Zachary's Campout Party

No one ever accused me of being on time.  Ever.  Not my forte.  My poor husband and in laws have had to learn how to deal with my lateness.  It's bad.  So here I am, six months later, posting about Zachary's seventh birthday party.  Which was in July.  At least I'm getting to it, which is more than I can say for anything that happened last year.

Zachary reeeeaaaaallllly wanted a sleepover party, so, since his birthday is in the summer, we decided that a campout would be perfect!  I loved sleeping in the tent in the backyard when I was a kid, and I knew he would too.  It was a super easy party to plan and execute and was inexpensive, too.  And the bonus was that my husband Jason and one of our friends, Bryan, did most of the heavy lifting!  Yes!  Totally my kind of party!

We started off with the invitations.  Every year for birthday party invitations, I've done a picture of the birthday kid doing something related in some way to the theme of the party.  But for this party, Zachary decided he wanted the invitations to look like a tent.  We found some ideas online.  Here is a link to the Pinterest board where we found much of our inspiration:

http://pinterest.com/mellowlane/campout-party/

I'm not sure if you can just click on that to go to the site.  I'm still a computer moron.  Sigh.  It's on my ever-growing list of things to learn/do.

We started out with our wording, and went with green and brown, which seems perfect for a campout.  Unfortunately Zachary is color blind and couldn't really even tell that we had two different colors.  Oh well.  So I decided on the wording and then printed them out in kind of a triangle shape, to show through the tent flap.  I printed two invitations to a page on white card stock and cut them in half.  (But in the getting-it-right phase, I just used regular printer paper.)  Then I rounded them off and cut a brown piece of brown construction paper to match.  Then I attempted to cut and fold back the "flaps" of the "tent."  This took several tries and a lot of experimentation back and forth between the printer and the "tent."  Here is what it looked like:

That's my paper cutter underneath there.  It's been with me since grad school.  We're tight.  And yes, I'm in my pajamas there.  It was probably about two in the afternoon.  Awesome.  That's how I roll when I'm in craft mode.

We also added a packing list, so the kids would know what to bring.

You see that nasty carpet underneath there?  That's gone now.  Yes!!

Another thing I always do is hand write the envelopes in some kind of cute font.  But I just didn't have the energy to copy that cute camp font.  And now that I've figured out how to load free fonts onto word, I decided to let the computer do the work for that, too.  Look at me.  I know you're impressed.

I had originally thought that I would have the boys immediately tie-dye a shirt to wear for the rest of the party, but the practicality of that shot that idea out the window.  So instead, I bought inexpensive backpacks from Oriental Trading and tie-dyed those ahead of time.  This left the dyeing to just our family, which was probably a smart idea.  My kids had fun tying the rubber bands around the backpacks and taking turns dipping them in the dyes.  We chose different shades of brown and green so we had a kind of camouflage effect.  So here's the thing about tie-dyeing.  It says on the directions how long to put the fabric in the dye.  It helps if you actually follow those directions.  Who knew!?  Needless to say we dipped them in for much shorter amounts of time, so our backpacks turned out really light.  I still think they're really cute.  And then I wrote each boy's name in black fabric pen.

At the last minute, because I had time to spare (i.e. I wasn't freaking out about screwing up another cake.  Curse you birthday cakes!!) I decided we needed a pennant sign on the front door.  I printed out the letters in that cute camp font again.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that I am a high school geometry tutor, spacial awareness is not something I possess.  Sigh.  There was a lot of cussing going on during this frustrating process.  I decided to bag in completely, when I spotted these:

Old file folders.  I think these might even be from grad school.  I think some of them were reused from my mom and are probably as old as I am.  Put those buggers to good use.  They certainly aren't holding social studies guides anymore!

Cut off the labels and cut them in half.  (There's that carpet again.  In the words of three year old Juliette, "See you later, suckah!")

Much easier to use pencil, a ruler and my BFF paper cutter.  As I was at this time, running out of time, I didn't do a cute font on the pennant, but here's the finished sign on the front door:

You can see it's just twine, and the letters are folded over and taped on the back side.  The sign was ever-so-elegantly taped to the door.  It got the job done.

When the boys arrived, they ran around for a bit.  (Obviously.  They are six and seven year old boys.)  And then they prepared for their hike.  Each boy found their backpack and water bottle, also with their name on it (purchased at the dollar store) and a large Ziploc bag for any treasures they found on their hike.  Then they loaded up a smaller baggie with trail mix from the trail mix bar.

My mother-in-law found these old vintage napkins hiding in a linen closet.  Weren't they perfect for the occasion?

A little twine around a mason jar and it's rugged.

The boys loaded their packs and headed out for a hike with the two dads, one leading (or chasing after the runners) and one bringing up the rear (and nagging/encouraging the stragglers).  Lucky us, we have beautiful horse trails that weave in and out of our whole town.  Zachary and Jason had mapped out their route ahead of time and the boys headed out on about a two or three mile hike.  And I didn't go!!!  I had a break.  In the middle of a birthday party.  Shocking.  I don't even remember what I did during that time.  Probably I cleaned.  So maybe it wasn't that exciting.  The boys came back dirty and thirsty and ready to run around some more.  So they did.  We had no other structured activities, so they played in the "fort" (made up of some old blinds, parts to a composter and anything else the kids can find) up the hill in our backyard, played basketball in the driveway and soccer in the cul de sac.  For dinner, we fed them hotdogs, cooked on skewers borrowed from the Girl Scout troop, over a fire pit, borrowed from my friend Michelle, placed on our driveway with camp chairs surrounding it.

For a cake, we decided not to do a cake.  You can't do a campout without s'mores.  And these boys were spending the night.  I was not about to feed them s'mores and cake.  I'm not totally insane.  So Zachary blew out his flaming marshmallow as his friends sang him happy birthday.

Little shout out to my cousin Katy there, a Wagner lacrosse player!

At this point, about half of the boys went home.  The rest of the boys got in their jammies and got into the tent, armed with flashlights and glowsticks, also purchased at the dollar store.

You like our tent?  It's actually my parents' tent and it's muuuuuuch older than I am!  They bought it right after they got married.  I spent much of my youth in that beauty!

This one is ours, a wedding present, but that night it was for Jason and Bryan to snuggle up in.  Or snore the night away.  The girls and I had our own sleepover in my bed.  I didn't sleep much.  Too many elbows on those little people.

In the morning, we served chocolate chip pancakes and kicked those boys to the curb.  I'm still tired when I think of that day.  After each sleepover, I vow it will be my last.  They are just torture.  But Zachary and his friends loved it!  As I said before, it was a really low maintenance, low budget party, but Zachary said it was his favorite!