He's been planning this birthday for the past eleven months, declaring shortly after last year's Star Wars party that his tenth birthday would be dedicated to The Lord of the Rings. A long expected party, one could say. We've had a LOTR party before and also a Dwarven themed birthday so thankfully, that helped with some of the planning and details. It was pretty impressive how much work the older three all did to prepare. My job was mostly the behind the scenes logistics and the cake about which he had very specific ideas.

But really, how is our David ten?! A few times in the week before he talked about entering into the double digits with both excitement and a touch of melancholy. I remember that feeling like a big deal to me, too!

If your older brother doesn't HANDFORGE YOU A REPLICA STING OUT OF SCRAP METAL AND A BRANCH, do you even Tolkien, bro? Our oldest had been working on this for weeks beforehand, only letting our second see it before the big reveal the day of the party. He had found some scrap metal in the field behind our house (the blade was fashioned out of an old truck spring apparently? What?) and made all of this. There are days that I worry they don't even like each other and will never be friends when they're older and the arguing drives me insane. Then there are days like this. Our second oldest worked really hard on fashioning that wooden ring that he painted gold to go on the bedroom wall and hold Sting.

He had his costume planned for a few weeks as well. Some of this was sourced from the LOTR costumes I made for Christmas way back in the day and some was pieced from his dresser. The mithril peeking out from underneath his shirt, however, he made himself with just a tiny bit of guidance from John Paul. He used light steel wire and this technique.

My little fellowship 

(or rather, a random assortment of characters they picked out on taste)

Aragorn, Pippin, Frodo, Saruman, Faramir, and our little Gollum ;) (He's kinda got the hair for it.)

Elven clasps you can find here and the Ring of Power around his neck is here.

I'm told this says happy birthday in elvish at the top and the engraving from the ring at the bottom.

Sign reused from other parties graciously offered free by Jessica along with the party banner you'll see below! We don't do huge birthday parties guest-wise but we sometimes let the kids invite a friend or two over as well as grandparents and Godparents. 

I crack myself up. 

Our first guest arrived. I was dying. They had planned this out a few days before, he bringing the cape and clothes, and our boys making the (slightly terrifying) ringwraith mask (cardboard!) and weapons.

And another guest! These kids are NOT messing around.

We did this at another party and David wanted to do it again. It's hard to see and I wasn't going to pass through our Dead Marshes (heh.) but those are paper orc heads mounted on sticks that they were all going at with swords and assorted weaponry. And miraculously no one actually got hurt.

My life, man. It is blessed but it is also really, really weird. Our neighbors must think we're nuts.

We did this at another of the parties as well and as much as I kinda hate pinatas (seriously, more dangerous and chaotic than the faux battle!) we did it anyway. He made it all on his own so that helped the decision! Plus, you can you really say no to destroying the Eye of Sauron at a LOTR party?

I didn't get a picture of this but David had woven rope all around our creepy cellar that the kids got to go through as a tribute to Shelob's web.

He had a very specific design for his cake that I think I pulled off adequately. After much deliberation he decided he wanted the Eye of Sauron mounted on top of the Ring of Power.

The coloring was made using these natural dyes which are still my favorite. The powder works better and lasts much longer than the liquid dyes.

Just don't look too closely at my Elvish script. With a medium of melted chocolate and writing in a foreign language and alphabet while a 10 month old was crawling around my legs, it wasn't a half bad attempt.

Yes, he used Sting for the first cut but then he licked it so that ended there!

I didn't get a good picture of it but he strategically placed nine black balloons on the ceiling surrounding the table to symbolically represent the nine Nazgul, ha! We've used that banner about 10 times now for various parties!

I should have remembered to buy sparkling candles but the regular ones still gave a pretty great fire effect around the Eye!

He ended the day exhausted, happy, and officially ten. I'll be honest, I don't always love and look forward to doing this stuff (especially my May birthdays that all come back to back along with all the other annual May busyness!). But I'm always glad afterward that we did it. I hope they look back someday and not only love the memories made but recognize just how much we love them and wanted to know they were special and worthy of our family going all out to celebrate them. A mom can hope anyway! 

Happy double digits to our Frodo!

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