Dash, version 2.0

Last year, after I went completely overboard for Dash's first birthday party, I swore: never again. I kept up that refrain through the whole of 2007. We would keep it small and simple this year. No theme, no favors. Just a small gathering of our closest family and friends to drink a little champagne, eat a little cake and congratulate the child on another year done.

Well.

I'm not sure how these things get away from me so fast. I swear to God, I was--just two weeks ago--talking to Aunty J about heading over to Costco for some mini corn dogs and maybe a few bagel pizzas. Things have progressed a mite since then.

We'll have a robot theme. There will be about 30 guests, 10 of whom are children. Here's where we are so far:

We'll need something for the littles to do, so I decided on robot stick puppets. This was so awesome to plan and shop for and execute that I want to keep doing it. Pirates! Literary Figures! US Presidents! You know, whatever the kids are into that year.

Here are the basic, unadorned robot shapes. They are felt with adhesive backing, so the kids will peel them, stick two together (each shape has a mate so they'll match perfectly) on a tongue depressor and get to work decorating.

The little buckets were on sale at Michael's for $1 each. I filled them with googly eyes of assorted sizes, adhesive sparkly stars in silver and gold, silver pipe cleaners cut into 3 inch lengths (for arms and legs), and adhesive-backed felt I cut into tons of shapes .
Here's a close-up of the felt shapes because my fingers hurt from all of the cutting and I want more bang for my buck on them.

I made a prototype so the kids can get an idea of the grand plan. I'm pretty sure Dash will destroy it well before his birthday, though. I handed it to him this evening to see if it would play, and found him 10 minutes later brushing its "teeth" with his new toothbrush.

I think the favor bags will be pretty sick, too. These are the actual bags. They're silver paper, $0.59 each at Target. I printed out the main image from the invitations (to be posted later as I accidentally deleted the only picture I had of them and don't have another to photograph) on label paper, cut them out & stuck them on each bag. Inside each bag will be:

I bought some magnet "paper" and printed out robot images I found online (along with some pix of Robo-Dash for the grandparents). I also printed some of our favorite family photos on the scrap pieces and they're currently adorning our fridge. This is awesome stuff, this magnet paper.


I got it in my head that I could find some foil-wrapped robot chocolates online for the favor bags. Nothing. It is absurdly impossible to find anything robot-related in the world of candy favors. But, lookit what I did find:


Robot candy molds. Less than $2 each, and including the wrappers, lolly sticks & twist ties, I think I paid $10--tops. It was a wee bit of work--heat up some chocolate chips, spoon them into molds, tap, freeze, unmold & wrap--but the fact that they're the cutest robots ever, cost less than a box of See's for, like, 40 lollies and I could control the quality of the chocolate? Worth it 100 times over.

Also in the favor bags will be one of these adorable things. I found them on Etsy. They're by a 7-year-old boy who finances his Lego habit by drawing amazing robots and having his mom print them as cards and sell them.

I'll include a bundle of Crayons so the kids can color them if they so choose.

And, finally, there will be a small sheet of "Build Your Own Robot" stickers because they are cute and 20 of them cost me about $2 on Ebay.

Ok. Well. That'll do it for today. But there will be more. There will be a video. And a good picture of the invitation. There will be the cake and, ohh, what will the cookies look like?

And, finally, something great will happen to these:

What? Well, you'll have to check back to find out.