Posted by Nicole Carney on Aug 18, 2014 in Birthday Theme Parties, Camping, Outdoor Activities, Painting | 1 comment

I had great time planning B’s camping party, which took place this past weekend. Camping is one of B’s favourite summer activities, so it only made sense to celebrate his 3rd birthday during a family campout surrounded by his nana and papa, aunts and uncles, and cousins.

There was a bit of prep work and additional packing required for this special camping trip, but it was well worth it!

Camper’s Crunch!

My bugs helped ~~eat~~ put together some s’more inspired snack bags for their cousins to munch on, by adding mini marshmallows, chocolate chips, and Golden Graham cereal into some paper bags.

I created a Camper’s Crunch Bag Topper, which you can download for free by clicking on the link. You will also need to download and install the Pinewood font found here, also free, in order for the bag topper to look like the one below.For an added rustic effect, I loosely tied a piece of twine around each of the snack bags.

Camping Banner

I created a banner that read ‘CAMP B———-‘ using the same Pinewood font at 400 size for each letter. I printed off the letters (as well as a couple of pine tree and pinecone pictures) and cut each one out in a circle, then glued them onto large triangles I had cut from brown and orange cardstock. When we set up camp, I strung a piece of twine from our awning and hung each letter of B’s camping banner using clothespins.

Campfire S’More Cupcakes

For B’s birthday cupcakes I decided to make campfire cupcakes with a yummy surprise baked into each one… a large, gooey marshmallow! I found the recipe for the marshmallow-in-the-middle chocolate cupcakes while visiting The Shabby Creek Cottage blog.

After baking them, I covered them in chocolate icing and added some graham crumbs, chocolate sticks (for campfire logs), and LifeSavers chunks (as flames). To make the flames I melted red, orange and yellow LifeSavers on a sheet of parchment paper in a 350° oven, and let it melt for about 10min. Then I waited for the candy blob to cool and harden before snapping it into jagged chunks.

Camping Party Food

For the party we had balsamic-honey pulled pork, meatballs, buns, hotdogs, coleslaw, corn on the cob, pickles, fruit, and vegetables. There was also a variety of candy to fit the theme: Bear Paws, gummy worms and gummy fish as fishing bait, chocolate wafer sticks for fire logs, maple leaf cookies, chocolate covered raisins as deer poop, and s’more pops. You can download the camping party signs I made, for free, by clicking on the link. You will need to download the Pinewood font here first, also free, in order for them to look right! You can print the food labels onto cardstock and then fold on the middle line. Feel free to alter them to suit your party needs.

S’More Pops

To make the s’more pops, I poked Pockey sticks into large marshmallows, then dipped them in chocolate and rolled them in graham crumbs. I poked the s’more pops into a circular, styrofoam base then filled in the spaces with red, orange and yellow tissue paper to resemble flames.

Camping Party Activities

Painting Birdhouses

I purchased some wood birdhouses from Dollarama, along with some foam paint brushes, acrylic paint, and foam stickers. We ended up using garbage bags as painting smocks to protect the kids’ clothing.

Nature Scavenger Hunt

You can download a free copy of our nature scavenger hunt by clicking on the link. I just printed them off and stapled them onto paper bags for the kids to collect their items in.