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A Sugary Sweet Fourth Birthday

Christy — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:21:11 +0000

You may remember how I complained awhile back about the extravagance and expense of kids’ birthday parties nowadays. With young kids especially, you’re hosting parents as well and space can be a premium. We are fortunate enough to have a home that is conducive to entertaining. With a large kitchen and even larger living room, we can host big groups of people without feeling too cramped. This year, we decided to host Bug’s fourth birthday party at home.

We invited only friends and parents (none of our own relatives) to a Halloween-themed crafty party. We made graham-cracker gingerbread houses and had each parent-child pair decorate their house with frosting and a variety of candies. I warned parents in advance, in part so they could make arrangements for younger siblings (either by bringing another parent or by finding someone to watch them).

I had fun channeling my inner Martha Stewart by making some themed snacks and cute goodie bag gift tags. I rarely have time to work on my crafts any more, so this was a nice treat for me as well. Here are some of my favorite aspects of the party:

Goodie Bags

Since we weren’t paying an arm and a leg to rent a location, I was able to spend a bit more on the goodie bags and was happy with the final result. I picked up reusable trick-or-treat bags for a dollar each from the supermarket and filled them with coloring books, color-your-own puzzles, a few pieces of candy, temporary tattoos and a matchbox car. I was happy with the mix and the lack of “junk.” Also, I used my Cricut Expressions with the Paper Dolls Dress Up Cartridge to make the adorable tags for each bag. They look like I slaved over them, but they couldn’t have been easier.

Food

I made chocolate cupcake with “ghostly marshmallows,” veggies that included ants on a log (cream cheese instead of peanut butter), little witches hats (chocolate cookies w/a Hershey Kiss on top) and a pumpkin spice cake in the shape of a pumpkin a la Martha Stewart and my pumpkin cake mold. The food looked adorable and the pumpkin cake was fantastic. Mmm.

Graham Cracker Gingerbread Houses

We bought orange juice in cartons, poured the juice into a pitcher and washed the cartons thoroughly. I covered heavy paper plates with foil and we hot-glue-gunned the cartons onto the plates. A friend of mind kindly covered the cartons with the graham crackers using more hot glue. We then took store-bought vanilla frosting and put it in large zip lock bags. We snipped the corner off each bag and used them to ice the houses. As a tip, if you’re going to use the frosting to adhere the graham crackers to the cartons, you’ll want to use royal icing or at least add some cream of tartar to the frosting to make it stiffer. Also, for fine detailed icing, cut off as little as possible from the bag. With little kids, it doesn’t matter so much, since the parents really just slathered the houses with icing! Each parent-child team had a bowl to fill with candy for decorating. The kids ended up eating more than they put on the houses, but I think we all had fun!

Delightful Divvies

Christy — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 03:28:21 +0000

I have been wanting to review Divvies cupcakes ever since sampling their molasses ginger cookies at the 2008 Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Walk in Boston. Trying them out at LadyBug’s birthday had a couple of benefits. First of all, it meant I didn’t need to bake Bug-safe cupcakes from scratch (thereby freeing me up to attend the local Boston BlogHer meetup the day before). It also meant that I got to test them out on people who don’t care if I got the cupcakes for free and aren’t all that excited about allergen free food. They just want it to taste good.

Our families are familiar with our food precautions for Bug. He’s allergic to peanuts, tree nuts and eggs and we are always checking labels, questioning ingredients and bringing our own everything. We have some wonderful recipes for allergen-free baked goods, but there have also been some less-than-stellar experiments. People were either skeptical or curious about the Divvies options.

Divvies Goodies

The Divvies cupcakes are shipped unfrosted in a cute Divvies box. Each half dozen cupcakes is sealed in a separate container, which is nice for smaller occasions. The cupcakes come with a large tub of frosting and a cute little container of sprinkles. You can frost your cupcakes in advance or allow your guests the pleasure of a diy experience. As an added bonus, the Divvies cupcake containers flip over to serve as a spill-proof carrying case for frosted cupcakes. Genius. Our chocolate cupcakes were moist and fudgy and the frosting was fantastically chocolatey. My only complaint (and it’s small) is that the frosting cover seems to be designed to come off and not go back on. We wrapped it in plastic wrap, but with so much thought into other design aspects, that was disappointing.

We also shared our sugar cookies with our guests. This particular package came with two dozen sugar cookies wrapped in pairs. Sugar cookies aren’t my favorite, but my husband (who is a huge fan) really likes these. They were just the right amount of chewy and sprinkled with decorative sugar. We experimented with some chocolate frosting on these as well and that was a huge crowd pleaser.

