We have been having so much fun with Granmommy and Gaga in town and have done so many fun things while I will get around to posting about at some point, but first here is Mia's party which we have spent so much time planning and anticipating. Mia was so excited to have an Ancient civilizations party and we lucked into so many great thrift shop finds. It really is incredible the great stuff we found for as little as $2. We kept the invite list down to just a few girls this year and they all spent the night, so it was also Mia's first multi-friend slumber party. Everything went really well. The girls all got along and had an awesome time.
The awesome evite that Shelby made for us.
Granmommy helped the kids make clay pyramids a week or so before the party. They all seemed to enjoy the process and everyone's pyramids turned out great.
The finished result after I spray painted them gold the night before the party. The sand we made them with was not a satisfactory color to Mia, so we went with a gold finish.
Our other craft project was this faience plate made out of salt clay. We saw one similar to this at the Museum of Fine Art when we went last month and Mia was super excited to try to make one of our own.
We ended up using almost two whole containers of blue food coloring to get the color just the way Mia wanted it.
After mixing the colors in we had to let it air dry for several days. In the end up put it in the oven on low for an hour or so to get it dry before we painted and glazed it.
By the time we were ready to paint it, Mia's first friend had shown up for the party so the two of them, along with Gaga, painted the design on the plate. I think it turned out so cool.
I had planned a hieroglyphics scavenger hunt, and got this great idea of the newspaper mummies from another blog. Gaga and I sat around watching Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra a few nights before the party making these and filling them with the jewels for the girls to decorate their sandals with at the party.
I filled each one with rings and sparkly clips, then tucked the jewels inside the folds before wrapping on top of the jewels and putting the gold bangles on the bottom of each one. I left the bangles off of the mummies intended for Lennon and Mateus. They had a different craft and their mummies were filled with snakes.
Fully wrapped mummies
We found this ash tray with Egyptian characters on it at a thrift shop and I made a little clay pyramid to hold incense for the party
Again, we found the golden chargers which we used as party platters and the Grecian looking jug at a thrift shop for next to nothing. I think I paid $1.40 for all four chargers.
We saved toilet paper rolls and cut them up and spray painted them gold so that everyone had lots of golden bracelets when they first showed up at the party. We put out a couple of Egyptian themed games as well for playing while everyone was filtering in.
We had several books on both Egypt and Greece set out for the girls to look through
The first official activity was applying Egyptian eye make up to all the girls. Only one didn't want it.
Posing like Egyptians
One of the clues for the hieroglyphic scavenger hunt. They started in the house with a clue taped to Egypt on our wall map and it went a few places before landing them all in the sand box which they had to "excavate" to find the 10 clues, or puzzle pieces, which told them the final place to find the missing tomb with all the mummies in it.
"excavating" the sand box
Mia with her friend Niamh and her gift
Mia picked this activity out of a book months ago. It called for regular flip flops spray painted gold, but Granmommy spotted these fantastic bamboo flip flops at the dollar store and they were even better!
The girls all did a totally different job on their sandals and they were all very pleased with the outcome.
Just before the feast was served
Cleopatra's Feast.
Mia read lots of books and helped me figure out what to serve. We had chicken which more likely would have been duck, melon, grapes, dates, honey barley flat bread which we made, cucumber, celery, hummus and "wine", sparkling juice.
Here they are toasting to themselves
I had the toilet paper set up for the girls to do the mummy wrapping game and the boys had another idea of what would be the most fun...
Bowling them down!
Mia has the sweetest friends. At one point while they were watching Fern Gully later one friend said "This is the best slumber party EVER!" That's pretty much the best thing I could have heard. I hope Mia feels the same way.
When it came time to brush teeth and get in bed it turned out that only one of the girls had even brought her toothbrush. After a good laugh, most of the girls brushed their teeth with their fingers and they were all asleep by about 11:30. They didn't sleep long though and were back up by 5 AM! Again, they were so good though. Shelby got up and started Jim Henson's Storytellers Ancient Greece for them and they watched that and had Greek yogurt for breakfast and I didn't get up until 7:30 with Lennon. I can't currently find my camera and all the pictures from Saturday are still on it, so those will have to wait. We made Greek peplos, which are sort of like togas and they did some "Olympic Games" and had lunch and cake.
P.S. I found two giant, gross boogers on my wall today. I know I have sufficiently freaked my kids out about boogers, so I know it came from one of our little friends. I literally almost threw up when I cleaned it off the wall. Eww! Boogers are so icky!
