My youngest baby turned 11 a few days after winter break ended. This, of course, was very much like when he was born--all of our older kids went back to school, and people were shocked that I "still hadn't had the baby."
With his birthday being so soon after Christmas, we don't always have time to plan a party with friends. Everyone is drained from the holidays, and being back to school and extracurricular activities is overwhelming and busy. But with this being Eric's last year of elementary school, I was determined to make it happen.... He just had to wait a couple of weeks.
On his "real" birthday, I attempted to make a beautiful chocolate ice cream and brownie cake--which turned into more of a mudslide :)
But being the wonderful, grateful and optimistic kid that he is, Eric just thought it was amazing!
The big event was planned for a few weeks later, on a day when we could get his old friend group from last year together to celebrate. Three of these friends are now in middle school, so they don't get to see each other very often.
Eric wanted a Lord of the Rings/Hobbit theme, but when I started looking at ideas, I realized that the bar had been set way too high on this theme. There are some BIG fans out there with A LOT of artistic talent. But somehow Eric talked me into it--and over the next few weeks, this theme CONSUMED MY LIFE.
It started with making cloaks. Eric and I looked up a tutorial on how to make a simple cloak in 30 minutes. We went to the fabric store and found some amazing material in just the right color, and the next day when he was at school, I set out to make four cloaks in the two hours I had free....
My first cloak took over two hours ... and then the other cloaks? Also at least two hours apiece. So that was the first 10 hours :)
Next, I worked on the banners and trees. We put up our two artificial Christmas trees and borrowed three more from my mom and sister. I thought it would look good with about 10 more trees, but I couldn't find any at thrift stores and didn't want to ask more people (since everyone had just packed away their Christmas decorations). So, the forest wasn't too, too dense, but in the end it was fine ... or at least that's what Jason kept telling me :)
We ordered a big hobbit-hole poster online and cut out some photo-booth props for some fun pictures.
I knew a Hobbit party would have lots of food, but we had the small challenge of our oven breaking down a few days before the party. It wouldn't heat up at all!
While waiting for a replacement, I learned that I could make mini muffins and tarts in my toaster oven! So, I spent the week experimenting with that.
The day before the party, I'd arranged to bake Eric's cake at my mom's house. I mixed up my recipe and took it over, fussing over every detail, and then turned off the oven while trying to boil water and then accidentally turned it to broil (at least I think that's what happened). I ended up with three layers of cake that were overcooked on top and LIQUID in the middle.
I had only a couple of half-hour windows of time that day, so later in the evening, I mixed up the recipe again and took it to my mom's ... but the batter did not look right. When the cakes came out, they looked and felt very strange, too. Then I tasted a corner and realized I had LEFT OUT THE SUGAR.
When I got home at 8:30 p.m., drained and discouraged, I was relieved to see that our new oven had not only arrived but also been installed. I preheated it immediately, and the cake baked perfectly :).
The decorating wasn't my best work, but at least the cake had sugar in it and was cooked through!
In looking up LOTR trivia, I'd realized that Bilbo Baggins was turning 111 at his birthday party (the beginning scene of the book/movie) and that Eric was newly 11, so I put the extra "1" on his cake :).
By the way, thank goodness for all those people who have posted on blogs and on Etsy/Pinterest about their Tolkien parties and shared links to materials! Even though the party still took over my life, this saved me a lot of time and allowed us to have so many more fun details.
You might be wondering now what the kids actually did at this party. Well, once we dressed them up in cloaks, gave them a ring and a lantern, we sent them on a quest.
They started in our laundry room, which Janae had decorated with spider webs to look like Shelob's lair. The fellowship had to find five plastic "spider eggs," that each contained either a ring pop or a bunch of terrifying plastic baby spiders. Once they'd done that, they could "speak friend" and enter our garage--which Jason and his employees had turned into a cave/tunnel. Jason asked the kids riddles, and each answer allowed them to progress through the tunnel towards the door that led outside.
In the backyard, the kids went through an obstacle course, practiced archery (shooting arrows into a stack of hay bales Jason had set up) and then threw their rings off our deck into a red bucket (which was obviously the fires of Mount Doom). I was picking up pizzas at this time, and Jason didn't take any pictures, but Eric said the archery was his favorite part of the quest.
After pizza, the kids just had fun doing their own thing (hide and seek in the forest, scaring each other in the spider's lair and cave, etc.) until it was time for cake.
Eric was so happy to be with this group of friends ... I honestly think they would have had a great time even without all my efforts, but I'm so glad we could make turning 11 extra memorable.
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