Mary Poppins 4yr - Spoon Full of Sugar Race

My daughter fell in love with the Mary Poppins movie, so for her 4th birthday we decided that to be the theme.   

INVITATION: I bought blank, white cards from a craft store and made the invitations.  First, I cut out a black silhouette of M.P. holding her umbrella and glued it to the front with IT'S A Supercali - FOUR - gilisticexpialidocious BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION! I made the part 'FOUR' stand out by making the letters look like Mary orange and red scarf. Then on the inside I printed out a picture of a blue sky with some fluffy clouds and glued that on.  Then I cut out 4 small kite shapes with colored construction paper and wrote WHO, WHEN, WHERE, R.S.V.P on them, glued them on the sky scene leaving enough room around each kite to write in the information. On back of one of the kites, I glued a piece of kite string for a 3D affect, but the others I just drew a straight black line to the bottom. I tried to make them cute by adding things like for WHEN - I put the date and time the party started and then added 'until the wind changes' and for the R.S.V.P. I wrote 'Your presence will make it PRACTICALLY PERFECT in every way, so R.S.V.P. Spit Spot!  On the outside of the envelope I printed a picture of the penguins that appear in the movie and used carousel horse stamps that I bought on Ebay. It was easy to tell what the theme was from the beginning! 

DECORATIONS: When guest arrived, they were greeted with balloons and a sign reading '17 Cherry Tree Lane' on the door. I made my daughter's Happy Birthday sign by cutting out kite shapes out of construction paper, about 6 inches long or so.  I then printed out large individual letters on white paper (decorating them with red polka dots to make it stand out more), big enough to fit in the middle of the kite.  I then taped kite string to the back of the kite for the tails, taped some bows I also made from construction paper to the dangling tails and then taped the kite/letters along a long piece of kite string.  It looked better than a store bought one and cost me nothing, I had all the materials already!  Through Ebay, I bought black umbrella and carousel horse cut-outs to sprinkle on the table. I bought white daisies, in honor of M.P's hat and used a teapot as a vase.  We had black and pink plates, napkins, etc.  The movie was playing in the background, which was a really great idea for the younger siblings to watch while the older ones played.  (Parents ended up watching it, too!)  Outside, we had the music CD of Mary Poppins playing, too. (Some of our snacks doubled as decoration, too)   

ACTIVITIES/GAMES: The huge hit of the party was that we hired a local actress to come as Mary Poppins!  We live in a small town, so we asked one of the girls at a local playhouse if she would come to play games and sing as M.P. It was not expensive and she was wonderful! We played a couple of games and I doubled a couple of the favors as game time, too.  When the kids arrived, I gave each one an individual chalkboard that I bought from The Oriental Trading Co. Each board came with chalk and an 'eraser'. Before hand, I wrote each child's name on the frame so there was no confusion later. Later on 'Mary Poppins' played Pin the Tail on the Kite with the kids.  I took a white cardboard-type board and sprayed a tiny bit of blue spray paint over it and then glued a couple of pulled-apart cotton balls, for clouds, and then attached a piece of colored contact paper in the shape of a kite on it.  Each child was given a piece of crepe paper, with their name on it. You know the rest. 

Another game that the kids loved and wanted to keep playing was the Spoon Full of Sugar race. We had about 10 kids, so M.P. divided them up into two lines, gave them a spoon and a cube of sugar and they ran to a bowl in front of them, dropped the sugar cube in it and ran back for the next person's turn.  There was no winner, the kids just had a blast.  Another activity that I had planned, but didn't go as planned, was the Carousel Horse Race.  I bought these Hobby horses (the ones with the stuffed animal horse head and stick attached to it) at a dollar store, for, yes, a dollar each!  In the movie, M.P. and the rest take off on their carousel horses, so I wanted to have a race, but it rained on and off, so we didn't get to that.  Although, the kids did race around the yard on their hobby horses freely from time to time .  The last activity/favor we had were these white, nylon kid-sized umbrellas from O.T. Co.  I bought fabric markers, the kind you don't have to heat up to set.  Then the kids were allowed to decorate their own umbrella!  I wrote each child's name on their umbrella the day before.  

PARTY SNACKS: I made 'finger' sandwiches, to try and keep the English theme, PBJ for the kids among others, chips and fruit salad.  For fun M.P. related food, I made black olive penguins.  You take large sized pitted black olives, cut a slice out of one, fill it with a flavored cream cheese, then take another black olive fill it with cream cheese, cut a carrot slice about one quarter inch thick and cut a pie-slice shape out of that. Then you stick the skinny pie-slice shaped carrot piece in the second olive bottom, attach this olive to the first olive with a toothpick on top of the carrot slice so that it looks like the penguin's feet.  Everyone loved them!  I also made penguin out of chocolate covered Oreos.  I drew a filled-in white heart on the top with icing, put two mini M and M's for eyes and molded Starburst pieces for the beak and feet.  My sister made Spoons Full Of Sugar by melting chocolate into spoon shaped molds, placing a plastic spoon in it so that when it hardened you could pull it out and and eat it off the spoon.  She added large granulated sugar to the top for sparkle. We had 'Admiral Boom Balls', which were just meatballs, 'Uncle Albert's' Laffy Taffy, Raspberry Ice - which was ginger ale and white cranberry juice with frozen raspberries added and 'Tuppence' which were those gold wrapped chocolate coins. I labeled most things for whom ever wasn't familiar with the movie. 

CAKE: Ahhh, the cake.  This was the best!  My daughter wanted a carousel cake, even before she wanted a M.P. party, so I made a carousel cake that actually spun around!  My husband did the handy work by using an old record player.  The speed was just right.  We covered it with white cardboard to look like a box.  To set the cake up high enough we bought a white, plastic cake plate and the attachable pillars.  I baked two round cakes, chocolate as per requested by the bday girl.  I iced them white, then decorated the outside edge with colored icing and some matching colored M and M's.  For the top, I took an old plastic lid, that happened to be white and the perfect shape and decorated it with ribbon, paint, tiny jingle bells, etc.  I also decorated four wooden horse cut-outs from the craft store, attached them to some wooden trim, also painted/decorated, and hot glued all of that to the top.  For the middle of the carousel and to help sturdy up the top, I painted a section of a shipping tube and hot glued that to the underside of the decorated lid.  When guest arrived, the cake was spinning around just like a real carousel!!  It was easier than it sounds, much easier than explaining it!    FAVORS: As mentioned before, each child received an individual chalkboard for 'skreeving', a white/nylon umbrella that they colored and decorated themselves - both from The Oriental Trading Co. and a hobby horse from a dollar store.  They were allowed to take home as much Laffy Taffy, homemade Spoons full of Sugar and 'tuppence' chocolate coins that they wanted.   

EXTRA: We took pictures of each child with the birthday girl and our Mary Poppins actress and sent it in the thank-you notes.  It was a wonderful party, one my daughter won't ever forget.  I loved gathering and making all the parts of this party.