The Simple Wealth

I decided to do a big birthday party for Katrina mainly to entertain my neighbors and her friends. It’s a wonderful neighborhood where I live in, most neighbors know each other, and some host annual gatherings. I have been to a few of those gatherings, so I used Katrina’s birthday as a chance to invite some neighbors over.

The center piece for the buffet table

I have collected some branches while taking a walk with Katrina and Maiya. A week before the party, Katrina and I did the stamping project together. The materials we used: some foam stamps, paint brushes and paints, decorative hole puncher, paper, scissors, some wool threads. We used small paint brushes to paint the foam stamps with different colors, and stamped on the paper, then cut the picture off, and punched a hole, and tied it with a thread. We did one side first, let it dry, then did the other side with the same foam stamp. Then we hang the little pictures on the branches. I added some ribbons and beads. It’s a very playful center piece.

The Menu

1.bow tie pasta with roasted chicken breasts and broccoli

2. Chinese style stir fried noodles

3.Zeppole with cinnamon sugar-I like the recipe from Giada De Laurentiis.

4.sweet potato tart

5.cole slaw

6.Thai milk tea

7.grapes

8.chips, coke and juice

The activities

1.Play Katrina’s baby movie on TV-some short clips of the movies we took when Katrina was a baby. At some point, we stopped taping because she started tracing the camcorder.

2.Open gifts

3.Hit piñata-We hang the piñata between the arch way.

All the kids took a turn twice but none of them able to make a dent to the tough piñata, so Michael had to hit it. When the piñata was finally broken, no candy fell down. Everyone was disappointed. Michael went to the kitchen and grabbed a bag of candies and dropped the candies down from the broken piñata. Because of his quick response, the kids had fun collecting candies from the floor anyway. This was my first time to buy a piñata, and I didn’t know that I was supposed to add candies into the piñata myself. Well, next time I will make a piñata myself and make it easier for kids to break it. It’s not so much fun if they can’t actually break it. It will be a fun project to do with Katrina.

4.Sing Chinese songs-We actually didn’t get to do this before some guests started to leave. Three kids in the party could sing some Chinese songs. It would be nice for them to take turns to sing in front of guests.

5.It’s time for the cake!-I spent 3 hours to bake a not-so-impressive cake last year, this year I bought a big and beautiful birthday cake from Costco for $15.99 and saved a lot of time.

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