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Monday, April 23, 2012

Birthday Party Bliss!

Here's the full report on C's Spring Fling party for her 2nd birthday with all the fun details and pictures too, of course! I did my best to capture everything, but I also put everything together myself so I was a busy bee and missed photographing a few things here and there! 

First, I'll say that the theme was "Spring Fling" and I use the word theme kind of loosely. I kept everything pretty well tied into spring time/outdoor play, but I'm not at this level or anything (though I really do love a lot of the ideas on there!). I'm all about DIYing things as well as putting together something cute and fun for very little cash, so I DIYed pretty much everything.

Since we were having the party at a playground I decided not to do a lot in the way of decorating. We used plain brown paper to cover the tables because it's cheap and you can color on it with crayons, and we had some balloons. We were outside on a gorgeous (thank you, Jesus!) spring day.. what more spring decor do you need beyond spring itself? And do little kids care if there's a centerpiece on the table? They do not.

For fun we of course had the playground, and I brought along sidewalk chalk and bubbles. Classic outdoor fun for kids of all ages!







  
  


I did fruit and veggie cups for munchies since spring is the time when we get our gardens growing. We had pizza for lunch (not that springy, oh well), and dirt cups in place of cake/cupcakes! I failed to take pictures of the fruit and veggie cups but try to imagine apples, grapes and cheese cubes together in some little cups, and then carrots, celery and broccoli together in some other cups. That's pretty much what they looked like. More excitingly, here are the dirt cups:

Before we sang Happy Birthday and opened presents J, C, and I snuck away for some birthday girl photos!








That is a happy kid :) 
Why I didn't think to straighten up her hair before taking these photos, I can not say.

Here she is sitting with her cousin, Sophie on the playground.



 Our happy girl!
 





Finally time to sing Happy Birthday and eat some cake dirt! :)  We have been reading a book about feelings (by her choice) for a few weeks now in which it is Big Bird's birthday. He keeps asking his friends if they want to come over to play with him but they are all busy doing other things. In the end they are all at a surprise birthday party for Big Bird and she loves pretending to blow out the candles on that page. We talked about how we were going to have a birthday party for her and all of her friends (cousins) would be there and we would sing and blow out candles. She always acted very excited so I was interested to see how she would really react.


 Turns out, she was a pro :) 



 She loved the dirt cups! 
Her cousin, Evan looked a little more skeptical...

Time for presents!  She was hilarious and thought that when we said the present was from someone that it was actually for that person, so she was trying to give each person their gift.

iTunes gift card for some new music to sing & dance to!

Lots of pretty spring clothes...





What?! New flip flops?? Girlfriend had to change shoes immediately.
When it comes to shoes, she does not play.

Her new best friend, Abby Cadabby





A new guitar for our little rock star :)

A doodle board because she loves to "color paper!" and this saves paper :)

Her pots and pans which she has been carrying around from the minute we opened them... wearing the oven mitt (I know you just burst out laughing, Laura, haha)

A Sesame Street blanket made by Nana


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She is definitely one lucky kid :)  And to thank all of her cousins who came to help her celebrate, I put together thank-you bags that included...





Pinwheels...


Bubbles with pipe-cleaners for making wands...

Sidewalk chalk...


And ready-to-plant flower cups (Cosmos, for anyone wondering)

All of these things were really easy and fun to make. I bought one pack of $10 scrapbook paper, a box of straws for $1.50, a bag of paper fasteners for $3, some Dawn for around $3, corn syrup for another $2-ish, a giant box of sidewalk chalk for $4.50, seed packs for $5, and a pack of ten plantable cups for $1.50.  I put everything in brown paper lunch bags and made name cards to glue on them. 

The morning was kind of whirlwind because I had to do some things last minute like cutting up the apples (can't let them to turn brown!) and assembling the fruit/veggie and dirt cups since they all have to be refrigerated. But once I made it down to the park with the rest of our stuff, it was... well, an afternoon in the park! I was so SO glad the weather stayed nice since the forecast had been questionable earlier in the week. It was a gorgeous day with our favorite people, and really, we couldn't have asked for any more than that!

Tomorrow is C-baby's actual birthday (I can't believe it!) and we have another day of fun planned for her. J is taking off work and we are spending the day together and then Nennie is coming over to play in the afternoon since she was working on the day of the party. C will be super excited to see her :)  Check back later this week to see how we spent our birthday girl's special day!

2 comments:

  1. looks like my sort of party, with the emphasis on simple, cute, and most of all fun. can't believe she's so old, seems like she was a newborn just a few minutes ago. :) she sure is a beauty though, good job you two!

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  2. It was so much fun :-) Tuckered our little guy out, that's for sure! lol! Those Cosmos have become my first attempt at green-thumbing in the new digs... I'll let you know how it goes ;-)

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