My Two Cents: Four.

Another year has passed. Somehow. I'm not really sure what happened, where the time went, or where I've been, but my baby girl turned four years old on the first of this month.

Before all the craziness, we had a small celebration at home on her actual birthday so she could enjoy her favorite dinner with ice cream and open the gifts from us. Yes, I had raided the Disney store. Sigh.

I'll be honest though, it's not like I wasn't prepared for the party. I'd planned this she-bang back in July. Details had already been hashed out and most of the supplies had already been purchased before January even rolled around. But all the party planning in the world can't seem to prepare me for my baby growing out of baby-hood.

She's four now. Which of course, means she's big. More accurately, she's now 38 inches tall and weighs 28.8 pounds. And to celebrate the gift that she's been to us (thank you, God), we gathered some books and ran with them to create an unforgettable (budget-friendly) Bookworm Birthday Bash. Nerdiness embraced.

First up, the invitations. I created little "books" with cardstock and affixed a library-style book sleeve with insert on the back inside page that held the details of the party. The best part of these little creations is that they were completely free to make. Zero dollars. I had asked our very friendly librarians if they had any checkout cards and book sleeves left over (since now it's no longer done with stamps but rather electronically), and they had boxes upon boxes of them. I happened to have black cardstock paper on hand and used free printable scrapbooking paper to make the number "4's."

For decorations, I got a little creative.

I had fallen ill with hand, foot, mouth disease the week before Fallon's birthday. To make good use of the time, I constructed tissue paper pom-poms. They're like balloons, only they don't deflate and they could potentially be reusable.

I also made a book wreath. The most expensive piece of this little piece was the bow in the middle. I was of course very paranoid that the book police would come and take me away for my destruction of a perfectly good book for the making of the wreath, but they didn't. Whew.

The frames on the wall were filled with pages from books the youngin had added her own artistic signatures to, so I didn't feel quite as nervous with that project.

The rest of the decor went to labeling the food, which was where I felt my creativity and theme really came together.

All in all, decorations set me back about $15. Bam.

Of course, a party ain't a party till the food gets served. And this food was special. And I don't mean gluten-free special (though it was); every dish correlated to a favorite story.

The spread

Carrots, celery, and grape tomatoes

Glutino's gluten free pretzels

Kinnikinick Gluten Free oreos dipped in semi-sweet chocolate

Followed Jules Shepard's recipe for the dough...looked funny but tasted great!

Chocolate dipped marshmallows coated in sprinkles

Cuties, apples, and strawberries

I was very nervous about this cake. Made it totally from scratch (as in, no box mix). Turned out delicious!!

My favorite childhood cookies...made with gluten-free flour and oats.

Cherry Limeade!

Total cost of food with the fancy labels...$75. Told you it's expensive to go gluten free.

Then, because we don't just gather and eat (unheard of) at kids' parties, I had activities ready to go. Thank goodness too, because we all totally would have just sat around quietly and pondered our innermost thoughts for three hours.

I found these blank books on Amazon.com for the kids to create their own stories and picked up a few boxes of crayons. Each child was given a book, and they shared the boxes among themselves.

We also had a little bookmark-making session where we constructed monster page corner bookmarks. I had mostly pre-assembled them so that the were only picking out the skin and eyes to attach to their monsters. Adorable, if I do say so myself.

Finally, we set out some old scarves and nerdy glasses so the kids could dress up as nerdy librarians.

That's a book she's balancing on her head.

We dropped about $35 on the activities once all was said and done. But the books and book marks doubled as favors.

The rest of the party was a cake-eating, gift-opening, playing-with-every-single-new-toy, crazy whirlwind. But, nobody left unhappy, nothing was destroyed or even broken, and hey, we only spent $125 (a fraction of what we spent last year).