Cousin Camp 2011: Birthday Party

It has been over a month since Cousin Camp, so it's about time I filled you in on what we did this year. I'm just going to hit the highlights this year; I hope you don't mind. We've found a schedule and some activities that work well for us from year to year, so our schedule was a lot the same as last year.

So today I'm going to show you the details of the big Cousin Birthday Party. (Five of the nine cousins have birthdays within a month of Cousin Camp, so we celebrate them all together.) The theme this year was a western theme, and I had a lot of fun.

I collected plastic and glass boot cups all year at thrift stores, and we had enough for everyone. I got the foam hats and silky bandannas at Dollar Tree.

I used some of my son's toy horses to decorate the middle of the table, and I used these plastic steer molds to hold trail mix. (They're from Oriental Trading company, but I got mine in a big pack from the thrift store.)

I had each of them don their duds for the meal. This is my son.

And this is my daughter, the one we affectionately dubbed "Annie Oakley". (She's left-handed and a pretty good shot, although it looks pretty random when she does it.)

After the main meal, the boys took the play guns to our parking lot and rode around pretending to shoot at each other. I guess the bikes were modern-day horses.

We also decorated the cowboy and cowgirl hats after we ate. We made barrettes with the girls, but I don't have a picture of those handy.

To decorate the accessories, I used some conchos and string I picked up at the thrift store. For the boys, we also made string ties (shown here draped over the hat) from the same materials.

After all of that was done, it was time for the mug shots. I posed each of them on the porch so that I could photograph them through the metal banister, mimicking the look of jail bars.

My plan is to get these made into "Wanted" posters as souvenirs for each of them, but I honestly forgot until just now.

Sorry that the cake picture is on its side. I have no idea why it decided to do that after I uploaded it. We did a basic cake this year and added a silver paper star to the top. I've discovered that Cousin Camp is not the time to attempt elaborate cake decorating. I just miss out on too many things.

So there you have a 5th, 7th, 10th (x2), and 17th birthday party all wrapped up in one! I'll try to get more Cousin Camp details posted within the next week or so. Enjoy!