This weekend the three-year-old became a four-year-old.  Woot!

We decided to have a bubble party, mainly because we met this woman who is a “bubblologist” at a grown-up party, and her description of what she does seemed pretty cool.  So we hired her for the birthday.  We were drawn in by “square bubbles,” “triangle bubbles,” and most of all, “every kid gets put INSIDE a bubble.”

And it was pretty cool.  She set up a kiddie pool with bubble solution in it and used a hula hoop to make bubbles.  She had a cube and a tetrahedron to make the square and triangular bubbles, and all around I learned some fun things about the science of the bubble.  Oh yeah, and the kids kinda liked it, too.

Here’s the seven-year-old getting put in a bubble:

She told all the kids when they were in the bubble to blow gently and it would create a kind of “nose” on the bubble.  That’s what’s going on in the last photo here.

And the birthday boy in the bubble:

The bubble show took place inside (I know, I was shocked, too, but she did lay down a lot of tarps.  I think the wind is too much for bubble science.), and then the kids went outside for general bubble mayhem.

Tiiiiiiiny bubbles...

Now, you know I wasn’t going to do just any old party favor.  One of my party pet peeves is getting a bunch of plastic crap as a party favor at a kid’s party.  I also hate getting Ivory soap, but that’s another (hilarious Sub Mat) story (definitely worth reading!).  I’ve done custom CDs before, which is always a hit, but this time I decided to make bubble-shaped and -decorated cookies on a stick.

It took a lot longer than I had really anticipated.

I’ve done sugar cookies with the piped royal icing decoration before, but this time I wanted them to come out really nicely, so I followed all of Martha Stewart’s recommendations.  This meant I needed a bunch of different frostings in different colors and consistencies.  First, the frosting you use to outline the cookie needs to be thicker than the frosting you use to “flood” the cookie (that is, fill in the outline).  The “flooding” needs to ooze together nicely so as to create a smooth surface.  So already, I’m at two frostings.  Then, I wanted two different color details on the top, so I needed two more frostings in different colors.  I really should’ve had both an outlining and a flooding frosting for the darker blue I chose as a shadow, but by 10 pm the night before the party, I was beat.

Here they are:

CLOSE UP!

You can see why I needed both the outline and the flood on the dark blue; it looks all rough because the one thicker icing I used didn’t ooze very well.  I was going for a shadow and highlight thing, here, which apparently didn’t translate so well, since the seven-year-old told me it looked like a wonky smiley face.  Look, I won’t argue with that.  I was just happy that they tasted divine.  Ok, ok, I was a little bummed they didn’t look more like bubbles.

I packaged them all in bags with silver ribbons.  Here’s the birthday boy holding a sample:

Anyhoo, it was a very successful party, and now the boy is four.  I almost can’t believe it, until I totally can.  You know?

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