Look out, there are 2 more teenagers in our house

Elizabeth and Carissa have officially begun their teenage years now. We celebrated their 13th birthday with a big movie night themed slumber party. 15 friends from both school and dance invaded our home for the evening, and it was a blast. I’m very thankful that my girls have good friends who can all get along for an extended period of time in close quarters.

journaling: We celebrated Beth & Carissa’s 13th birthday with a movie themed slumber party. We ate hot dogs, pizza, cake and candy with handmade sodas from Squeak Soda Shop.There was a talent show, movie themed games, and of course watching movies- Phantom of the Opera and Alice in Wonderland with Johnny Depp.
credits: Movie Night by Kate Hadfield and Holly Griego at The-LilyPad, Template 150 by Yin Designs; font: CK June Bug Louise

Elizabeth and Carissa helped me make the popcorn bucket cake this year. Specifically, they cut all of the marshmallows that were used to represent the popcorn by hand for me the night before the party. I then sprayed them just a bit with Wilton’s yellow spray food coloring, tossed them a bit and sprayed them a bit more.
 

Sarah helped me out the next afternoon after she got home from kindergarten by adding the ‘popcorn’ to the top of the cupcakes for me. She was very meticulous and made sure that all of them were covered completely.   We had just enough marshmallows left in the bowl to do the cupcakes. Of course we had to spray them with just a bit more ‘butter’ to finish them off.

The big indulgence we had at the party this year was a dozen flavors of hand-made soda from Squeak Soda Shop. I picked out fruity flavors (since we have liked those the best of what we have tried at our visits), and sent the owner some labels designed after the invitation style so that they matched our party theme. The sodas were a hit with everyone. We love Squeak Soda Shop! Food fare to go along with the fancy sodas was hot dogs, pizza, 4 flavors of popcorn and many varieties of candy.
{The third label design not matching the invitation was made using Movie Night by Kate Hadfield and Holly Griego, and Cinemania by Lauren Grier and Mandabean at Sweet Shoppe Designs}

For entertainment at the party, besides watching movies of course, Carissa ran a talent show in the living room and Beth worked with me on putting together a movie trivia game during the days before the party. When I was designing the soda labels for Squeak to use, I thought it would be neat to have people try and identify a movie based off of the title font. Since most 13 and 14 year olds aren’t too familiar with fonts though, I figured we had better give them a bit more of a clue. Beth found lots of movie title fonts and then wrote out a one sentence summary of the main plot of the movie in the font. The girls had to identify each of the movies from the clues. We posted several copies in strategic spots around the house and gave them about an hour to take turns looking at them. I think the winning number for the game was 28 out of 31, which is pretty good I think since there were a few movies on the list I wasn’t sure they would have seen.

So, the girls golden birthday year started off with a successful party. Happy birthday, Elizabeth and Carissa! We love you and are blessed to have you in our family. I hope the next year is filled with wonderful memories!