For the want of a throne...

Yesterday was Liv's 5th birthday. I'm still kind of reeling at the thought of having a kid-aged-child instead of a small-child. But I digress... When we first mentioned that she could have her birthday party at a place outside of our house, her first thought was, "Oh, maybe we could have it at the JumpZone, cause I haven't had a chance to sit in the chair yet." The JumpZone being one of the favorite places to have parties. And "the chair" is this big fiberglass throne thingie that the birthday kid gets to sit on while opening presents.

Well... To make a long story short, we decided to have her party at the local Y where the kids could swim in the indoor pool. They had a party room downstairs, but it didn't have any kind of special chair for the birthday kid.

And so, a craft project was born.

Here's what I started with:

• a tri-fold cardboard display (think science fair projects)
• an old electronic box (happily freecycled one afternoon on the way home from the park)
• yellow spray paint
• white and gold craft paint, the cheapest that money could buy
• smattering of flat-backed acrylic gems
• some gold glittered holiday berry picks

The plan was this:

1. Shove the empty box over the back of a kitchen chair. Isn't that incredibly lucky how it fit???

2. Cut the science fair display into a throne-ish shape, spray paint yellow (Liv's fave color), and then paint details in white and gold. This was all totally made up on the fly. Please, please ignore the totally messy house in the background.

3. Embellish the throne shape with sparkle gems and the gold berries. Not going to show a picture here, lest it spoil the grand reveal down below.

4. Glue the throne shape to the front of the empty box, wrapping the sides of the display around to the back as much as possible. (Tape the sides to the back of the box.)

Put it all together and you get one very yellow, very sparkly, very cardboard birthday throne.

Total cost: $20. AND I have leftover acrylic gems and glitter berries...

See how the name frames her face oh so perfectly? Yeah, that was totally random.

Toodles,