I'm back on here after a nearly two year blog hiatus! It's fun when you have special things to write about! My nearly 11 year old daughter was having trouble deciding what theme to use for her birthday party. I listed off and asked questions about her interests when finally we came to books! We had been listening to the Focus on the Family Radio Theater Chronicles of Narnia audiobooks. A Narnia party it would be! We looked at pinterest and found some great inspiration! See At the Picket Fence and Toni Spilsbury. I also found a lion graphic to use with my Silhouette cutting machine. I used it to make the sign on our front door, along with hand copying the Narnia font. We used the cut out lions on a banner too. We found gold plates, utensils and paper goods, so we set places for each kid along with stick on jewels for their cups. My daughter had hoped to find some goblets as seen on At the Picket Fence. We spray painted some plastic lions from the dollar store gold to be our Aslans. We attempted to make a wardrobe entrance like Toni Spilsbury had for the entrance into our living room. I used spray paint and the stencil that was made from the lion cut outs. Kind of shabby, but the effect was great for the kids! We cut right up the middle of the doors on the sheet, and you could walk through. We have to get creative at times with food and ideas being that we're not in the States. Our menu included: Father Christmas Ham Beaver Dam Pudding (Caramel) Apples of Youth & (Kettle Corn) Forever Winter Snow Acorns (Dates), Nectarines and Cair Paravel Cupcakes Mrs. Beaver's Hot Chocolate While the kids were finishing their snacks, we passed out the treasure boxes to paint. We got the idea from Lisa Leonard Designs blog. We found small wooden ones at our dollar store. A couple of the boys decided to use their stick-on jewels in other spots while they painted their treasure boxes! Next, we had "Susan's Archery Practice" in our neighbors' backyard (they already had a target spot). All the kids seemed to enjoy giving it a shot! This is the birthday girl's little sister! I did not get any great pictures of our Scavenger Hunt but wanted to tell you about it! We took copied colored illustrations from the books, cut them into puzzle pieces and laminated them. Then we hid them all over our street and outdoor spaces with Narnia-ized clues as you can see below for one of the teams. For example, number seven was in an olive tree. Team Dawn Treader 1. The Clawed Vine Portal 2. The Bashful Blush Blossoms 3. The Pear Postal 4. The Elves' Correspondence 5. The Royal Footrest 6. The Electric Chest Alley 7. The Oil Fruit Branches 8. The Silver Cauldron Our last activity was freeing the animals from their "frozen" state in a balloon, in the same vein as the White Witch had turned so many of the creatures into statues in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. We had put little plastic animals in the balloons to free with darts. . One more shot of our birthday girl and her sister! She was really pleased with the party!