Glow in the Dark Lanterns

My favourite internet find that I made for the little miss' glow in the dark birthday party were these great glow in the dark lanterns! I had seen other types of glow in the dark lanterns that use the goo from broken glow sticks, but what I liked about these ones was that they are made with glow in the dark pigment powder which is rechargeable and would last for more than just the night of the party.

I was thrilled to find that the lantern instructions are from a blog written by someone in New Zealand, as it meant that I would probably be able to find all of the 'ingredients' I needed without too much trouble. In fact, the hardest part was finding 6 glass jars to make the lanterns out of! I didn't want them to be too big, or too funny of a shape, and I wanted them to all be the same. However, I soon realized that finding enough empty jars all the same size & shape (without having to go out & buy any) was just not going to happen. As it turns out nobody (including the very particular little miss) cared that they weren't all the same size.

We had the jars displayed on a shelf for the party, but with all the glow lights in the room it wasn't actually dark enough to see the lanterns glow. I wrote a little note on each lantern with the child's name saying "Thank you for helping to brighten up my party." and the little miss handed them out as the children left. This (along with the many glow sticks & light wands they were playing with throughout the night) was given as a little thank-you gift instead of a loot bag.

I made my lanterns a bit differently from the instructions as per the link above, but I did copy the basic idea. The blogger noted that the pigment she bought the first time was not water soluble, so when she mixed it with the glue it turned into a solid glowing lump. The company I bought mine from actually sells a water soluble pigment as well as the non soluble one, and I liked the idea of just mixing it with regular while glue and painting it on the inside of the jars, so I did that. I also put some glitter in to the glue/pigment mix and painted it all on in one go! As the little miss would say, it was easy peasy lemon squeezy! Rather than paint the lids, I let the little miss choose some fabrics from my scraps drawer and I tied on a nice little ribbon with a handle.

It's been almost 4 months since the little miss' party and she still loves her lantern! She takes it to bed every night and it's still glowing just as brightly as it did the night of her party.

Note: I did try to take photos of the lanterns glowing, but no matter how many times & ways I tried I just couldn't do it. Apparently glow in the dark photography is NOT my thing - you'll just have to trust me that they look awesome in the dark! ;)

Glow in the Dark Party!

My little miss recently turned 5 and we celebrated her birthday by having a glow in the dark disco party - and by 'disco' I mean dance party, not terrible 70's music and fashion. ;)

I like to put on do it yourself, low-key birthday parties like the ones I remember from when I was a kid. Growing up, all the birthday parties I went to were held at the birthday girl or boy's house with a bunch of kids, presents, cake, balloons, and a few games. Everyone had a great time and it didn't have to cost a fortune! When we first started planning for the party I went straight to my computer to see what fantastic ideas the internet would provide. As with most of my brainstorming on Pinterest, I didn't end up doing very many of the items I pinned but the few ideas that we did follow through on ended up working well.

My little miss LOVES dancing, so naturally dancing would be a part of her big day and she didn't even have to think about what she wanted - she wanted a disco! Living in New Zealand, a birthday in July means a winter birthday so a glow in the dark disco seemed like a good way to brighten things up a little. We started the party at 4pm with some catching up and opening presents, had an early dinner of hot dogs and pizza (and cake of course!), and then the kids danced off their sugar highs for the next 2 hours!

We handed out glow sticks on arrival and had a container of balloons on light sticks for the kids to dance/play with (which very quickly turned into light wands and the balloons discarded). We had almost all of the lights in the house turned off, but there were so many glow sticks, light wands, and paper lanterns that it was actually too bright to see any of the 'glow in the dark' things we had put out (including the awesome glow in the dark lanterns we made). The kids loved it and everyone had a blast! There was even an unexpected surprise as one of the guests brought over some sparklers her family had left over from the 4th of July (they're American) - we finished up outside in the fresh air and everyone got their sparkle on!

Glow Bath

The kids were driving me crazy this evening and I was kind of dreading having to get them both in the bath myself as the husband is out tonight... And then I remembered something I saw on a friend's Pinterest board - glow baths! We almost always have a stock of glow sticks in the cupboard and it's not like they could get any more wild than they already were...

We did all the actual getting clean stuff first with the promise of something really cool if they could manage for that long, and then I turned off the light and cracked the sticks and the most amazing thing happened - they actually chilled right out! They were totally mesmerised by the lights in the water and the calm of the near darkness. I couldn't believe I had dismissed the idea earlier because I thought it would turn them into wild water beasts!

Sadly the magic didn't last forever - they did go back to fighting over containers after a short while, but the fighting was definitely more toned down than before. Both of my little monsters are now tucked snugly into bed and calm has once again come over this house - time for this Mumma to sit back with a cup of tea & relax.

*Neither my photography skills nor my camera are really up to capturing this sort of thing, but if you look up "glow bath" in Pinterest, there are no shortage of photos!