Happy Birthday Namominus!

Don't know what it is but we seem to come up with nicknames that seem somewhat weird when typed out...  It seems perfectly normal to call Naomi, "Nominus" at home but when I typed it, it looked strange.  Either way our sweet Naomi just celebrated her 6th birthday and it was quite the affair!

Jason was traveling for a week the day after her birthday and I didn't have the presence of mind to plan her party for before his travels and with her birthday falling in the middle of the week, we just did our family thing on her actual birthday and planned her big party for a few weeks later.

It seems fairly typical here for birthdays that kids will invite their whole class to the event and it seems to usually be at some party hosting type place.  Well, that's not really me...  Both parts actually- the invite the whole class and the let somebody else do the whole party.  Naomi has never actually had a party where she got to invite her friends, it's always been family and maybe a few of our family friends which has always been just great.  We're a bunch of kids at heart anyway!  However, for this year, I got brave and we sent invitations to all the little girls in her class at school (I thought it was 4 and it ended up being 8 but that's ok...).   Naomi was super excited about planning her princess party and also I thought it would be a great way to get to know some of the families at the school..

On her actual birthday, breakfast in bed, a family tradition (or at least delivering it to the sleeping princess...)

We took her a birthday cake to her class at school since her birthday fell in the middle of the week.  She was very excited!

Figured I couldn't go wrong with a Texas sheet cake- can't get much better as far as chocolate cake!

So, like I said, Jason left for a trip the day after Naomi's birthday so we put off her party about a week and a half.  Since we invited the girls from her class as well as some American friends that we have here, I opted for Thursday afternoon (Friday/Saturday is our weekend so Thursday is the start of the weekend).  I figured that way I could get away with just doing cake and ice cream and a few other light snacks.  So many times at birthday parties here there is a full meal spread for the adults that bring their kids and I wasn't up to that and wanted to be able to focus on Naomi anyway.  

I confess that in preparation for Naomi's birthday I decided maybe it would be a good time to check out pinterest and see what all the fuss is about.  Hard part is, there are so many things, especially when it comes to birthday parties, that are SO easy to get done in the US, that somehow become SO complicated overseas because everything just takes that much longer.  Naomi had some very definite ideas about what she wanted to happen at her party so in the end, instead of getting too overwhelmed by everything that was on pinterest- great ideas, overwhelming ideas, perfect ideas, over the top ideas...  we opted for keeping things pretty simple and letting her decide how she wanted everything to be.  It turned out to be kind of a hodge podge of ideas but it was her designed and executed hodge podge and she was thrilled and that's what it's all about anyway!

Naomi wanted a pink princess dress-up party with rainbow cake.  Ok, think we can handle that.  I came across this cute cupcake idea and it was really pretty easy (a bit time consuming but overall easy).

Most importantly, it was something that Naomi loved helping with

Aren't' they pretty?!

The rest of our snacks included pink ice cream punch, pink popcorn, chocolate covered pretzels with pink sprinkles and rainbow cake.   The rainbow cake that I also did this past summer for Maddie's birthday was almost a complete disaster.  My cream cheese meringue icing would NOT thicken.  I blame either or cheapo cream cheese or collapsing egg whites.  Not really sure what happened but we got creative and put the cake in a trifle bowl, running icing and all.  I didn't have time to start completely over with the icing and Naomi was perfectly happy with this fix...  whoo!

Here's our spread...

To decorate the table, Maddie folded the pink napkins into princess crowns using an origami pattern that she had- thank goodness there's one creative genius in the family!

Naomi also wanted princess games at her princess party.  OH, and crafts...  Ok, still trying to keep it simple here but I think we can make that happen!  We used paper plates and ribbons and made dancing circles for the girls to use during our "musical dancing" game.  Here's Naomi's...

For "musical dance" we put princess cards on the floor (one less than the number of people) and the girls danced around the room to "princess music" until it stopped and they had to find their princess card.  Think a princified version of musical chairs...

We also played "pin the tiara on the princess" using an adorable princess that Naomi drew which apparently I didn't take a picture of...

We had a dress up station for those who didn't come with their own princess dress (or in some cases for those who wanted to change princess dresses 84 times...)

This little princess had her own wand and tutu.  Pretty cute and she knew it!

Maddie drew a beautiful castle to go on the front door to welcome our guests to "Naomi's princess castle"

I was holding my breath once party time came since it snowed ALOT for Jordan on the day of the party and I was super paranoid that no one would show up- thankfully our friends came through for us or we would have had one disappointed little princess!  Our princess castle ready for guests...

Happy Birthday Naomi!!