The white frosted cake with Happy Birthday spelled out in red-hot candies came from “Winona’s Pony Cart,” chapter six, page 64. The games were drawn from Betsy’s fifth birthday party in “Betsy-Tacy,” chapter two, page 8. And lunch was a compilation of the many picnics that took place in Maud Hart Lovelace’s books about childhood friends growing up in Deep Valley.

“We’re having ham sandwiches and boiled eggs,” said Sarah Reichwald Beiswanger, who held her daughter Faith’s eighth birthday party at the Tacy House in August. “Faith asked for chips, but I said nope, they didn’t have chips then.”

Faith has grown up with Besty and Tacy, the two best friends modeled after Mankato-native Lovelace and her next-door neighbor Bick in the author’s beloved series of books. She’s already read four of the 13 books and eagerly volunteers at the Tacy House with her mother one Saturday each month.

“She’s so proud of doing that,” Beiswanger said. “She loves to be here.”

So it was a natural to ask the Betsy-Tacy Society, which uses Tacy’s House on Center Street as its headquarters, if she could borrow the space for Faith’s birthday party. The society was thrilled by the request.

“That is really our goal for these houses, as they get finished,” said society director Julie Schrader, who took the group of seven girls on a tour of both the Tacy House and the unfinished Betsy House across the street. “When people come here, like these kids here today, they get excited about what they see and then they want to read the books. That’s what we want.”

Reading was secondary to party games on this particular day. Although the girls were fairly familiar with Pin the Tail on the Donkey, they’d never played Hide the Thimble or Blind Man’s Bluff before.

Neither had Beiswanger. “The books didn’t give descriptions of the games,” she admitted. “So I had to call my husband’s grandmother, who’s 90 and lives here in town, and ask her how to play them.”

The good news was that none of them required an expensive investment in equipment. She pulled a dishtowel out of her kitchen drawer for a blindfold, borrowed a thimble to hide and had her husband draw a donkey on a sheet of foam board. The tails were cut out of construction paper.

“This has been the least expensive birthday party I’ve ever had,” Beiswanger laughed. “They only used what they had. I didn’t have to buy anything, and obviously the girls are having a great time.”

Faith was especially pleased with the party. She happily led her friends up the hill, balancing plates full of ham, eggs, watermelon and pickles, to eat at the bench that Betsy and Tacy often visited with their dinner plates.

“It’s been fun seeing what they used to do,” she said. “I like playing the games that they used to play.”

The adults gathered on the porch of Tacy’s House, meanwhile, enjoyed watching them just as much. “It’s so cute that at this age, they still enjoy something so simple,” Schrader said.