If You Want to be a Pirate, Say ARRR!

When Hailey decides she wants or likes something, she throws herself into it.  Her latest love is pirates - specifically Jake and the Neverland Pirates - which is a new show on Disney Junior.  She wants to be a pirate when she grows up, and truly believes that if she had some pixie dust she would be able to fly.  As her birthday approached, she informed me that she wanted to have a pirate party.  The Jake and the Neverland Pirates show is very new and there aren't party supplies available, so I had to be a bit creative.    

I would not say that I am creative, and I am definitely not artistic.   I do not excel at (or even like) crafts, cake decorating, party planning, or planning at all for that matter.  Not to mention - we just moved here and I didn't really have all that many people I could invite to the "big"pirate  party Hailey had her little heart set on.  This would be her first birthday that we weren't able to travel to Erie to see her cousins and have a party with them, and also the first birthday her Nana and Papa had to miss, so the pressure was on to at least create a fun time for our little pirate.

We have some great neighbors in our new neighborhood.  One family has three little girls and another family has two little girls.  That would have been a party itself, but Hailey really wanted to invite her three little friends from her preschool class, and two of them were able to attend as well.  I excel at surfing the internet, so with a little internet inspiration I came up with some cute pirate games and had the girls "earn" their pirate swords, pirate caps, and beads.  We also dug for hidden treasure (fake gems and gold doubloons) in the sand box, and Daddy was the star when he produced the cannonballs (purple water balloons).

Her birthday cake was another challenge, as she wanted Izzy to be on it, and then when we went to the store to look at what we could get she decided she wanted the strawberry shortcake theme cake.  With a little persuasion, I got her to choose a cute flip flop beach theme cake that we pretended was a pirate island.  With the exception of when one of the little girls "smelled" the candle and burnt her nose, it turned out very well, if I do say so myself!

Aubrey enjoyed herself as well, and is pretty sure that she already IS a pirate.