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: Food, Favors, and Outfit

This is the last installment of the three part series about PB's Frozen: Melted 3rd birthday party. See posts about the decorations and games.  Let's get down to the good stuff- the food!

We had turkey and cheese sliders. With the quote "We finish each others...sandwiches!" (idea from here) We also had fruit and veggies, pigs in a blanket, and "reindeer chow" (muddy buddy chex mix).  We had marshmallows (snowballs) and powdered doughnuts.

 The punch was blue Koolaide, sherbet, and lemon-line soda. We put some of the "ice" around the bottom. This was my grandma's idea :)

So the cupcakes were super simple but looked awesome. I used a white cake that I put food coloring in to make purple, blue, and left some white to go along with the color theme. I used store bought frosting and them I added the ice. (For a tutorial go here. It was simple, had a great effect, and was tasty!)

Favors: I was thinking about quotes from the movie that talked about food and I remembered how much Elsa and Anna love chocolate. I made Oreo truffles and put them in baggies and cut off the top of the bag. I tied them with teal ribbons.

Outfit: There is a noticeable lack of 3 year old in these pictures. My angel has told me repeatedly that is is "dis-gussing" and she refuses to wear it. I got a text from my amazing sister-in-law this week with a picture of an awesome costume she made her 4 year old who also refuses to wear it. It must be genetic.

I made her a towel poncho for the pool that has an Elsa dress on it. I bought a bath towel at Walmart along with light blue and teal sparkly tulle. I used teal felt I had on hand.

To make the poncho part of the towel I folded the towel in half and measured my cutie. I measured the width of her shoulders and the length to just under her arm pits. I cut a hole in the towel width wise centered on the crease of the towel. I cut it two inches shorter than her shoulder measurement. I cut a three inch slit to accommodate her head. Around the opening I folded it down 1/4 of an inch and sewed to finish off the edge.  On either side of the towel I sewed about a 5 inch long section on either edge to leave arm holes. It was about 5 inches from the top of the fold.

I pieced together the dress and used the measurement of the length to her chest for where to put the gathered section on the front. The light blue was very light to I had to layer it a few times to see the color. I zig-zagged around the felt and the completely tacked down sections (sleeves). The cape on the back is only sewed on the top and the two bottom corners. The dress on the front is sewn the same way except there is gathered fabric above the felt.

Phew! It was quite the party! I was thinking of writing up some tips about how not to go insane (like I did) while throwing a birthday party. Have a great 4th of July!

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!

Triple Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting

For Valentine's Day, I made my first cake to put on my cake dome. I got the cake dome 7 years ago as a wedding gift so it was the perfect time for its maiden voyage. Sadly, My cake making skills were lacking and the cake kinda fell apart and there wasn't enough frosting to seal it all together. It still tasted great though! Ok, the point is, I needed to redeem myself so I took my friend, Ari's, birthday as the perfect time to do so. Ari's favorite cake is chocolate with peanut butter frosting. I went for it!

I used a doctored chocolate cake mix recipe and an AMAZING peanut butter cream cheese frosting recipe. SO GOOD! I was licking the bowl. 

Here is the happy birthday girl

The cake was a hit and I'm grateful my dome has finally housed a very, very good cake.

Birthday Candles Card

My friend's birthday was this past week and I made her a quick and easy card to go with some cookies. I got the idea from this card and remembered I had purchased these candles for this same friend's birthday last year. I rummaged them out of the back of our silverware drawer to find the candles and then broke out my glue gun.  This card came together in 15 minutes!

I liked the asymmetry with the candles. The ribbon hides the glue!

Next time I would use more glue, since some of the candles came loose on the way there! 

(I snapped these pictures on the way to my friend's birthday lunch--while stopped at a red light!! Say hello to my car, leg, and foot)