A Peanut Free Birthday Party

So how does a PA 3 Year Old celebrate her birthday?

Well, if you want to do it right, you do it with:

• 12 friends (and their parents and some siblings)
• a bouncy house with a slide, ladder, and basketball hoop (whew!)
  
• a wiggles cd on continuous repeat
• lots of balloons
• a sandbox filled with hidden treasure to find (fake coins! and shells!)
• an art easel for bursts of artistic inspiration
  
• cupcakes with Elmo decorations
• dirt cups (quite possibly the most white trash food i've ever made - no offense to anyone out there - pudding+cool whip+oreos+gummi worms=heaven) here's the recipe. try it.
  
• goldfish!
• pretzels!
• sunchips!
  
• cheeze-it snack mix (i don't know what the little white balls in this mix are, but they might as well be crack to me)
  
• sliced apples (green + red)
  
• sliced melon
• veggies and dip
  
• fruitabu (thanks for the tip David!)
  
• juice boxes
• water
• lemonade
  
• wine and beer (for the grownups)
• kick a$$ goodie bags filled with: bubbles, candy necklace, fun-dip, tattoos (3 for each kid!), and a silly straw. ok, i know there are two super sugary treats in there, but hey - life is short!
  

I don't think we crammed enough into a two and a half hour party, do you?

One of the cutest things I did was portion out the snack mix and goldfish in these little containers (ironically called 'nut and party cups') to avoid what Mark calls "a big bowl of germs" (aka little hands rooting around in a bowl of snack mix) since we are entering cold and flu season.

Anyhoo - it was a ball. Once I get my act together, I'll post a shot or two of the festivities.