The BFG Birthday Party

The year Avery's birthday party was more like a small gathering, yet we wanted to make it special. She has read The BFG by Roald Dahl at least twice, and we had a special date to the see the movie when it came out in theaters. One day we mentioned how fun/funny it would be to have a BFG party, and the idea stuck.

If you have seen or read The BFG, you know that the Big Friendly Giant mixes up words and sayings in a most endearing way. We did our best to highlight some favorites. 

As I said, this gathering was a bit pared down from our usual parties. Since we included watching the movie as part of the party, we served popcorn, cake, cookies, and a tasty beverage. 

The cake was fun to make! It wasn't one I would make again for flavor, but it received the desired affect from Avery. The tricky part was that the book version of a snozzcumber varied a bit from the movie version. We leaned toward the movie version, because I wasn't really game for a black cake. 

If you wanted to duplicate this cake, I used the Jelly Roll recipe from Martha Stewart, but filled it with strawberry jelly and buttercream. For the the frosting, I tried the Marshmallow Frosting from Sweetapolita. 

At this point, sugar cookies have become a tradition at our parties. Avery actually came up with the idea to reuse the mason jar cutter from her Chasing Fireflies party. If you are not familiar with the story, the BFG collects and distributes dreams. He and Sofie catch a special dream that he saves just for her. 

Frobscottle is another funny drink depicted in the book. We used this tasty recipe idea. 

I had two activities planned, but we ran out of time for the second one. Since the BFG's job is to catch dreams, we made our own dream catchers. 

Avery and I pre-made some felt hearts and pom-poms to speed things along. 

I can't believe we have a nine year old!! 

Shorts and Roller Skates

Avery just turned NINE years old!! She has been wanting roller skates for a while now, and she finally received a pair for her birthday. Now she only takes them off when she sleeps and showers! 

Nine is a hard age to grasp. I mean, she's halfway out of the house!! Yikes! Avery is kind, tough, creative, and determined. She's going to do great things in this world!

This top is a Japanese Sewing Book pattern. You can see the cover in this Instagram post. The construction is rather interesting. The bias that creates the straps continues down to cover the seam allowance of the curved bodice insert. I couldn't get this spot to lay as flat as I would have liked, but I do like the look of the ruffle sleeves. I ended up adding quite a bit of length to the pattern, so keep that in mind if you sew one up.

I paired the top with Oliver + S class picnic shorts. The fabric is from my great aunt's stash. It's maybe a tad bit thicker than a quilting cotton, but not so thick as a twill or denim. It looked like my aunt was in the process, at some point, of making a skirt or taking apart a skirt with it. Hard to tell which! 

I love the construction of these shorts!! I am trying to figure out the sizing though. She measures a 5 for the waist and a 10 for the length. I went with a straight size 7 to see where things would end up. I really like the fit, but for these to work for school next year, they would need to be longer. I haven't found a tutorial for lengthening this pattern yet, and the facings make it a bit tricky. I'm going to try to give it a go though. 

So far, year nine is the year of the roller skates! Hopefully it will cruise on by without too many bumps in the road! ;)