A Very Merry Muppet Party

Just recently the Smaller Person has taken a great interest in the Muppets, especially the Muppet songs and Animal. We spend hours clicking Muppet Youtube clips on demand! So, we planned a colourful Muppet Party to show 'the Rainbow Connection' ;)

My Mum and Grandad hiding in the kitchen :)

My Nan, Auntie Dawn, Mr Bogert's sister Helen and his Mum, Nita watchng the children have fun :)

The invites were created using an image Mr Bogert found online, switching out one of the character squares for a photograph of the Smaller Person:

I have been extra busy just lately with my uni work, so I delegated to Mr Bogert. I just gave him a list of what we needed and a few useful links to point him in the right direction, and he did a fantastic job (See, he's definitely a keeper :D). His masterpiece was the Kermit pull-string pinata:

There is a full tutorial (which Mr Bogert followed) here.

He printed off some great Muppet band posters to pin to the walls and also sheets of these character cubes which I cut out and taped to a length of string to make Muppet bunting (Love this!).

The napkins, table coverings, and pinata fillers came from Wilkinsons. The goody bags were left over from one of The Small Person's previous birthdays (It might have been the pirate one...) and I filled each one with a bag of Haribo, a tub of play dough, a pack of colouring pencils for the older children, or a pack of stacking crayons (also from Wilkinsons)  for the younger children. Mr Bogert also printed out double sided Muppet colouring sheets which we found here. I rolled them and tied them with a colourful ribbon.

The Table centre was just a white milk jug filled with the bright colourful mini windmills that we had left over from The Smaller Person's Christening decorations.

We borrowed Miss Piggy and Kermit from My Dad and his partner, who made them for this last summer's village Open Gardens and Scarecrow Trail. Miss Piggy guarded the presents and Kermit oversaw the play area.

We had the big play things out from the toddler group that I run. We just let the kids play and have fun. We played pass the parcel just before food, then did the cake, then let them play for a while again before finally pulling the strings on the pinata.

Mr Bogert recorded lots of Muppet songs from Youtube and played them on the laptop down by the play area. It took us days to get 'Am I  a Man or Muppet', 'Rainbow Connection' and Bohemian Rhapsody' out of our heads!



Sing along everyone :)

For pass the parcel the prize was 'The Muppets Take Manhattan' DVD, and each layer was wrapped in a different coloured tissue paper and had a sweetie mini prize under each layer.

For food we had jam and soft cheese sandwiches for the kids, a sandwich platter from costco for the adults, two large pizzas, assorted crisps, babybes and cheese strings, a platter of rainbow salad items, mini dip pots, a rainbow platter of fruits, trifle for the adults, raibow jelly pots ans squirty cream for the kids, chocolate cakes, chocolate fingers, and iced party rings.

We baked rainbow cupcakes topped with vanilla buttercream icing and rainbow sprinkles, then we had a larger layer cake with vanilla buttercream filling and spiky buttercream icing all over. The decorations for the little cakes were brightly coloured flags made using coloured paper diamonds clued around cocktails sticks. The idea for the 'Zack' cake topper for the big cake came from here (only the most amazing Muppet party I've every seen!). I sketched each letter and the character details onto plain paper first then transferred the design to the coloured paper. Each main letter was created on the fold so that it could be glued around the yarn at the end. Once all the pieces were glued, dry and hanging on the yarn, I tied the yarn to two bbq skewers. All done!

The cakes went down quite well, and each slice of the big cake was HUGE!!!!!

 

Zack had so much fun, and we're thinking of hanging onto the Muppet bits and pieces for the Small Person for next year (this year's party is already planned - got to think ahead in this house!). The pinata was fun. Lots of the younger ones weren't really sure what was happening, although they were all pretty quick to pick up the sweets!, The funniest thing was one of Zack little friends got SO excited when everything came tumbling down he was jumping around and squealing with excitement - best reaction ever!! And we got it all on video.

I really enjoyed the party, even though I was still feeling really run down after my recent yucky illness. (Seems to be becoming a habit: get ill around the time of the kids birthday and be wiped out for the party). Our wonderful family and friends helped us pull it off so huge thanks to them too.

So, Smaller Person's birthday all over now. We get a slight break, then before we know it, it will be the Small Person's Princess 7th Birthday party.