Sophia's Outer Space Friend Party

With COVID numbers still still elevated and vaccinations slowly underway (but only in select groups of people -- ages and professions), we decided to continue with a "small" friend party for Sophia at our house.  Sam had three friends over for her birthday party back in November so I told Sophia that she, too, could invite three friends over to celebrate.  (I will do the same for Jack in May).  

Keeping the parties small, has allowed me to plan different party favors/games/crafts than I've done in the past.  Instead of a bunch of little favors to fill a bag, I can do one or two larger things that are maybe more expensive but more worthwhile.  The crafts can be a little more time-consuming because the kids are older and there are less of them to manage.  (Sam's Wizard of Oz party once had 22 little guests to micromanage!).

Each guest (including Sophia) received a super-soft blanket with the moon and stars on it that glows in the dark.  They were also given a beautiful and dainty necklace with the moon and stars on them.

There were cupcakes, black holes (brownie bites), Jupiter's rings (powdered donuts) and cake balls designed to look like planets.  A moment of pause here -- those cake balls were a true labor of love.  My sister helped me to make them the night before and we vowed that we would never make them again. Wow, I have a whole new level of respect for bakers that make them on a regular basis.

 

Another special surprise: the guests were served these drinks with their pizza and breadsticks.  I called them "Galaxy Drinks," and they were simply lemonade with crushed ice where the ice was "butterfly pea flower" frozen water.  Butterfly pea flower water is naturally a deep, dark blue-purple color and tasteless, but in an acidic solution (like lemonade), it turns pink.  So the drinks tasted like lemonade but looked even cooler.

The craft that I had planned was "Galaxy Jars."  The girls used simple mason jars with lids and glow-in-the-dark paint to decorate them inside.  We set the jars out on the porch (with the lids off) and then when we brought them inside, they glowed brightly in a dark room.  

They had so much fun with this, and I had plenty of extra jars, so they each decorated 2 of them.  The idea is to leave them open during the day in their bedrooms and then at night, they will glow like a nightlight while they are sleeping.

We also played a fun game (kind of like Scattergories) where I gave them a theme -- like, 'things in a kitchen' -- and they had 3 minutes to list an item that started with the letters for OUTER SPACE.  For example, O could be 'olive oil.'  The person that came up with the most answers without duplicates among the players won.  

This was so simple to do because I just made the papers on my computer and printed them out.  Sophia helped me add stickers for decoration.  We played three rounds of this and they wanted to play even more.

Near the end, we sang happy birthday to our beautiful 10-year old and she opened her presents.  

Everything was carefully chosen and perfect for her!  It was a great way to end a very special weekend of celebrating!