RJ's Harry Potter Birthday Party - June 22, 2013

We have been reading the Harry Potter books to RJ at bedtime for a little over a year now.  He was interested in the series when I had been reading it for the first time last year (I know, I was late to the party!) and we gave it a try.  We're currently in the middle of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (Book 6 for the uninitiated), and RJ is still completely enthralled.  He has several of the Harry Potter lego sets, was Harry Potter for Halloween, loves playing the Lego Harry Potter game for the Wii and frequently carries around something resembling a wand in his ongoing pretend play.  We even spent one morning a few months ago building quidditch hoops from Logan's straws and connectors set so he could play quidditch in the yard (wearing my cousin Dave's quidditch cape of course!).  He even drags his best friends along for the ride, convincing me to make "Ron" and "Hermione" their own robes for Christmas presents!  So it comes as no big surprise that he wanted his birthday party to be Harry Potter themed.  Luckily, there is A LOT that one can do with such a theme, and RJ is a lucky kid to have a mom who is also a Potterhead!

RJ's friends first received Hogwarts Acceptance Letters as their invitations, along with the evite that I sent to their parents.  His friend "Hermione" even sent her RSVP back using an owl she left on our porch!  This wonderful brown owl was originally named Hedwig, despite its coloring, but when I finished his stuffed snowy owl, the owl was renamed Errol, since RJ reasoned that Hermione probably borrowed the Weasley's owl!  In any case, they've written back and forth a couple of times, and I'm hoping that "Errol" helps RJ to be motivated to practice his writing over the summer!

When his guests arrived at our house, they entered through the magical brick wall at Platform 9 3/4.

Once inside, they visited Ollivander's Wands to obtain their handcrafted (by RJ and I) magic wands and Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions to obtain their handmade wizard cloaks for attending Hogwarts.

 They might have also spotted Hedwig, Errol, and Pigwideon hanging out in Eyelop's Owl Emporium along the way.

Oops.  I guess Hedwig was busy with Harry when I snapped this. Pig and Errol were there though.

Once they were outfitted for their studies, it was time to sample some courses (after all, this was advertised in our invitations as a Hogwarts Orientation).  In the living room, future Hogwarts students assembled toilet paper roll and fabric owl models in their Care of Magical Creatures class.

RJ taking another Charms class
after the party ended.

In the back yard, students conjured bubble snakes in Charms class, planted pumpkins in Herbology, and created the Exploding Potion in Potions Class.

Periodically, we ran an advanced Potions Class out in the garage dungeon where students were assisted in making "Fred and George's Bruise Removal Slime".









RJ somehow got it in his head that he should teach "Defense Against the Dark Arts" up in his room, of course pretending to be Harry Potter running a "Dumbledore's Army" meeting in the Room of Requirement, which would've been fine if he didn't have the poor leadership skills of a 6 year old, or if we would've been prepared for his expectations, so we could've addressed them realistically.  It worked at first when there were only a few children there, but as more people arrived and he was more insistent on people fulfilling specific roles when they didn't want to or didn't understand what he wanted from them (understandably so), his bossiness was met with either ignoring his requests or outright refusal to go along with his demands.
This ended up leading to a bit of unfulfilled expectations and upset for RJ, sporadically throughout the party, as he also got bossy during "quidditch practice" in our front yard (we had hung three hula hoops from the tree and made sure that we had a couple of black "bludgers" and a red "quaffle" to go along with RJ's golden snitch.  The idea there was to just let the kids run around throwing the balls through the hoops, but RJ, being RJ, was trying to recreate a Gryffindor vs. Slytherin Quidditch match and had a hard time understanding that not everyone wanted to recreate the events of the match in his head.  Given how much effort was put into the party, the fact that he spent some time not enjoying it to the fullest was a little disappointing, but sometimes over-excitement can lead to these things.  However, in the end, he said that he loved his party (and he did participate in other activities), so that's good!


While the children rotated randomly through the classes, our guests enjoyed carrots and dip as well as a tray of Pumpkin Pasties.  Our beverages included Pumpkin Juice and homemade Butterbeer.

Okay, so I was still dressed as
Molly Weasley instead of
Prof. Trelawney, but...

Just before serving dinner, I ran a Divination class/demonstration where we read the future of each student by the color that their clear (all natural with no HFCS) soda turned (a little dried dot of food coloring hidden under ice provided the color surprise).  Children with red liquid would find great love in their lives, children with yellow would find great friendships, children with green would have great luck, and children with blue would have great success.  This was the perfect activity to gather all the children up so that we could announce that it was dinner time in the "Great Hall".

Dinner included traditional Cornish pasties, as well as some vegetarian pasties, and some Cornish pasties with added greens (we were inundated with leafy greens from the CSA - and in a pasty, my kids gobble them up!).  There were even a few with gluten free crust!  Oh, and there was salad (because we were also inundated with lettuce from the CSA).

