For us, fall has come and gone…too quickly! This October was busy for me, with a couple of parties….in particular this Garfield party for my son that I had been thinking about for awhile. I always start thinking about the parties way ahead of time, but the nitty-gritty gets done mostly last minute! (by that I mean, practically everything gets done last minute!!) October is a great time for a Garfield party….all the stores carry lots of black and orange stuff because of halloween, so it was easy to find orange and black crepe paper streamers. So I stocked up on those before hand, and some orange plates and bowls from the dollar store. I think that was the extent of my pre-preparations.
Garfield, oh Garfield…..what a funny cat! He was totally a part of my growing-up days, so I feel quite nostalgic about him. My youngest son just devours all the Garfield comic books that his uncle gave the kids…I have to force him to stop reading and turn out the lights for bedtime! We also enjoy watching episodes of (that old) series Garfield and Friends….that includes US Acres with Orson the Pig and others….so funny! (I don’t like the computer animated Garfield shows at all, rant rant!) So Garfield is practically a pet in our household, and thus it seemed like a really good idea to have a Garfield party when my son suggested it! 🙂 (gotta stick a “thus” in there because of my tendency to way overuse the word “so”…I also credit that to my brother.)
I decided the colors for the party would be orange and black and yellow and lime green. It just seemed like a good (easy) idea. So there. Here are the streamers
Last minute idea: Garfield’s famous black stripes, even if they are going the wrong way!
There, these ones are going the proper way….crepe paper streamers taped onto a yellow polka-dotted orange plastic tablecloth….
Add a few printed-out Garfield strip cartoons (the printer was printing crazy colors).
And add a Happy Birthday paper banner.
This family party ended up lasting a whole day…so there was both lunch and supper served. Here is the fun Garfield lunch:
On this awesome lunchbox site I saw a lovely Garfield bento box lunch for kids…but that didn’t work out for me exactly…so this is what I came up with: eyes=cucumber slices, pupils=raisins, eyelids=cheddar, face=mozzarella, nose=cherry tomato, ears and whiskers=cucumer and then some pickle-and-ham fancy sandwiches for some real food. (And yes, I know that Garfield hates raisins, but my kids hate black olives!!)
Another necessary on our Garfield party table was some Tang to drink!! These Mason jars have been a great help to my parties of late! My mom gave me these little Mason jars and I have loved using them for drinks for the kids: take off the lid and take out the metal disk, add a paper cupcake liner over the top of the jar-after you’ve filled it with juice of course! and screw on the outer metal circle on over the cupcake liner. This time I printed out Garfield faces and set them on top, then cut a small hole through them to pop in the straw:
Is he a cool kitty or what?!
I printed out a few “surprise!” Garfields to spread the party cheer around!
Tape him onto a plate:
This was our fabulous lunch dessert. Jello Pinwheels!! We just loved this fun sweet! Easy and fun and yummy for kids and grownups. Here’s the link for the jello recipe and how to, here.
The lunch was fun 🙂 The pop bottles that were going to be for supper were a nice bright orange-and-yellow touch to the decorations!
I’m saving the little boxes from all the food that I use for the parties…saving them for a Christmas craft! 😉 Oh yeah, the Reese’s pieces were from the cookies that my son took to school for his bday…appropriate colors of course!
In the afternoon we worked on some crafts, like this pipe cleaner Garfield head:
You can find this Garfield pipe cleaner craft here. It was a little tricky, and the kids didn’t get into this craft, but I thought if someone (not a kid) wanted to try them for your next Garfield party, they could be used like this for a place setting:
And like this for a party favor bag:
Well, there is more Garfield stuff to come, but I think this post has gone on long enough for now, so I’ll continue posting the party tomorrow!
denna's ideas 