I try to have a theme and/or plan for people's birthday parties over the course of the year. I came across a Dollar Tree Facebook group about a half a year ago and saw some great ideas for a Cookie Monster/Sesame Street themed party. I started gathering things as I saw them while shopping. I had a pretty good head start on it. I also wanted to do a Cookie Monster/Sesame Street Jeopardy game as well, so I spent some time working on that and coming up with questions. I learned a lot while researching the themes and questions.
Instead of a cake, I was going to make Monster Cookies. Mid-January, I asked Doug when it was okay to have his birthday party, since he just moved out and was living with his girlfriend, and he said the last Sunday in January. He was busy on all the other weekends. I asked him what kind of food he wanted to have, and he said breakfast. I made him be more specific. He elaborated, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, French toast with cinnamon and he insisted that everyone had at least one mimosa. I told him that not everyone is going to have one because they are gross. I told him I would have stuff to make them for those who actually wanted one. He said okay. The last question I posed to him was what time? He said 1 p.m. I let everyone know so they could plan for it.
I spent Friday and some of Saturday cleaning the house and getting it ready for people to come over. I finished up the Jeopardy game on several note cards and I had a spot on the wall where I was going to tape them to. I had several categories such as Jim Henson, Me Want Cookie, Om Nom Nom and Pop Culture. I was actually excited for people to answer the questions. I picked up several decorations from The Dollar Tree like streamers, blue plastic cups and large googly eyes. I bought Cookie Monster plates on Amazon and a stuffed plushie because I could not find one at the Goodwill. I bought the food I needed on the day before.
That morning, Ben and I got up around 10, we got the tables and chairs ready, I spent some time getting the table stuff decorated, I taped the Jeopardy notecards to the wall and at about noon, I started making the food. I went out to the living room a few times to see how the AFC Championship was going. Sadly, the Ravens didn't show up, so we had to watch the Chiefs again in the Super Bowl.
I got out our food warmer because most of the food was going to be done at different times and I needed to keep it warm. I started with the sausage, then did the bacon, the scrambled eggs and then the French toast on the griddle. I've had lots of practice cooking breakfast, so I knew how long it approximately took for that many people.
Everyone arrived close to 1:00 and I told everyone that the food was done and ready to be eaten. Doug and Sonya were the only ones who partook in mimosas. I am just not really a fan of them. Champagne to me is gross. We all sat at the table and ate our food while talking about random things. Doug was pretty surprised about the Cookie Monster themed birthday party and Mom brought the red roses.
Once we were done eating, I grabbed the Monster cookies, I made on Saturday, and handed them out to those who wanted them. They turned out larger than I thought they would, and they were very blue! This was my first time using gel food coloring in my cookies. Everyone had a piece or part of a cookie. I announced that we were going to play the Jeopardy game I had made. Everyone was intrigued on what answers I was going to give them.
We went through Jeopardy and then double Jeopardy. I didn't do the daily double in each round just to make it simple. I also tried making the answers easy but some of them people either couldn't remember or just didn't know. I did have a final Jeopardy question, and no one got it right, but I didn't think they would. It was more of a fun fact to know. Everyone seemed to have fun.
We had Doug open his birthday presents. I really had no idea what to get him, so he got junk food from The Dollar Tree, Coke, candy, sunflower seeds and Crunchy Cheetos. I put them in blue bags with googly eyes on them. They sorta looked like Cookie Monster, lol. He opened the rest of his gifts and by that time I think everyone was "funned" out. You could tell Erika and Zac wanted to go.
I thanked everyone for coming and Ben and I spent some time cleaning up the decorations, doing dishes, vacuuming and putting the table and chairs away. We watched part of the AFC Championship game and sadly the 49ers won. Now we had to watch a really awful Super Bowl with Taylor Swift being the center of attention. We hoped neither of them won but we knew that wasn't realistic.
We did some laundry, put some stuff away, ran the dishwasher and I worked on some wedding stuff for the rest of the evening. We started getting some of the RSVP's back and I spent some time filling out my spreadsheet to make sure we got all the information we needed to work on the next set of wedding purchases.
Next Adventure: A Cache Maintenance Adventure with Bev
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