Scaredy Squirrel Birthday Party

We have a big milestone coming up on Saturday; my son’s 6th birthday party.

All summer, he has been saying that he wanted to have a luau for this birthday, mainly because he wanted the shaved ice truck to come to our house. So, that’s been our plan for months. I even bought favors and some decor.

Recently, Jackson has fallen in love with the “Scaredy Squirrel” books. In fact, he thinks Melanie Watt is the best, funniest author ever. And he told me one day on the way home from school that he’d like to have a Scaredy Squirrel party instead and that he doesn’t want to wait until he’s 7 because people might make fun of him. Of course, I couldn’t deny or disappoint him.

So, it’s been a busy couple of weeks as we switched themes from luau to Scaredy Squirrel.

Like Jackson, I think Scaredy Squirrel is a hoot! I highly recommend these books; they’re such fun to read with your kids.

Scaredy Squirrel has some major anxiety. He doesn’t want to leave his nut tree, and he’s afraid of everything. Germs. Ponies. Bigfoot. Killer bees. Jellyfish. Green Martians and the list goes on.

In “Scaredy Squirrel Has a Birthday Party,” Scaredy decides to throw himself a birthday party and invite only one person — himself. But plans change, and he invites his pal, Buddy, a rambunctious dog, who brings along lots of his canine friends. Chaos ensues, and Scaredy Squirrel plays dead! Because when all else fails, “Play dead.”

We’ll be recreating lots of Scaredy Squirrel’s adventures (from the birthday party book and others in the series) at Jackson’s party. And we’re keeping very true to the theme, from the invitations to the food.

As a crafter, I tend to go overboard when it comes to birthday party invitations. Last year, for example, I made dozens of handmade Angry Birds invitations, using punched paper cutouts to create pigs and the entire cast of Angry Birds. They took forever, and this year I vowed that the invitations would be simpler. (It’s probably a good thing Jackson canceled the luau, because I had some pretty complicated ideas for those invitations.)

(Address and phone number redacted to protect me from the Internet crazies!)

Luckily, I found a printable Scaredy Squirrel birthday party invitation from the book’s publisher. But, of course, I couldn’t just print them out and handwrite the party details.

Nope, I had to devise a Photoshop hack and customize the invitations in the same font used in the book. (It’s Potato Cut, by the way.)

Here’s the front of the invitations, which I affixed to cardstock:

And here’s the back, a list of party “rules” from Scaredy Squirrel, in keeping with our theme:

I’ll show you a finished invitation later when I post photos from Saturday’s party, but I wanted to give you a preview here.

We’ve also been busy crafting to get ready for the party.

Scaredy Squirrel is afraid of jellyfish, so we’ll be hanging crepe paper jellyfish from the trees in our backyard as decoration.

Jackson and I made a few the other day after school. (And he’s dressed in pajamas because he splashed in puddles at school during a gullywasher of a storm and got soaked.)

The crepe paper jellyfish are super easy to make. Ours aren’t as pretty as the ones on homework that inspired us, but they’ll be perfect for our Scaredy Squirrel birthday party.

1. Glue two cupcake wrappers together, face down, using a glue stick.
2. Cut strips of crepe paper, about 6 inches long or so and glue them to the top of the cupcake liners. Crisscross them, covering the entire wrapper.
3. Flip the cupcake wrapper and glue longer lengths of crepe paper to the center, overlapping and crisscrossing until you have lots of tentacles.
4. Attach a loop to the top of the cupcake wrappers and hang. Make a frightened face!

Another thing Scaredy Squirrel is famous for is making rules. He requires that you do things like use hand sanitizer and brush your teeth before reading his books. So, in that spirit, I painted some simple little warning signs for the party.

The “Unknown” sign will go on Jackson’s treehouse because in Scaredy Squirrel’s world, everything beyond his nut tree is the Unknown and should be avoided. The “Germ-Free Party” sign will welcome guests (as soon as I can add a few finishing paint touches.) And the No Ants Allowed will be posted near the picnic area. Those ants can be tricky!

Stay tuned next week for the full party recap. And wish me luck. It looks like we’re going to have a huge crowd. But at least the forecast calls for sunny skies!