Fancy Nancy and the Boy from Paris Birthday Party



These days Child Thing #1 and I are talking a little bit about her birthday party. It's still a few months away, but these things are so fun that we/I like to start planning them way ahead of time. It makes the fun last longer. Thinking about her birthday, I remembered that I never posted about last year's birthday party. So...here it is!

Last year my daughter decided she wanted a Fancy Nancy birthday party. Fun! But then we decided to have a joint birthday party with the baby so that we could celebrate before their Daddy left for Iraq. Wouldn't want him to miss the first birthday party!

I wasn't sure how we could make Fancy Nancy work for a 1-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl until I read the book Fancy Nancy and the Boy from Paris, in which a new kid from Paris comes to Nancy's school. She is so excited because everything from France is fancy, you know, but then she realizes that he is from Paris, Texas, and he is into horses and cowboys and etc. So, we had a party that was half fancy and half cowboy. I set up two tables in the backyard and decorated one with pink and purple feather boas (I also strung these along the fence instead of streamers) and a small Eiffel Tower. The other table I topped with bandanas, set up a toy cowboy set on top of it, and hung cowboy hats over the table.

The kids were all given their party favors when they arrived: feather boas and tutus for the girls, cowboy hats and bandanas for the boys. When the party started, the kids


Some of the girls enjoying their parfaits (that's French for ice cream sundaes).

 dressed up, played in the yard, had refreshments (half of our food was "delectable" like fancy macaroni, chocolate dipped marshmallows and fruit kabobs, and the other half "finger-lickin' " like chicken wings and nuggets and tortilla chips with dips), and helped themselves to the parfait bar.
Later, I gathered the kids together to play a dig-in-the-haystack game. I hid cowboy shaped die cuts in a stack of shredded paper and had them all search for them. Wow, did they go crazy for this! Everyone who found one got a prize, and I tried to be sure each kid got a prize.

Then it was cake time! Last year, I was lucky enough to live right next door to a fabulous cake decorator, so we had two wonderful cakes!


 The cakes were adorable and delicious. If you live on Oahu and are looking for a cute custom cake, look up Mantra Cakes. Here is her facebook page.

The cowboy cake

It was a fun party, and the two stars of the show seemed like they had a wonderful time, which is the most important thing! I tried so hard to make this event something special and memorable, but honestly, at this age, if you do nothing but give them cake, they are still over-the-moon.