Molly's 5th Birthday Party - Mermaids and Pirates Party

For Molly's 4th birthday we were really just excited to have made it to Cherryville. We threw her a party, there was cake, the end.

For her 5th we were back in action, and this time making her the present to end all presents, her very own pirate ship.

 People assume I am the artist in the family, but I am not the only one. Sam conceived the idea for this pirate ship on a napkin in a restaurant, with the idea that from the front the tree would look like a mast. The napkin drawing is pretty bang on to his finished work, with the exception of the additional pirates yelling and sharks taking it down from underneath. He got a little carried away with that napkin.

So Sam build an amazing pirate ship, and then set me to the task of painting it. I did a faux wood effect on the sides, chose teal, red and aged wood for the colour scheme, and to be honest the largest challenge of this was a)painting particle board to look smooth, and b)painting while chickens pecked my toes. One of my all-time favourite aspects was the amazing ladder he created. He used two fence posts and some dowel and a sander to make this amazing extra.

 For Molly's party, we invited her guests to come as mermaids and pirates. We rented an inflatable twister game, because we were really going quite nutty on this party, and I decked out the table with mermaid madness.

 At the completion of our ship, in what we thought was a totally unrelated matter, our chickens started to only produce 1/4 of their previous egg count. We thought this odd, because they were very young, healthy chickens, and seemed to want for nothing and be in no distress. So we consulted a few different resources, and were mostly told "these things happen." It wasn't until about two weeks later Sma was having coffee outside and said "oh.....OH" As he saw an egg roll out from under the ship. Apparently the chickens also loved the new playhouse because they had taken to wedging their bodies between the tree and the ship, and laying their eggs in a secret stash.

 Next step for us, once the bees are settled and the gardens are 100% done, is going to be the giant octopus weaving it's way through the front, the plank, and the sandbox off the front left side....er port bow.

Look at how happy she was: