Thursday, March 19, 2009

SPRING CELEBRATIONS: BASEBALL PARTY!



Well, I was planning on saving this post for April 6th which is Opening Day at Fenway, but once I started sifting through the photos of this party we had for Pumpkin in February of 2007, I just couldn't wait to share. I really shouldn't work on Opening Day anyway, it being a major holiday and all.


The most important thing to know about Pumpkin, in general, not just for the purposes of this post, is that he loves baseball. Not just loves as in it's his favorite game to play or that he really enjoys it. No. Loves as in he's obsessed, it's all he thinks about, he was the only preschooler I knew then or since that would sit and watch an entire baseball game on TVEvery day, twice on Sundays, if we would let him. I know some adults who do not have that kind of attention span for televised baseball! So this post features one of the many baseball-themed parties that we have had for Pumpkin. Oh, and save for the Wii party that we just had for his tenth birthday, if the theme wasn't baseball, it was football. What can I say? He comes from a long line of sportsaholics.

{Magazine Cover Thank You Note}

This particular baseball party took place at an indoor baseball facility where the boys spent most of their time in the batting cages. While the boys waited for their turn at bat, I was equipped to paint their faces with baseballs, team logos and the numbers of their favorite players, setting them up for a photo op that would later appear in the form of thank you notes. 

{Cake. And (top left) cd favors in blow-up replica of Fenway}

Since the party was not at our home, a new concept to me at the time, I felt like a free spirit! Not having to clean and decorate to prepare for the party made me feel like I had all the time in the world - so I decided to make the cake.  The idea was to make a baseball on a base, that way we could have two kinds of cake, yellow cake for the base, and chocolate for the ball. When you ever see a ginormous baseball sitting on a graham cracker crumb sprinkled base at a baseball game, I'm not sure. Let's just say that some things are better left to the professionals. Although, Pumpkin definitely looked at it through Red Sox colored glasses as he proudly announced: "My Mom made that!"

{CD Jacket}

Coinciding perfectly with the start of Spring Training, this party was a fun way for Pumpkin and his friends to gear up for the coming season and begin sharpening their skills after a long winter. To fire them up even more, we put together a cd for each guest with a playlist of baseball-themed songs to listen to throughout the season, complete with a custom jacket to commemorate the party. See a copy of the playlist below. 

{CD inside jacket playlist}

The best part about this party for me (aside from Pumpkin and his friends had so much fun and the cake was eaten quickly, so there is very little physical evidence of it's existence) is that two years later, parents of the party guests still tell me all that they have the magazine cover thank you note tacked up on their fridge or they still listen and sing along to the cd in the car. I love that momentos of our parties linger on and the guests remember the good time that they had. That's what it's all about!

2 comments:

Katrina said...

I should post my Mini-magazine I did for my oldest daughters 1st birthday...
your magazine cover reminded me of it!
My husband wanted to do a cover, but I took it over board with a invite on back, a cover on the front...
a table of contents, one page was her *favorite things*
another page was all the 1sts and when she did them.
I got tons of complements on it :)

P.S. I have a question about blogging stuff, how do you see that you have comments and followers without going on your blogger... *help* I'm new

kelli said...

lovin' the cake! thanks for the inspiration!