Practically Perfect in Every Way

Of all the parties we've had, the Mary Poppins party was possibly my favorite.

I've always loved Mary Poppins and I was very excited when we drew this movie.  However, I was a little concerned because I was fairly certain Jill had never seen Mary Poppins, and if she had, I was fairly certain she never sat through the entirety of Mary Poppins.  I've noticed that kids' movies are getting shorter and shorter as kids' attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, but Mary Poppins is a proper, full-length feature film.

Perhaps one of the reasons I loved this particular movie night so much was the decorations.  Because Mary Poppins is older and not a princess movie, I couldn't find any awesome paper crafts, so I had to get creative.  The first thing I found was directions for making a chimney sweep here.  Here's dad modeling our finished product:

Another thing I found, and loved, was this design:
 

Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything particularly awesome to do with it, so I just printed it out and put it on the table or something equally boring.  However, it did give me the idea that I wanted to do something with the silhouettes of Mary and  Bert over a skyline.  So, I used the following images to cut the silhouettes out of black butcher paper.

Small Fry then used more of the black butcher paper to make a skyline, and we decorated the entrance!

We were very happy with the finished product!  So much so that my family left it up for quite some time after the party, and when they finally took it down, Big Lil made an art project out of saving it, so now I have a permanent piece of the Mary Poppins party in my home!  Didn't she do a great job of recreating the wall paper at my parents' house?

For dinner we decided to go with a classic English meal of roast beef and roasted vegetables with gravy, and Yorkshire pudding (gluten free of course).  I don't know if you're familiar with Yorkshire pudding, but it was the key to making this feel like an English dinner instead of just a plain old roast.  They're actually very similar to a roll, but calling them Yorkshire puddings just makes you feel British!

We also had a fun addition of penguins at the dinner table (in true Mary Poppins fashion).

For dessert, we took the lead from two wonderful songs from Mary Poppins.  The first was from "Jolly Holiday" (around 3:23).

"Now. then, what would be nice?  We'll start with raspberry ice."

And then, of course, we had to have spoonfuls of sugar!

Although we made these in advance, it could have been fun to make them at the party when "A Spoonful of Sugar" comes on.  Instead we just ate them when the song came on.  In fact, we did a lot of activities during the movie!  In order to combat any potential boredom in the six year olds, we had activities peppered throughout the movie.

The first came at the scene when Mary measures Jane and Michael.  I secretly gathered the heights of all in attendance (even the dogs) and wrote special messages on a measuring tape for everyone.  Frankly, I thought it was a little silly, but it was the biggest hit of all of the activities.

When Mary Poppins measures Jane and Michael, Michael's says "Extremely stubborn and suspicious, and Jane's says "Prone to giggling and not tidying up."  Those were a little negative for my tastes, so I did one positive and one potentially negative for each person.  Well, sort of.  In order of height, our messages were as follows:

The husband:  Sleeps a lot; surprisingly funny.
Dad:  Extremely handy; grumpy after 9 p.m. (he still hasn't let us live this one down)
Big Lil:  Stubborn to a fault; very clean.
Me and Mom:  Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way (we decided we were probably the same height as Mary Poppins)
Small Fry:  Full of joy; rarely puts things away.
The Bean:  Slightly stubborn; prone to giggle.
The BFF:  Somewhat suspicious; puppy magnet.
Penelope: Very sweet; doesn't listen.  (This is the Jack Russell.)
Emma:  Chews on everything; too cute for her own good.  (This is the Dachshund puppy.)

Big Lil seems skeptical about her measurement.

The next game we played was during "Pavement Artist" when Bert is doing chalk drawings on the sidewalk.  For this, we used the leftover black butcher paper and sidewalk chalk to let the girls do their own chalk drawings.

 

Next up was penguin bowling!  While Bert was dancing with the penguins, we did a little bowling for penguins!  These penguins were made out of empty 2 liter bottles, black spray paint, multi-hued cardstock, and hot glue.

Our final activity was dancing to "Step in Time" with our chimney sweeper.  Some black face markings could have been fun here.

Apparently, the Bean has enjoyed dancing to this song for a LONG time!

 

I intended to make sashes for a dance during "Sister Suffragette," but, unfortunately, never got around to it.  And there are so many things to be done with "Feed the Birds," "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," "Stay Awake," "Let's Go Fly a Kite," or any of the other wonderful songs from Mary Poppins.

We all love Mary Poppins around here, and we're hoping it will become one of the Bean's favorites too!

Coming up next is my birthday party!  So, to celebrate, we did a Beauty and the Beast party with the most magnificent cake you can imagine.

Godspeed!