happy saint's day, sofia!

My daughter was born in August, when pretty much everyone in Italy goes on vacation, so she can never celebrate with her friends and family at home. So we throw her a party for her onomastico, saint's name day, as is celebrated in Catholic countries. I've had a lot of work to do, but I did what I could manage for her party. Unfortunately almost all of the pictures I took of what I did are horrid, but they'll just have to do!

First of all, we made a sort of banner saying "Auguri," (a very generic sort of "congratulations" that is used for every possible occassion). I have pictures of every birthday party I had as a girl with all the guests under a "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" banner that my mother made from colored construction paper. Every year, the same banner and quite often the same kids.

So I found a couple of shoeboxes, cut out the letters and punched holes at the tops to string them up. Then my daughter and I painted them with acrylic paint. I had imagined doing each letter a different color, but the fact the virtually all our paint had dried up foiled my plans and we had to settle for a different color of glitter for each letter. A nice afternoon project to do together and I assure you that it does look much nicer than you would think from this photo!


Then the favor. I still haven't figured out if it's typical in Italy to give out birthday party favors (it is in the United States), but I prepared them anyway. Last year I brought sidewalk chalk home from the USA and all the kids (including the old ones) who live in our apartment complex were completely enthralled, because this sort of mega-chalk doesn't exist here, and kept asking me for months afterwards if I had any more of "that big chalk" and where I had bought it.

So this year I bought a few boxes and put a package of five with Colombian lollypops and some little plastic toys in cloth drawstring sacks. I made a bunch of these sacks in just a few hours and my daughter helped me turn them right side out and fill them up.

And I made the desserts. I didn't take a picture of the Rice Krispies Treats, a typically American thing, made from the breakfast cereal and melted marshmallows. They're always a success because first of all, they're yummy, and second, nobody in Italy knows what marshmallows are. I did remember to take pictures of the Hello Kitty cake, even though the pictures are horrid. I cut out the shape of her head from a rectangular chocolate cake, covered it with white frosting and added liquorice whip whiskers and candy eyes, nose and flower. Auguri, Sofia mia!