Divvies sent us a 6 oz. bag of their caramel corn. We didn’t share that with party guests because it was better suited in quantity for our family movie night. The small bags would probably be best shared with maybe 2 or 3 people, but they sell larger quanities (including chocolate and kettle varieties) on their site. I was concerned because bagged popcorn can sometimes be stale and chewy, but the caramel corn was incredibly fresh. Honestly, I missed the peanuts, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the product! If your family has had to remove peanuts due to allergies, this is going to be a real treat for Cracker Jack fans.

The last little treat in our Divvies box was a BingGo! Divine Chocolate Bar. It came wrapped in it’s own bag with an ice pack to keep it fresh. When you buy chocolate without dairy, you’re going to expect a dark chocolate since creamier versions require milk. This bar was definitely a dark flavor, but also sweet and without any of the bitterness that you might expect. Obviously the Divvies people had true chocolate lovers in mind when creating these bars. Each bar is marked off in two parts. There is a big portion that is roughly 2/3 of the bar, and a smaller portion. The larger side is labeled “Mine” and the smaller side “Yours.” Very, clever! We aren’t dealing with dairy allergies in our house, and I generally prefer a milk chocolate, but I think these bars would be a nice stocking stuffer or thank you gift for anyone who can’t have dairy.

BingGo! Divine Chocolate Bar

Divvies says on their website that their products are free from soy other than soy lecithin and soybean oil, so they would be safe for more people with a soy allergy. They also say that their products are vegan friendly. If you’re hosting a houseful of people for the holidays or a birthday party, Divvies are a really safe bet to keep around. You can even sign up for monthly cookie orders to keep your house stocked with allergy safe treats. Great for people who just don’t have time to constantly bake cookies and cakes from scratch.

I pride myself in writing balanced reviews when testing products and I honestly have nothing bad to say about the Divvies samples (other than the frosting container cover!). They were fresh, well-packed and delicious. My guests agreed and so did Bug and LadyBug who have been enjoying the extra cupcakes and cookies!

If I’ve set your mouth watering with this review, you can have a chance to win a dozen Divvies cupcakes to share with your favorite people.

*Update: Susan from Divvies emailed to let me know that the frosting container lid should be able to go back on. Looks like user error! That said, it broke pretty easily, so be careful.

*Disclosure – Yes, Divvies sent us treats so that we could actually write an accurate review. Although they were delicious, we were in no way obligated or swayed to write a biased review as a result of the free food. This is an honest and balanced opinion of the product in question.

Birthday Party Dilemma

Christy — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:20:12 +0000

When I was young, we had birthday parties at home. I have two sisters who are very close in age (we became instant family when our parents remarried) and we were allowed to invite maybe 5 or 6 friends. We often had slumber parties followed up by a pancake breakfast. There was no entertainment and no goodie bags. Just friends and simple fun.

I’m not sure what happened, but now the bar is higher. These same sisters (one in particular) have hosted parties at museums, bowling alleys, hotel swimming pools (with overnight stays), paint your own pottery shops, roller rinks and more. One year involved the rental of a jumping castle. Yeah. All we’re missing is pony rides. Maybe that’s next year…

Unfortunately, they’re not alone. My three year old has been invited to a Gymboree party, a bowling party, a jumping castle party and several playspace parties. Oh, and I admit it… we had his party at the [cheapest possible] playspace, largely so we didn’t have to host a gaggle of preschoolers and their families in our home at the end of October. And, don’t get me started on the goodie bags!

I’m not a particularly competitive person, but I’m not sure how to keep up. Party space rentals are well over $100 (many over $200) and that’s not including cake, requisite juice boxes, munchies or goodie bags. If I had known then what I know now, I would have planned to have a baby in the summer. LadyBug can have parties in the backyard, making use of our swingset and swimming pool. At the very least we can head to a local park or even a farm.

And what would happen if I just stopped doing goodie bags? Mainly they’re trinkety items that people throw away after a day or two (with the exception of the aforemention harmonica). Would my children become the birthday party outcasts in their preschool classes?

Is there someone out there with older kids who can convince me that my older sister is the exception and that we’ll eventually outgrow these extravagant celebrations? I’m hoping the numbers will be smaller when we’re not hosting entire families. We simply can’t fit all of these people in our house! I do have a little hope, though. When I asked my neice what she would do if she could do anything she wanted for her birthday, she said, “Oh, I’m allowed to choose whatever I want. This year I think I want to go bowling. Or maybe I’ll just have a party at home…” Ah, the luxury of it all.

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