to share your birthday with someone else in your family. Sucks to be you!) : ) Everything else you have to share—Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day. Heck, even when you’re a mom and you’ve finally got Mother’s Day you’re sharing it with your own mom, grandma, and mother-in-law. Not that they don’t deserve it too. It’s just that it’s shared.

Eden on her 4th birthday. She was really excited about having her own decorated chair!

But birthdays are all yours. And my poor Eden didn’t really get much of a birthday last year. We had just moved to Lincoln on June 2^nd and there were boxes everywhere. We had absolutely NO money for a party. Zip. Nada. Her birthday dinner was toasted cheese and tomato soup. I baked her a cake, but it looked like crap so I stuck candles in her toasted cheese to make up for the fact that her birthday was so lame. Her gifts? A $5 umbrella from Wal-Mart and a bath toy that I had gotten for free that she was way too old for. And Landon couldn’t even be here since he was still training for work. Lame-o. So this year, I am determined to give her just the party she wants. Never mind that we will have just moved into a new place. Never mind that we will again have boxes everywhere or that Landon will be in a new training program (but should actually be home this time). This party’s going to rock!

Eden's birthday dinner. Notice the boxes off to the left and the mess on the right.

Sad little birthday cake!

What a sweetheart to be so excited about such lame gifts!

Now I’ll be honest, when we first rented Gnomeo & Juliet I didn’t even want to watch it. I picked it up at Redbox one night when Landon had been gone for a couple of days and I just needed to keep the girls occupied for a couple of hours to finish off the day. But it was really cute! Surprisingly cute. And the Elton John soundtrack was perfect. I’m not normally a huge Elton John fan, but it was so fun for this movie! As soon as the movie was over, Eden announced that she wanted a Gnomeo & Juliet birthday party. And I said, “As you wish.” (Name that movie!)

I started searching the online Bibles of ideas—Pinterest and Google. And I was happily surprised to find out that there are actually a lot of fun ideas for a Gnomeo & Juliet-themed party. So I’m working on it. I’ll leave you with a couple of the ideas that I really love. I definitely won’t be able to do all of this, but I’m really excited to do a couple of fun things for her!