This is a short little video that is well worth your time if you are a mommy.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151482814282720

Our Amazing Judah turned 5 this year and we just had  to celebrate Spidey style.  Judah has been in love with Spiderman since some time around last summer-fall, but not because he had seen any of the movies or comics or cartoons; Judah fell in love with Spiderman when he saw a costume in the store.  So for 9 months, he had been asking for a Spiderman birthday party.

Now that he’s 5, and has a much stronger opinion about everything, I wanted to throw Judah a “super cool” party – one that he would say was cool.  In May we gave Justice an Elmo party that involved turning our entire dining room into Elmo’s World using butcher paper and crayons.  It was a huge hit with the kids, so I wanted to do something just as big and special for Judah’s party.

Of course, my first and foremost goal is to make my child’s day special without blowing our budget, so I try to make most of the decorations…this is where it takes a lot of creativity, and it helps that my mother-in-law has the Cricut and is a really good sport for all my ideas.  I also found a couple of blogs out there that had some cool ideas that I incorporated into our party.  I just searched “spiderman birthday party.”  So here are all of my ideas, almost all homemade:

For the invitations I got this idea from a blog I found.  I printed a free online coloring page of spiderman’s head on red cardstock and cut it out.  Then I cut a slightly smaller shape from spiderman comic books and glued on the back side.  I got some used, inexpensive comics from a local comic store for this.  Then I printed the party info on vellum and stuck on top of the comics.  I had to use special vellum tape  = $6.

  My first idea for decorating was to make a giant web and have it suspended in the air…some black yarn and time was all I needed for this…a big impression for cheap = huge success.  I then added to my original thought by connecting the web to a spiderman cut-out to make it look like Spiderman was shooting the web.  I accomplished this in two ways.  The first was made with a spiderman poster and some foam board = $7.  The second was made from a spiderman gift bag I had leftover from another birthday party.  I simply cut the spiderman figure out and glued it to a poster board I already had = free!  Here’s how they turned out

As far as other decorations go, I made pom-poms out of tissue paper, as well as bought a couple of lanterns. My mother-in-law made webs and call-out sign with her Cricut. She also had a cartridge that made cityscapes that I used. And I did buy a banner and spiderman cups (they held candy) that was on clearance at our local party store.

I also incorporated a large cityscape painted on a poster board. I just used a small cityscape that was cut out with the Cricut, and a projector, and traced and painted. I put the large cityscape on the party favor table.

As far as party favors, I try to keep them simple and not spend too much money on them because, as a mom of 3 little kids, I know where they end up…lost or in the trash. So, I got the idea to make these fry boxes from a blog I found, also made with the Cricut, so all we had to do was fold and glue them. I decorated them with a tiny cityscape, a call-out, and a sticker. I made the boy and girl boxes a little different, but that was mostly because I could only find 1 pack of spiderman masks. So I gave those to the boys, and made girl masks from a foam kit I found at Walmart. Then I threw in some spidey tattoos, spiderman pinata candy, and a spiderman coloring page.

For food we had Doc Ock hot dogs, with chili to go along with it. Bugles in honor of the Daily Bugle, the newspaper that Peter Parker photographs for. My husband made our own copy of the newspaper for this special occasion. As far as the cake goes, I just have to say I have an amazing cake lady. She gets all the credit for her work.

Here are just a few extra photos to complete the picture

All in all, everything turned out very nice. I think all the kids had fun, and Judah was very happy with everything. All the hard work paid off with another successful party.

Judah's 1st Day of Kindergarten

Judah wanted to dress “like Daddy” on his first day of school, meaning he wanted to wear a shirt and tie.  He’s so stickin’ cute!  

  Bella got to participate too.  

Along with our first week of school, we also took our first trip to the library.  The kids loved it!  They each got their own card and checked our their own books.  

And of course we couldn’t leave Justice out!  He wanted in on all the learning fun too.  

 Judah has already had a desire to read and write, so we had already been working with him on these skills for some time.  We are so proud of him and how well he is doing! 

One of the projects he worked on was the Creation Story.  He made a poster out of the numbers 1-7 that told the story of how God created everything.  And Bella made one too.

Judah's Creation poster

Another project Judah is working on is Things God Created vs. Things Made by Men.  He took photos of things in our back yard and is classifying them into 2 categories:  Things God Created and Things Made by Men.  He did such a good job, and he took all the pictures on his own.