Julia's 5th Birthday Party Plans

Julia had a list about 10 miles long of different birthday themes she considered for her fifth birthdayparty. I'll always remember how excited she was about her birthday. For months (the whole year, really) leading up to it, she'd tell friends and random acquaintances that they were invited to come to her birthday party, which was really cute, since she'd never even had a birthday family that included anyone beyond family (and this one wasn't going to, either...haha). We sat and looked up photos on the internet of different party theme ideas, and finally (mutually) settled on "Inside Out" for a theme.

We'd loved Inside Out when it came out. We'd been looking forward to seeing it since we love Disney-Pixar and are fans of some of the voice actors. Julia had first seen the movie with Aaron's family when she visited them over the summer. Aaron and I had an opportunity to see a movie alone while she was out of town, and had really been tempted to see it then, but saw Lost World instead, laughing at how silly it would have been to see a kid's movie without her on a rare opportunity to see an adult movie in the theater. We later took Julia to see it for her second time, and of course, it reminded us of our family - a beautiful story about a little girl and her parents, and the moments that make up life - happy, sad, and everything in between. Aaron and I both left misty-eyed, thinking about how fast Julia is growing and how much we treasure all the memories we are collecting watching her grow.

Julia and I had enormous fun making plans for her party. We carefully planned out themed decorations and food. We bought the soundtrack (which is excellent) to play for mood music. I ordered Julia some Inside Out clothing, and she chose to wear the cutest little dress for her party. It was interesting planning the party because all the clothes, brand decorations, tableware, etc. were on clearance online. The movie had been popular months prior, but wasn't going to have the staying power of a movie like Frozen, so the lines of party wear and clothing seemed to be on the way out. There were some items that I saw but were no longer in stock, but I was lucky to snag paper plates, napkins, a tablecloth, and that dress and a couple clothing items for really cheap before they were discontinued.

The coolest craft project we did was making memory balls. We took photos of Julia from her whole life, as well as a subset from the past year, and cut them to fit inside round plastic Christmas ornaments. The ones from the past year we decorated with glitter at the edges to fit the emotion of the memory. We strung these up on a string of round colored Christmas lights. The remaining ones were placed on the Christmas tree. We also made paper chains in the colors of the emotions. We had a lot of fun working on these crafts together, working on them a lot over her Thanksgiving break.

For food, we had pizza (like the broccoli pizza in the film... minus the broccoli), potato chips with onion dip, tortilla chips with guacamole and salsa, and various cut fruit for a DIY fruit salad bar. Dessert was cookie cake (made by my mom and decorated by my sister) and I also picked up gummies of each color at the local candy store.

Julia colored the characters for the hallway, a yearly coloring tradition. It's amazing to see how much better she was at this than the year before!

The centerpiece table!

Each color had the doll and some gummies. Red also had salsa and strawberries (for fruit salad).

Potato chips and pineapple.

Purple onion dip (for the potato chips) and purple grapes.

Blue corn tortilla chips and blueberries.

Guacamole and kiwi. 

The movie poster I bought that stayed on our living room wall for most of 2016. (It's now finally in Julia's room on the backside of her door, facing her bed).

The memory balls from Julia's past year, with 1 from each month. 

Memory balls in "longterm storage" - the Christmas tree.

We had drinks for the 5 colors/emotions, too - yellow lemonade, green limeade, red cherry 7UP, purple grape Fanta, and "blue" water. In the kitchen, we also had pizza for everyone for dinner (like the broccoli pizza in the film).

My mom made the cookie cake with M&Ms (memory-ball-esque, of course), and Sarah decorated it.  

I got this super cute tablecloth on clearance online.

July Joy - lake fun

Anger - Julia was looking a bit peeved in this photo... haha! Some of these were a stretch, since one doesn't usually take photos of anything other than joyful moments. 

Sadness - the brace

Joy - Halloween

Joy - Frozen on Ice

Fear - insects at the Botanical Garden

Disgust - crawdads (although MC's disgust was definitely worse than Julia's!)

Joy - snow angels

Sadness - being put in the stocks at the Renaissance festival ;-) 

Disgust - a snake at the OKC zoo

Angry (really probably just determined!) face while bowling

Fear - Julia's giant swim instructor

We didn't end up having time to glitterize all the emotions from Julia's childhood on the tree. It was actually pretty funny when we were done how disproportionately many of the negative emotions ended up on the tree, since I was trying to get a fair number of each emotion, and there's 4 negatives (Sadness, Disgust, Fear, and Anger) for 1 positive (Joy). It looked like we had really strange taste... a Christmas tree full of photos of our kid frowning and crying! Haha!

A bit scared of Santa

Terrified by Uncle Stephen, the fake dad.

Looking a bit angry here...

Joy in the swimming pool

Jumping for joy

Joy meeting a mermaid

Joy running and playing

Another happy baby photo

Joy playing with the fire hose

Sadness?

Could be sadness or anger!

Joy!

Wrinkled nose... at this age, probably meant nothing, but we billed it as disgust ;-)

Sadness

Fear?

Fear

Sadness

Sadness.. see how awkward this is getting?? Haha! So many sad/crying/angry photos!

Good thing most of the guests didn't look too closely at this tree. In hindsight, would recommend maybe 1 of each of the negative emotions, and mostly joyful memories. Too funny!

No idea... disgust?

Next post will feature photos from the party itself. What a wonderful day that was!