Birthday Bliss … or Birthday Blunder?

Covid birthday’s suck. There’s no gatherings to celebrate, less/no presents, and it’s all very anti-climatic. Sure you can still have a cake but it’s just not the same. And with no guests to share the cake, those Covid-19lbs just keep creeping up. It’s especially hard on kids who just want to have a party with their friends….nope. Or go to that special venue….nope. Awkward zoom party… sure? Parents nowadays are struggling to make the day special when we ourselves are also limited. Party supply stores are essential service I tell you! But we persevere and we do it, and our kids are thankful for anything because they are way more resilient than we give them credit for.

Here’s how we tried to celebrate my youngest turning 9 during all this covid-crazy business. My husband came up with the idea to use the theme “Bean” because one of her nicknames is Bean. My trusty Girl Guide leader and crafty mind pinged with a giant floodlight-sized lightbulb and ran with it. All in less than a week, I managed to pull off an epically themed Bean birthday. A few late nights, a few trips to get supplies, and numerous hours with my beloved Cricut, and I was grinning like a cheshire cat. I couldn’t wait for her birthday! There was STEM activities, math activities, crafts, themed reading and even some horticulture! In case you have a Bean in your family who would like a Bean birthday, here’s the details of what I created (details on each activity below).

1) Magic Beans to Grow Overnight : The night before, they (birthday girl and older sister – because you can’t really leave her out when it’s just us celebrating as a family) were given a small paper envelope containing magic beans. Directions said to plant them in sugar and leave them overnight. (These magic beans were just jelly beans). The next morning they found that the magic beans has sprouted into a giant rainbow swirl lollipop. Sweet!

2) Bean Floor: Before the birthday girl woke up on her special day, I placed 150 3in x 4in coloured bean shapes all over her bedroom floor. So when she woke up the first thing she would see is her floor covered in beans.

3) Jelly Bean Bracelet Craft : Using a needle and thread, push some jelly beans onto the thread to make a bracelet. Tip : Using a push pin first helped make a hole that the needle would go through easier.

4) Bean Boozled game : Purchased easily at Walmart, I swear this game is rigged and ALL the beans are gross flavoured. Seriously – dead fish, stink bug, canned dog food, barf, stinky socks etc etc. This game didn’t last very long….. but was entertaining anyway. (Picture of the game at the end of the post).

5) Bean Around the World : Quick visit to the local coffee shop Bean Around the World for a treat

6) Jelly Bean Engineering : Using toothpicks to connect jelly beans, they constructed a basic house shape. They knew they needed a good base for support, but didn’t actually have the patience to make anything bigger. Tip: use a push pin here again to pre-make the holes in the jellybeans.

7) Playdough : I found a playdough recipe online where you heat up some jellybeans in some water in the microwave to leech the colour out. You then use the coloured water in the playdough recipe to colour it. Appaerntly, depending on the brand of jelly beans, you could end up with vibrant candy smelling playdough. You could…. but we didn’t….. still, playdough is playdough and they still had fun with it.

8) Bean bag toss game : Classic game of tossing bean bags to score points.

9) Plant and Grow a Bean : Using a method from my childhood, we lined a mason jar with a piece of plain paper, and then filled it with good soil. We carefully dropped three different beans (tricolour bush beans) between the glass and the paper so that we can watch the beans grow. Within 2 days 2 of them were already sprouting! We also placed some beans inside some paper towel and are continuing to spray the paper towel to keep it moist until those beans sprout as well.

 

 

10+11) Guess and Graph the beans : Guess how many jelly beans are inside the container. Simple enough. Older sister guessed 350, Birthday Girl guessed 351. In order to see who was the winner, they had to sort the beans onto a poster board by colour. This actually took some time (yay!). Total jellybeans was 446 so the birthday girl won! I was pleasantly surprised at how evenly distributed the colours were.

12) Blindfold taste test : By the time we got to this activity, we were jelly bean’d out. Depending on your brand of jelly beans, this one may be fun or pointless. You could join this with the Bean Boozled game if you’re brave enough.

13) Mr Bean movie: My girls only lasted through one episode of Rowan, but then watched several of the cartoon version. Thanks (Amazon) Prime Video!

14) Bean Books : The plan was to read bean-themed books at bedtime (Franny the Jelly Bean Fairy and Jelly Bean Summer), the evening didn’t really pan out positively.(explained below) We still have these library books and will attempt to still read them over the next few days.

There you have it! A Birthday Bean Bonanza!

I honestly thought celebrating her day with (jelly) beans would be a huge hit. Unfortunately, skip forward to bedtime on her birthday and there’s a sad, tear-streaked face trying to hide the fact that she doesn’t want to hurt MY feelings because she didn’t like the theme and didn’t like her birthday. Urg. She admitted to liking the individual activities, but it still fell flat. I thought I couldn’t go wrong with a whole day filled with candy. I’ll admit that my planning, organizing and creating made me lose sight of what her own wants would have been (bean?). But what kid doesn’t want a day of candy?!!? Apparently mine 🙁  Now I know that something that will be a huge time commitment (planning and on the actual day doing it) shouldn’t necessarily be a surprise. We’ll collaborate more next time to ensure success. And no matter what she chooses, you can be sure I’ll dive head first into creating a fantastical day to beat this day by a long shot. And no jelly beans. Like, ever again. If those little sugar turds vanish off the face of the earth, they will not be missed.

Regardless of Covid and failed birthdays, this new 9 year old will continue to grow up just like an actual jelly bean. She’s sweet and tough yet squishy at the same time. She’ll always be my Bean.