Lucky #7

We have 4 #7’s in our house right now.

Joe is always big #7 because that is his baseball jersey and his birthday is 7-17.

I am the big 37 (WOAH!).

Ella is 7 years old.

And AJ is 7 months old.

This definitely must be a lucky house!

Ella had her birthday party on June 14^th.  I have a rule that when we’re having a birthday party and Ella wants to invite some girls from her class, she must invite ALL of the girls.  I don’t want anyone to feel left out.  The problem this creates is that with 10 girls from her class, combined with her 6 best friends from church, we invited 16 girls to her birthday party.  In case you aren’t aware, we live in a townhouse.  Now, imagine 17 7 year old girls in a townhouse.  CRAZY!  Thank heavens it all worked out and we ended up having 13 girls come, and much to my benefit, several parents stayed to help out.

The theme for this year was “cooking.”  Ella decided that she wanted all of the girls to make their own personal pizzas and make their own ice cream.

In preparation I decided it was in my best interest, and the best interest of my furniture, to push everything to the outside of the room and roll up the rug.  This way I didn’t have to worry about the pizza sauce, cheese, flour, fruit, chocolate and caramel that would inevitably end up on the floor.  With children, hard wood floors are a beautiful thing.

I took Ella to the store so she could pick out all of her own birthday decorations.

I bought pre-made pizza dough and gave each girl a ball that she could form into any shape she wanted.  We had several hearts, some circles, some triangles and one cat.  The toppings available were, pepperoni, black olives, green peppers and mushrooms…and of course plenty of cheese.

After the pizzas each girl made their own fruit kabob with strawberries, grapes and blueberries.  Thank heavens we didn’t have any injuries sustained from the wooden skewers.

While the pizzas were cooking (13 pizzas, one oven…I should have asked a neighbor for help cooking) the girls played in our backyard.  We were blessed to have absolutely perfect weather!  Not too hot, not too cool.  It could not have been more perfect!

For dessert Ella decided that she wanted to have an ice cream sundae bar!  But, since this was a cooking party afterall, we knew it would be much more fun to make our own ice cream.  My original plan was to pull out the ice cream maker and put it to work.  Then, in the back, cobweb laden area of my mind, I remembered when I was a teenager and my church youth group made ice cream in bags.  I couldn’t remember all of the details, so I did what any good, 21^st Century mom would do…I consulted with Google.  With the additional help of youtube, I came across an easy recipe.

2 freezer bags (must be the freezer bags because they’re thicker and won’t get holes from the ice), 1 quart size and 1 gallon size.

In the quart sized bag put ½ cup half and half, 1 Tablespoon sugar and ¼ teaspoon vanilla.  Close tightly.

In the gallon bag fill with ice and add 1/3 cup ice cream salt.

Place the quart bag into the gallon bag and shake.

The girls (and parents) absolutely LOVED this activity!  They had so much fun going outside and finding new and creative ways to shake their ice cream.

I love this picture because you can see on the moms face (in orange on the left) how surprised she was that it was actually making ice cream.  Hysterical!

Within about 15-20 minutes the ice cream was solid and ready to eat.

Knowing that several girls would not be satisfied with plain vanilla ice cream (Ella included) I had purchased 4 flavors of ice cream to be included in the sundae bar.  The tables were loaded with any kind of topping a kid could want; marshmallows, hot fudge, caramel, chocolate chips, coconut, any kind of sprinkles possible, gummy bears, etc.

At the end of the party my house was a disaster, the swing set was broken, the kids were on a sugar high, and I was exhausted.  But…it was all worth it when several (yes, more than just 2 or 3…SEVERAL) of the girls declared, “This is the best birthday party I have ever been to!”  SUCCESS!!!