Teddy Bear Picnic 1st Birthday Party

A few weeks ago we celebrated KZ's first birthday. Her nickname is "Bear Bear" so we decided to have a teddy bear picnic. It was one of the last warm weekends (even though it was mid-October) before fall has fully set in. It was the perfect day! We had the picnic in our backyard with some of our family members and everyone had fun!

The best part of this party was I only had to purchase a few things! The decorations were all the teddy bears, mason jars, and baskets we could round up in the house. I did purchase the tablecloths (from Party City) but the flowers were leftover from events we attended earlier in the week.

I served sandwiches on kaiser rolls, pickles, chips, teddy bear crackers, and red and green apples. We also served lemonade.

 I had big plans for a beautiful cake but I opted for a simple cake. In addition to the chocolate frosting I used 4 vanilla wafer cookies, and half a pink Starburst. 

For the favors I ordered flavored honey on Amazon, and had gummy bears, and Bit of Honey candy.  The papers said "Thank you for BEE-ING sweet and coming to my party"

Those are some happy people having fun!!

This was one of my favorite parties that I have attended. Mostly because it was the most simple and I got to have fun enjoying the party without the stress!

Frozen Party: Decorations

I noticed the quality of my images on the last post was lacking so I updated the pictures. 

This is post number 2 out of 3. To view the games we played see here. To see the party invite see here

The color scheme I went with was light blue, purple, white, turquoise, white, and silver. Some of the decor items included:

• Plastic table cloths. I found these at Walmart. I have used plastic table cloths for pretty much every party I've thrown in the past few years. They can be used in so many ways! This year I used them on the deck swooped as well as on the table. 
• I used paper poofs on the deck and on the backdrop behind the cupcakes. Both years we have lived at this house and had PB's parties here I have used the window in our breakfast area. It's hard to photograph though because it has so much back light.
• I put signs with cute quotes everywhere. 
• I made a Love Experts corner. I wish I had more time to make this area. I was going to fill balloons and use them as water pinatas but it was one thing I had to let go. I used gray balloon, paper, and a sharpie to make this cutie. ("I'm going to keep [him]" -yes, we watch it too much)
• I made these snowflakes
• For the backdrop I used the puffs mentioned above, a silver "P" from Walmart, turquoise tulle, and purple streamers.

Through a little bit of research (yes, this is the way over the top I should have majorly toned it down part) I discovered that the decorations on all of the clothing, buildings, and pretty much everything in the movie is called rosemaling. I tried to replicate that on some of the posters. 

Only one more post to go! Stay tuned for the party food and favors! 

Frozen Party: Games

So I'm breaking up PB's third birthday party into three posts. It was a huge amount of work that I should have started at least a week before I did.  So I'm pretty sure every girl child in the US (and many other parts of the world) is still drooling over Frozen. Since PB has a summer birthday we decided to have a Frozen Melted party. See invite here.

Today I'm going to tell you about the games that we did. I had everyone come straight to the backyard and I had a bunch of stations set up with different activities. There were five altogether

1. Throw melted snowballs (water balloons) at Hans
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Ship building in the melted Fjord
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Melt Anna's heart and Elsa's hands

   

   I used different sized tupperware, a heart cake pan, and a glove to make the ice cubes. I used food coloring, glitter, necklaces, and coins in the ice. These were great!

   
   

4. Arendelle water park

   

   We had a crazy sprayer, slip and slide, and a spraying ring

   

   
   

   
5. Melted snowball bombs (sponge bombs): I had these in a bucket and they can be seen in the picture of the fjord

I made signs from Frozen images I found online. I would share them but I didn't keep track of where I got the images. I put them inside of taped up page protectors to keep the water out. 

Check back next week for the food and decorations for the party! Have a great weekend!

Frozen party invite

So PB is turning three on Friday. Where oh where does the time go? I'm obviously super busy planning for this party. Why is there no Frozen stuff anywhere? My mom sent me a text lamenting that fact late last week and I didn't understand the full extent until I went to Walmart today. Seriously they had 5 different toys all of which were way over priced and mostly Olaf and a display of books I had to ask about to find. No stickers, no birthday cards, no party supplies. I think a party supply store would have some but I didn't want to make an extra trip so everything will be from scratch. In case you want to see where I am getting my inspiration here is my Birthday Parties Pinterest board.

Here is what her party invite looks like.

"Winter's a good time to stay in and cuddle, but put me in summer and I'll be a-HAPPY SNOWMAN!"

Here are the printable images. Enjoy!

In case you want to use it the font was Bernard MT Condensed

Blue's Clues Party- contd.

Today I'm super excited to show you PB's cute shirt as well as how I only paid $6.51 for favors for 10 kids and how I incorporated the Blue's Clues theme into our food.

Shirt
A couple nights before the party I went a little crazy with the puff paints as you can see here and with PB's t-shirt. I first went to buy it at Michael's and they were $6 and sold out. I went over to Target and got a toddler boys shirt for $4. They didn't have any girl's shirts without a picture on the front.

Seriously, could this kid get any cuter? Maybe I'm biased :)

 I did an online search for "Blue's Clue's birthday coloring pages." I found this image and printed it out. I put a piece of stiff cardboard and the image inside of the shirt. I had a bit of a hard time seeing through the shirt but I outlined using the puff paints and used a small paintbrush to fill in the larger areas. I had a color copy of Blue on hand to I could make sure that I was using the right colors and getting the details right.

For the back I free handed the outline and again filled it in with a tiny paintbrush.

Favors
I couldn't have been more happy with how these favors turned out. I first went to the Dollar Store and bought two bags of bubble gum and 4 3-packs of bubbles.

For the bubble gum I counted how many pieces I had and divided it by 10. I got 10 snack bags and filled them.

 I got all of the air out the bags as I sealed them. I cut 10 pieces of 3.5"X 3.5" and folded them in half. I took each bag and folded it in half width-wise.

I slipped the folded piece of paper over the top and stapled the left and right side. I labeled each bag with a child's name.

For the bubbles I measured how big of a label I needed to cover. I went into my photo editing software and whipped up these beauties.

Feel free to add your child's name and use these! I took PB's name off so you could easily do so!

I cut them out and taped them onto the bubbles.

In total:

2 bags of bubble gum $2

3 1/3 packs of bubbles: $3.33

2 color copies: $.1.18

Total: $6.51 or $0.65 per favor :)

Food

Since Blue is well Blue I decided to make our food have a blue twist. We had blue raspberry lemonade.

We had blue licorice (thank you Dollar Store for carrying blue candy).

We had blue speckled cupcakes with blue and white polka dotted cupcake liners.

I know that Funfetti cake is just cake with sprinkles so I bought blue sprinkles and added them to the cake. 

If you have watched the show a many times as we have you know that Steve loves anything banana-flavored. In one episode them make banana muffins and he gets super excited. I made some from scratch and labeled them as such.

I also served fruit, veggies, chips, and mini pizzas. The mini pizzas we let everyone make for themselves. We had BBQ chicken and regular pepperoni. There is no need to let people make them for themselves. Almost everyone wanted pepperoni, a couple wanted plain cheese, a some wanted BBQ.

Check out the invitation and more fun details about the party!

I hope you guys have a great weekend and this inspired you with ideas on how to have a simple show-themed kids party!