Soon after dinner, it was time to move on to birthday cake.  I know this is usually an area in which I go completely overboard, but I managed to go even further off the deep end this time.

The main cake was fashioned to look like Harry Potter's second broom - a Firebolt.  As per RJ's request, the cake was strawberry, with chocolate buttercream filling and frosting for the bristle part and peanut butter buttercream for the handle (which actually gave JUST the right color!).  I also added marshmallow fondant details for the goblin metalwork part of the broom and for the Gryffindor scarf RJ wanted featured thanks to his spying my Harry Potter cake pictures on Pinterest.

And of course, if we had a broom, we had to have a snitch, so I made snitch cake pops (chocolate inside, white chocolate coating, with piped white chocolate snitch wings), and snitch cupcakes in two flavors - butterbeer and chocolate with peanut butter buttercream, both with sugar cookie snitch wings.  And I made Gluten-free, vegan chocolate cauldron cakes for our guests with allergies.  And for some odd reason, I thought that wouldn't be enough, so I added on a replica of Harry's 11th Birthday cake from Hagrid, which was chocolate cake with strawberry filling and strawberry frosting.  Guess what?  It was WAY more than we all could have consumed in one night.  Especially when there was also homemade pumpkin cheesecake ice cream.

Once the children were all sugared up with cake, we also let them loose in Honeyduke's, which I set up on the second floor, featuring some homemade Harry Potter sweets (chocolate frogs, peppermint toads, fizzing whizbees, exploding bon bons) and some store bought treats (lemon drops in honor of Dumbledore, Bertie Botts Every Flavor Bean (really Jelly Bellies), Flossing Stringmints, and some gummy frogs that Logan insisted on buying in the store even though they were not strictly Harry Potter candy.  Each child got to fill up a bag from the "store" before going home.

As you can see, RJ tore right in to his bag from honeydukes!

Finally, RJ opened his gifts, which were much appreciated!

It was a ton of work, but so much fun for us and hopefully for all of our guests too!

More pictures here.

DeLanceys go to Joan's Farm (again)

The beginning of October can only mean one thing - it's time to make the annual pilgrimage to Joan's Farm and Pumpkin Patch for our friend Zach's Birthday party!  We've also been there in 2010 and 2011!

I made the cake again...this time, Zach wanted a lego cake, but different from RJ's lego cake.  

Here are some pictures from the farm!

Happy Valentine's Day from the DeLanceys

Valentine's Day around here was good.  We started the morning out with homemade heart shaped cinnamon rolls with Bagels, cream cheese and lox (because it's yummy AND pink).

The boys put on their "Spud Muffin" shirts and we headed off to preschool with RJ's 28 owl valentines (it's a miracle they were done on time since we made them ourselves and RJ signed each one!  Thankfully, the teachers asked that they not be addressed, so we didn't have to do that!).  Friends and family should be getting their Owl Valentines soon (I put them in the mail today.  Yes, I realize it's March, but we wanted to finish them!).




The party at RJ's school was WAY longer than I thought it would be.  We got there at 10am and didn't leave until nearly noon.  While his preschool is normally very organized, it's clear that losing one head teacher to another job and having the director out on maternity leave made a huge difference!  It took a while to even get started, but Logan enjoyed the extra playtime in RJ's classroom, and pretty much ate his lunch in healthy and not-so-healthy party food at 11:30.

When Logan and I finally got home and I got him down for a nap, it was time for me to get moving on making our fancy dinner.  I made roasted duck with pomegranate reduction sauce and corn cakes topped with garlic, bacon, smoky mozzarella kale saute (which I also drizzled with the pomegranate sauce!).  Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of the pretty presentation of the adult plates, but I did get pictures of the kids eating theirs!  The corn cakes were a huge hit with them!  And RJ even ate some of his kale, so I think it's clear that we all enjoyed dinner!

For dessert I made strawberry chocolate yogurt parfait popsicles.  (Basically pureed strawberries on top of strawberry-yogurt puree on top of strawberry-yogurt-chocolate custard ice cream puree).

After the kids' ate their popsicles and we got them to bed, us parents got to drink wine, have dinner together, and watch Glee (which had an AWESOME valentine's day episode!)  All in all, it was a great day!
More pictures here.

Logan's Second Birthday Party: An Outer Space Adventure

Thanks to RJ, Logan is into all things outer space these days, so when he suggested an outer space themed birthday party, we thought that was a great idea.  A runner up idea was "Where the Wild Things Are", but I think we had a lot more options with the space theme.

As usual, I probably went overboard, but it was a LOT of fun and my three weeks of preparations was 110% worth it, since most of the projects were a lot of fun.

