cat party! part one

I love throwing memorable birthday parties for my children.  This blog didn't exist for most of them, but I've hosted an insect, space, lego, Magic Tree House, fairy, and unicorn party to name a few of the early childhood ones. This year's request: a cat party.  My daughter had three wishes: a piñata, pin the party hat on the cat, and mask making. Some active tweeting gave me a few other great ideas, and we were off and running. Cat calls were made:) and on a brutally cold day... seven cats gathered for celebrating

We began with masks. After looking around the web for an interesting tutorial,  good ol' Martha pointed me in the direction of this Mardi Gras supply store in New Orleans. Just what we had had in mind... and one less thing for me to make. I ordered paper mache blanks for each child and set out paint for them. After doing a trial mask the the day before, I decided not to get too complicated with glue and whiskers. I knew the girls would want to wear them immediately... so we stuck with one medium (paint) for all of the decorating. This turned out to be a great move, because with the wood stove cranking, they dried in minutes. (There's daddy cat in the background adding more wood!)  They slipped them on as they made and ate a snack- mini bagels decorated as cat faces. Don't those cats look grand?! It's like a storybook come to life!

The girls took their "costumes" very seriously... masks have powerful transformational qualities. Suddenly, we had a house filled with very playful and animated cats. Perfect timing for some movement. We played musical cat beds for the longest time. How to play? Just like musical chairs, but folded towels acted as cat beds. My son is a wonderful pianist and entertainer, so he played as they crawled. When someone missed a bed, they got the lucky job of sitting on the couch to be fed a "cat treat" (a sunspire chocolate drop). The intention was to diminish any feelings of being "out" or losing. No none of that and it's amazing how effective a little bit of chocolate is.



They could have played this for hours, but I was concerned about little knees on our sisal rug. We moved right into freeze dance. While the music played everyone had to do their craziest cat dance... the photographer got in on the action too, so sorry no photos... but it was good fun. Tomorrow I'll share a few of the handmade items crafted for our cats friends.