(Said With My Best English Accent) It's Peter!

I may be a little (ok, a lot) bias, but is she not the cutest Peter you've ever seen? And Mark makes for a pretty good Hook too.


We had a really delightful time on Saturday! There's so much to share, so I'll dive right in. First up, the food. I went over the menu a bit before and we didn't stray from it much. We skipped the peanut butter balls, mostly due to time, but did add a black bean & edamame salad that we called Hook's Treasure. Everything was super delicious, especially the acorn cookies, which you really should try sometime!


In addition to those delicious acorn cookies, we had a dessert of pirate ship cupcakes. I did my best to get liners reminiscent of waves, chocolate frosting to act as the ship itself and sails made of paper and toothpicks.


My yard is pretty large and overly landscaped thanks to the previous owner's green thumb. It separated quite perfectly into the different areas of Neverland. We turned a treed area into Pixie Hollow by using the tree stump tent that Charlotte got for Christmas two years ago, along with some oversized flowers that I made out of construction paper. And you can barely make out my handdrawn Pixie Hollow sign (sorry some of the photos are blown out).


Just to the right (as you look at it) of Pixie Hollow is our shed. We put a couch and air mattress inside, hung some twinkle lights and voila! The Lost Boys Hideout. The kids really loved this area (helped by the sign that says No Grownups Allowed). Oliver, dressed as Michael, complete with teddy bear, was particularly enthralled!


Even further to the right is our stone patio. This area was decorated as Pirate's Cove with paper waves and a large sail. Here we set up a patio table for the adults and a Lego table with pirate ships for the kids. See the biggest kid of all? Yup, Mark spent a lot of time making sure his ships were getting played with properly. While all the kids had fun in this spot you could hardly tear Elijah away. He loved it so much!! He also had fun with Charlotte's Cozy Coupe, although I'm not sure that he was a big fan of having to squeeze into it with her.


And Charlotte really enjoyed present opening! We love everything she received, but my personal favorites have to be her Charlotte-sized violin (for real, it's a tiny, blue real violin - thanks Regina!!) and all the outdoor toys. We never had much outdoor space to speak of before and so never got many things for outdoor play. Well, family and friends really came through and Charlotte is now stocked with a wheelbarrow, watering pail (which she used to water our paper waves instead of the tomato plants right behind them, go figure), sand and water table, adirondack chairs and more.


And much to my chagrin, my mom got her light up shoes (hate those things - just a personal quirk of mine) and she loves them. She had to change out of her sandals right away to give them a try:


After presents it was time for the treasure hunt. While Mark and I set up for it, we gave the kids some time to devour those cupcakes. And they didn't hold back!


Didn't Penelope look adorable? I will note that she doesn't normally dress up so much (but probably should cause she looks good). We actually encouraged everyone to wear costumes on the invitation and some of our guests really went all out. Earlier in the party Penelope had wings and a wand and looked super cute! You already saw Oliver dressed as Michael, being held by his mom, a green fairy. A few pics up you can see Regina, our Red Wing fairy (go ahead, scroll up and check out her hair) and below you'll see some more. Joe went as a weird pirate (there's a story behind the costume, but too much to explain here) and Kevin fringed the sleeves on his Halloween costume and added an eye patch. And I threw in another photo of Charlotte (whose costume I made based on this tutorial) cause that's too much cuteness not to see again. All those folks, plus a few more pirates made for a very strangely clad group!!


I got sidetracked... back to the treasure hunt. I drew a map of our backyard and came up with some simple clues for the kids to follow.


After much running and an epic battle with Captain Hook, Charlotte snagged the key to the treasure (favor bags with various Peter Pan-themed goodies). And we only had one casualty - poor Garen!


All told, everything went really smoothly and I actually got to enjoy some of the party. And, most importantly, Charlotte enjoyed it too!! And while it's out of focus, here's one last photo of my cute birthday girl: