The Dalmation Party

My "Big Project" over the summer ended on Wednesday last ... and I promptly thought, what shoudl fill my time for the next 3 days? Planning a Dalmation Party for a soon to be 4 year old!



Lots of photos, so I'm going to post the small ...

We started by making dog collars; I loved this! I cut out posterboard, put velcro tabs on the ends, and had them glue stickers and pompoms on the collar. And in the middle I punched a star-shaped hole and threaded in a key tag ... one of those paper tags edged in metal. It really looked like a dog tag! Very cute.



C3 demostrates how to wear the dog collar and how to sit like a dog. She does it well.



As you can tell, we did some face (and body) painting. C3 has 5 dogs on her. Q2 had 3. Other children branched out a bit: Crabs, dolphins, waves. Mice. A fire truck and a car. And there I am in the background.



The kids played "Stick the Spot on the Dalmation" An incredible hit. They loved this!







Here is C3 and her best friend, Z3, Spotting up the dalmation:



And Q2 just hanging out.



Then C3 was ready to do cake. She had requested dalmation cupcakes ... you'll see I took the easy way out and made them with chocolate chips (the non-dalmation ones are buttercream mixed with marmelade and a tiny bit of orange oil ... really really delicious frosting)

She has been saying for about 3-4 months that when she has her 4th birthday she would throw away her candle (and stay 3). So when it came to blow out the candle ...



See K2 in the background there looking at the cupcakes? She ended up blowing out the candles because C3 wouldn't do it!

And here she is throwing the candle away (and K2 looking longingly at ... cupcakes, rubbing her hands together in anticipation).




Then we had the only peace we had the whole afternoon:



They sat and licked frosting for ... 15 minutes. It was calm and quiet. Weird.

Then the kids dispersed around and did their own thing. They found the doghouse.







Some baseball happened, even though Manny wasn't around:





And then C3 decided it was time to deliver the stuffed dogs that we bought as going away gifts. She hid them all (with some help from C39) and invited everybody to find them. This particular activity convinced me that next year she'll be ready for a girls only party ... girls that all love snuggly lovie fluffy dogs. Some of the boys were indifferent to the stuffed dogs they got. Because, frankly, they are boys, and a cuddly toy isn't their thing! But the girls ... they liked their dogs!!








Then as they left, we gave each of them a dog sugar cookie on a stick. This is a picture from last year, but the same thing ...



I made C3 & Q2 save theirs until after dinner. A dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches (soy cheese and Parkay for Q2). Which was not the best of ideas, I think, considering all the fat and rich foods they'd had. But there it was. Q2 ate nice and slowly and refused to finish her grilled cheese ... but C3 managed to shovel the grilled cheese down and horked down her cookie.

And promptly threw it up again. In multiple ginormous waves of vomit all over my back, hair, and foot. Oh, and the whole room. While she was doing this Q2 was eating her own cookie and asking "Why C3 (gag) spitting up her cookie (gag)? What my nose (gag) smell?"

Lovely.