The Pirate Birthday Party- It Takes a Bloggy Village

Just like our mothers and their mothers before them, I slaved over a goofy birthday party trying to make it as accommodating, child AND parent friendly and as much fun as possible. All for a 4 year old who would have had fun chasing a balloon around the playground with a stick. But the pictures for that? Oh, they would have been depressing. And certainly not blog worthy.

So we went for a pirate party. Aarrgghh.

In brief, the weather was amazing. I really owe God one for that. I can't tell you how many people {I think everyone there} commented on how wonderful the weather was. It was about 80 degrees with just enough cloud coverage in the sky and I think I saw some Care Bears sitting on those clouds sending down gentle breezes. And for the end of August in Alabama, that's about like Hades freezing right on over, so we'll take it. And I'll ask Al Gore about global warming later, but that's another post.

This party really fell into place because of you. That's right... YOU! I can't tell you how thankful I am to blog readers and friends all over. If there is anything I have learned, it's that you can't try to plan these large orchestrated affairs birthday parties all on your own. So that's where you stepped in.

I meantioned in this pirate post about possibly having a pirate party. My real life friend {who I originally met in Wal-Mart}, Erin, commented with several links to pirate birthday parties.

First was Amanda's Blog. {Here is her pirate party post.} We started chatting both felt like we knew each other, and it turns out that we grew up together. And played softball together. And so it was quite nice to reconnect. Not only did Amanda share her ideas, she sent me 2 inflatable pirate treasure chests and an inflatable pirate ship cooler! Isn't she awesome?!

My next new friend was Brandi at My Three Bubs. {Here is her pirate party post.} I loved her awesome costume and decoration ideas. And promptly stole them and had a pirate and princess dress up party.

* you can click on one of these pictures and see the whole birthday party set at Flickr.

Then there was Jamie from The Newman News. {Jamie's pirate post, of course.} I completely copied her invitations word for word {I did change the birthday boy's name}, but cheated and sent them via Evite. I also LOVED {READ: Copied} her idea of a treasure dig. It was a huge hit, if I do say so myself.

Taking pride in stolen ideas? I'm not above it.

I would have also stolen Jamie's huge life size pirate ship, but, alas, I ran out of time. So she wins the prize for greatest-birthday-party-throwing-mom. The prize is a nap!

Finally, I owe a HUGE thank you to my friend Lisa from Alexanders in Atlanta. She went out of her way to send me directions for a 3D Pirate Hat Cake.
Twice.
Because I accidentally deleted the first one.

Mine ended up not so 3D,

but I am going to do a tutorial {ironic, you think?} later this week on how to do it the right way. Not any fault in Lisa's directions, of course. Only in my "following" of the directions at 11 pm on Friday night before the party on Saturday.

And you might notice the candle broke when the cake fell over. My hubs "glued" it back together with icing. He's nothing if not handy in a pinch.

So, I learned a lot this week from YOU and am happy to share at Musings of a Housewife's What I Learned This Week. Jo Lynne has a wonderful blog and is now a fun real life friend, as well. I just love you people. Really, I do.

Thanks for making my job much easier than it was for our mothers and our mothers before them. I guess I will have to take back my global warming crack now and thank Al Gore for inventing the internet. It has served me well, Al.