It’s that time of the year again: Birthday time!
I have 3 kids so it only happens 3 times a year, and yet this time it came as a big surprise.
I totally forgot that Elena was turning 3 in a week! Sure, we were preparing a family party, so I didn’t really forget about her birthday. But I completely forgot about our tradition to make a birthday countdown. I was struck by the terrible feeling that I’m a lousy mom.
There I was making a train birthday countdown for Lukas and a fairy birthday countdown for Victoria and now 7 days before my youngest would turn 3 I had nothing. And that felt bad.
I finally thought of it about 30 minutes before they’d all be home from school. So what was I to do? I had to choose between feeling lousy about myself, or taking action. So action it was! I got creative with what I had around the house: balloons, candy and stickers.
So 30 minutes later this birthday countdown and a happy mom was welcoming the almost 3 year old princess home.
Did she like it? She liked it alright, tough she was very confused about the fact that the balloons had to be popped to get to her surprise. That is so not done in her world! Balloons are there to be played with, and if they break, it’s usually a mini tragedy. Luckily this time the balloon explosion came with a shower of candy and stickers and that made up for the pain of the first broken balloon. The next balloons got popped much smoother.
Here’s how I did Elena’s birthday countdown.
I used 7 big balloons and as usual I had some small candy, stickers and a note as “filling”. The size of the balloons and the candy is important, because if the balloons are too small or the candy is too big, there’s no way to put the “filling” inside.
I put inside each balloon some candy to be shared between the kids, an activity note and a sticker for Elena. About the activity note, I was less inspired than the previous time, but luckily for me she can’t read, so I can still adapt last minute 😉
Then I blew the balloons, wrote numbers on them and hang them on the ceiling using a ribbon and some paper tape. Keeping in mind that my target group consists of little people, I also wrote numbers on the bottom of the balloons. Elena sees her birthday countdown from a different perspective.
If you’d rather not hang the balloons, you can forget about the ribbon, and you can stick them on the wall or ceiling using a piece of paper tape that you can roll around the finger with the sticky part on the outside.
Then attach one side of your – homemade – double sided sticky tape on the balloons. That will help you stick the balloon wherever you want it.
That’s it folks! Do you like our latest birthday countdown?
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