a Frog and Toad birthday party.

Lorelei turned three a few weeks ago, and for a month or two before the actual big day she kept telling us she wanted a "Frog and Toad party" in honor of her favorite book series. Pinterest informed me that, sadly, this is not a very common party theme for the toddler set - so I was on my own to come up with the details.

This was Lorelei's first-ever kid party, and even though we were keeping it fairly small, I decided that having it somewhere other than our house was the best plan - and where better than a pool, since one of the best Frog and Toad stories is all about going for a swim in your funny-looking bathing suit? We're lucky enough to have an amazing kids-only pool in our community, so once we reserved our day and time, I drafted up the invites, using an old copy of one of the books for the illustrations and border.

Lorelei at first requested a Frog and Toad cake, but I'm not anybody's idea of a cake boss, and after rejecting several local bakeries that are known for their Crisco-laden frosting or boxed mixes, I started to worry that I was going to have to break the bad news to her that a cake like this one was never going to happen. Luckily, she changed her mind - and once she started asking for chocolate cupcakes instead, I knew I'd have no trouble making and decorating those myself. Twenty minutes, a box of toothpicks, double-sided tape, and some craft punches were all I needed to turn the rest of that worn-out copy of the stories into cupcake toppers. (I snagged the polka-dot cupcake liners and the oversized white sprinkles on Amazon.)

For the party itself, most of the time was spent in the pool so I had very little to prepare - perfect! We went with green decorations (with a few rainbow touches thrown in for good, girly measure) and I served ice cream in paper drink cups alongside the cupcakes - a trick that seemed to really help contain the mess.

At the end of the party, each child went home with a Frog and Toad-themed gift bag. If I were a better blogger, I'd have taken pictures of all of the contents - instead, you can barely see them in the background in this shot:

I'm just as overwhelmed with stuff as the next parent, so I wanted to make something for the party guests that wouldn't just add to everyone's household clutter. I thought it'd be fun for each of the kids to have a set of activities to do connected to some of our favorite Frog and Toad stories, so I burned a CD for each child with an audio recording of Arnold Lobel reading "The List," "The Garden," "Cookies," and "The Letter." Then, in addition to the CD, each bag held the following (edited to add: I found most of the supplies in bulk at the dollar store or used what we had here at home, so each bag was less than $2.50 per kiddo):

* a small green notepad (for making their own lists)
* a pot and a small packet of wildflower seeds
* a half-pint Mason jar filled with the ingredients for making a toddler-sized batch of cookies
* a blank white card in an envelope, complete with a stamp (for best friend letter-writing)
* 6 markers to go with the list and card

The bags were decorated with a classic Frog and Toad image and had an explanation of the contents so parents could help kids with the activities once they got home.

All in all, a pretty simple little party - but I think the birthday girl and her 6 buddies had a great time!