real parties: a breakfast cereal mixer

You know what a fan I am of originality, and Merrilee of Mer Mag has got it in spades.  I've been reading her blog for some time, so naturally I fell hard when I recently saw her son's 5th birthday 'cereal mixer'.  She was kind enough to share it with us here and I just can't decide what I love most... the fruit loop O on the invitation, the rice krispie cake, or the fact that she held it first thing in the morning with pjs and all.  Read on below for more details from Merrilee...

 {images via mer mag}

My little A has the best personality. He has a multitude of imaginary friends whom he impersonates on several occasions. He loves learning and begs me to sit down with him to do his reading lesson everyday and he's getting very good at it. He's memorized the track numbers to all of his favorite Gabba songs in the car and requests them by number each time we go for a drive. He's still a puzzle fanatic, a little comedian, rather particular about almost everything and an all around wonderful big brother. Oh, and he recently told us his favorite food is cereal.

It was this such revelation that inspired the theme for his 5th birthday party. He had originally requested a Captain Underpants party. As he's getting older and coming into his own, I really wanted this to be about HIM, so I wanted to find a way to work in the Captain Underpants theme, but was struggling with how to really run with this. We had previously thought about taking him to a local cereal bar, Mix and Munch, for his birthday breakfast, as I knew he would love the idea of mixing cereals and adding toppings, etc. Then, after seeing Brooke's early morning PJ party, I thought, hey, we could do the cereal bar thing for his party, and hold it in the morning! And that is just what we did.

We started off with simple invitations with a yellow fruit loop adhered to the front of the card, inviting the guests to come in their PJ's and enjoy gobs of cereal and Saturday morning cartoons. We'd throw in a Captain Underpants reading for good measure and just all around have a good time.  

I tried the whole, you're turning 5 so you can invite 5 guest of your choosing thing, and it went over pretty well. With siblings, etc. there were more than 5 guests, but the effort still helped things not get too hectic with party planning and favors. It also helped him feel like he had some say in all of this, which was really fun for him (I know, it's about time right? The curse of having an artistic, meddling mom I guess...).

Little A was ecstatic about his "Captain Underpants Cereal Party" and had a blast picking out the cereal flavors ahead of time. He choose several brightly colored and fun flavored cereals because of their exciting packaging but ended up loving the tried and true Cheerios the best (and I, and his Dentist, couldn't be happier).

For toppings we had marshmallows, mini chocolate chips, pop rocks, chocolate covered sunflowers seeds (my fav!), strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, bananas, almonds and chocolate, carmel and marshmallow flavored syrup.

I made sure it was adult friendly with non sugar cereals such as granola with fruit toppings (which I had two generous helpings of!) and a few muffins in case there were any non-cereal lovers attending. 

For more details and other projects to get your creative juices flowing, visit Mer Mag.