sara hicks malone

Since the 'Cowboy Small' party I featured last month was such a hit, I've been begging "C"'s mom to share an earlier 'Where the Wild Things Are' party.

In her words, "C's favorite book was Where the Wild Things Are and so we invited some of his 'wild' friends over to celebrate. We hung lots of green streamers and 'vines' to make a jungle.

We played 'pin the tail on Max'. We also read the book to the kids and made a wild thing mask for each guest, so they had to hold up their masks and roar like the wild things do in the book..."They roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws..."

We went outside for the pinata and the kids got way too much candy and then we went back inside for cake. We made a little sign for the cake that was held up by two of the Wild Things (a color copy just taped to the skewers) and attached it to the cake. C loved it!

I think we might make this a tradition...basing our party ideas off of the kids' favorite books. We'll see how long we last before they demand Spiderman parties!"

From Sara: For those of you moms stressing out after seeing these great parties by C's mom, you should know that she's in the creative community and these things come easier to her then the 'average' mom!

I asked her to give more detail about how to create the amazing ideas within the party. This is what she said:

"For the masks, I scanned the monsters to my computer and then enlarged and printed them on cardstock...cutting just the faces out and making holes for for the eyes. You could do this on a color copier, too.

For the favors I scanned the pictures and printed them on Avery label sheets, then attached them to plain gift bags.

The tissue paper 'vines' are a bit tricker. You cut the leaves and vines out as one big piece...like a silhouette...then when you unfold it, you have one long piece. The tissue paper is only so big, however, so you tape a few pieces together, end to end, to make a big long strand." See the 'how to make a vine' tutorial in the previous post.

Thank you again for sharing, C's mom! These book parties are great inspiration to me. I hope you Party readers enjoyed as much as I did.