As Logan's friends arrived we handed out their Junior Astronaut ID Badges, which I made on the computer and popped into the many id badge holders that I had laying around from Academic conferences.  I LOVE when I can reuse otherwise useless stuff into something fun for the kids!  They were invited to play with the shuttle launch pad on the train table, the homemade outer-space themed felt board (felt thumbtacked to the wall with felt cutouts we made), decorate paper-mache space helmets that we made, draw a space theme with chalk on a black piece of fabric tacked to the wall, play in the cardboard rocket we made, or make their own toilet paper roll/paper towel roll rockets.  There was definitely enough for the 10 kids to do!  They could have gone outside to play with the moon sand and cloud dough, but no one ventured out.  As they played, everyone snacked on veggies and cheese cut into the phases of the moon.

For dinner we had "moon" ball hoagies and "flying saucer" falafels, and sweet potatoes covered in marshmallows (depicting a rocket launch) and two types of coleslaw (we had quite the CSA cabbage bounty - so one was a vinegar based cabbage-apple slaw, and the other was a more traditional cabbage-carrot slaw).  To drink, there was a healthy "tang" concoction, which Lance claimed should have been called "Tang inspired" because it didn't have all the scary chemical ingredients in it, and as such, was not really that Tang-like. It was closer to an orange-ade.  I also made fresh squeezed lemonade since we had a bounty of meyer lemons from our neighbors AND the CSA box.


I lost the most sleep over the space shuttle cake though. It was all chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream filling, covered in loads of thick buttercream frosting!  Logan actually requested chocolate.  He LOVES chocolate! ...and, we're still eating it because I made the damned thing 8 layers tall.  I should've learned from the 8 layer T-rex cake, but I have some sort of confection-related mental illness, where I find the need to keep topping myself.  We've been giving away and sharing what we could and I think the smoke part is going into the freezer in chunks to take out when we get a cake craving.  And, because the cake wasn't enough, I made homemade vanilla ice cream rocket popsicles (really it was an excuse to buy better popsicle making supplies...) and super rich dark chocolate ice cream for the adults.

Logan's friends went home with their space helmets and rockets and their favors: reusable sandwich bags that I made with outer space material filled with a small telescope, stickers, and glow-in-the-dark stars, and a container of homemade moon sand.

Thank you to everyone who came!  We hope everyone had a wonderful time!  We know we did!

Here are more pictures.

December in Pictures

We have been learning about Outer Space at home.
Here RJ is with the Space Shuttle he made.

We tried new vegetables, like this Romanesco Cauliflower

We hosted dinner and pajama parties

We played Outside

Our friends Erika and Rich had a cookie swap party; pictured here are Logan and Ethan getting some energy out before eating the cookies!  More pictures from the party are here.

Lance got to see his Steelers play Monday Night Football at Candlestick Park
(too bad the power kept going out and the Steelers lost).
Thanks to John for the tickets! More pictures from the game here.

RJ took his bike for its inaugural spin.  Unfortunately, mommy
and daddy suck at assembly and the pedal fell off.  So his inaugural
spin was interrupted by repairs.  We did eventually make it
all the way to the park though.

During Christmas Week, Lance and I took most of a day without the kids since he was off, RJ's preschool was open (and we were paying for it regardless), and our friend Erika's daycare was open for Logan.  We picked RJ up a little early and took him Ice Skating at Dell Osso Farms for a little while before continuing on to pick up Logan.  He really enjoyed the special time with momma and daddy alone (without Logan).

By the end of the session, he was skating on his own!
More ice skating pictures here.

More pictures from our busy December are here.

Thanksgiving 2011

We did things a little different this year.  Usually, I cook and we occasionally have visitors join us, whether from out of town or local.  This year we were invited to our friends' house to share their Thanksgiving meal.



For a change of pace (and because we would be pretty much the only ones who ate Turkey), we had butternut squash raviolis, along with a potato-fennel gratin that I made and brussels sprouts, followed by a wonderful apple pie!  The food was delicious and we had a wonderful evening with our friends, the Reichguts and their family.


It really was a perfect night; RJ and Logan got to play with their friends Zach and baby Austin, and we got to engage in some adult conversation at the table while Zach and Austin's Nonno entertained Logan!  Both boys love Nonno, who actually lives in our neighborhood and whom we get to see when Zach visits him and we meet at the park.


For those of you who up until now might be worried that Lance didn't get to eat turkey and stuffing this year, have no fear!  We decided to have our Thanksgiving party on Black Friday instead of on Thanksgiving, so we had turkey and stuffing (which RJ & Logan helped make with their bread tearing assistance), mashed potatoes with gravy, cranberry sauce, candied yams, and green bean casserole. And LOTS of pie...Ashley and Jason's Amazing Apple, and my usual - pumpkin and pumpkin cheese.  Two other families with kids our kids' ages joined us and we had a great time!  RJ & Logan even got to have a movie night with Maddie and Hannah since they were staying the night!
More pictures here.