Congratulations to Sharon Eisley for submitting January 2011′s winning story for Sono-Ma Celebrations.  Sharon is skipping home with Shikai Bath products, and you will walk away with inspiring party ideas for the upcoming fair weather seasons.

Garden Party

by Sharon Eisley

I design my sons’ birthdays around whatever is inspiring to them. Phineas loves gardening- particularly fruit plants and trees and things he can eat. Of course what he really loves is eating the harvest! So when he told me that he wanted a strawberry patch for his birthday present I realized a gardening party would be perfect.

The Menu

We bought a ton of fruit to slice up and put on plates around the house. Phineas’s great uncle even sent him a gift of 20 pounds of pears, ordering it by phone from out of state at Imwalle farm store on 3rd street.  We had hot dogs and bagels for lunch- inexpensive from Costco and easy. A cream cheese log doubled as decoration when I gave it carrot stick legs and antanae and olive eyes to make into a caterpillar.

I was going to make him a garden cake with gummy worms in the middle, but we saw a picture of a cupcake cooked right in a ice cream cone and realized we could make potted little gummy flowers instead. I went to the candy store but since there were no flower candies I experimented a bit and clipped 4 corners out of a gummy ring, put a gum drop in the middle and a green toothpick (I dyed it green) through it to hold it and for the stem. The candy only cost about 6 dollars for 24 flowers, and the cones only about $3.

The Costumery & Adornments

The Games

Too many tears seem to come from party games where only one child wins. So I devised the idea of the ‘pin the fruit on the tree’ game. I had a large board sitting about that I painted a bulls-eye on and the the tree over that. little kids get to pick a prize, while the older ones can aim for a colored circle to get a specific prize. My older son drew 15 fruits on cardboard and stuck rounds of duck tape to the backs. In the end they have created a Tree of Life.

Free play in the garden and our living room offered plenty of other activities to keep our imaginative kids busy…

The Take-home Gifts

For favors the children planted their own bare root strawberry plants in organic potting soil, which we bought from Harmony Farms in Sebastopol (the planters came from Michael’s). The strawberries were 8 dollars for 20, and the pots a dollar each. The soil was about 5 dollars. A good deal for favors!

Birthday Boy Treats

Phineas with a special birthday cupcake…soon to be lit up with the candles he helped to create.  (What fun to dip and twist candles for your own birthday!)

Phineas also requested a dog for his birthday.  Luckily, we found a water dog who happily marched in to add to the garden party theme.

The Result

All the kids had a blast and Phineas used the last bit of golden daylight to happily plant broccoli plants and strawberries, wearing his new little gardening gloves and a new small shovel.

Sono-Ma Celebrations

Do you have a party idea you’d like to share that features local, hand made, creative and fun elements?  We’d love to hear about it!  If we decide to post your idea as part of the official Sono-Ma Celebration we’ll thank you with a special gift.  Spring’s gift pack includes two adult hula hoops and one child’s hula hoop created by the talented local mama Jessica Irwin of Be in the Hoop.