the most famous reindeer of all

On Friday night we asked some old friends to join us for a Rudolph pizza and movie night.  I have recently discovered Pinterest and found a lot of my inspiration for the party there.  You can see all of the ideas on my Rudolph Party board. Besides eating pizza and watching "Rudolph" I set up two crafts and channeled my inner Amy Atlas by creating a mini dessert table.  Directions for making the cupcakes can be found here,  the rein"beer" here, and oranments here. I found the reindeer food labels here.


The food:

We served rein"beer" and Rudolph's nose (a martini made with vodka, chambord, lime juice and a cherry)!


The activities:

reindeer food

  and ornaments

 The favors:

Even our elf got dressed up for the occasion!

Hope your weekend was as fun as ours!

that's a wrap

I found these cute little hopscotch kits at the dollar store.  Inside was some sidewalk chalk, tiny bean bags and directions on how to play the game.  I decided to give them to all of the girls in my daughter's pre school class on the last day of school.  The boys got some rocket balloons which were a big hit at my daughter's birthday party.  My wrapping tip for today is to repackage something to make it look even cuter.  I didn't love the original tag on the hopscotch kits so I simply took them off and used some fun patterned paper and stickers instead.  It didn't take me long and I loved the way they came out.  This is an easy way to take something and make it look even more fabulous!  It also shows that you took the time to personalize something for the recipient.  This would be a great favor for a summer birthday party too.  This would also be a great favor for a summer birthday party too. 

the favors

We gave our guests CARS m&m's and pajamas.  I packaged the m&m's in some red tins and put a picture of the birthday boy inside.  The pajamas were placed inside the red paper bags that I tied with some CARS ribbon.  I put both into a red tin picnic basket and wrote "sweet" dreams with white stickers.  So that's the party- a little bit Disney and a whole lot of homemade for my sweet little man on his third birthday.  I hope you enjoyed it!

the activity

The main activity for this party was showing the movie "CARS".  As the children headed downstairs to our home theatre I gave each of them an orange glow necklace and some play money to use at our homemade concession stand.  I had mini candy bars and popcorn and small red boxes with Lightening McQueen on them that the children used to put their treats in.  The children loved making their own selections and then quickly found their seats to watch the movie.

the food & table

To keep things simple we decided to order pizza for dinner.  I also served some construction cones (baby carrots) and stop lights (watermelon, cantaloupe, and green grapes on skewers) for the kids.  I found construction cone sippy cups that we filled with water, personalized with stickers, and placed  on each plate.  One of my favorite details from the party was the snacks that we served in "Mack" the hauler truck.  For the grown ups I made two green salads and a pasta salad to accompany the pizza.  We also served a few different appetizers and a signature cocktail: the sidecar which is pictured above.  I also made my own tablecloth with some racing flag fabric.  I love parties where I am able to do all of the prepping of food ahead of time so I can enjoy my company at the party.  That was this kind of a party. 

CARS

My son turned 3 yesterday!  We decided it would be fun to do a pizza & a movie night.  He chose the movie"CARS".  The good thing about choosing a Disney movie is that it is EVERYWHERE. The bad thing about choosing a Disney movie is that it is EVERYWHERE.  What I mean to say is that by choosing such a popular theme it can be helpful because you can find everything from juice boxes to pretzels in the shape of many of the characters but, in my opinion, it is easy to get carried away and have to much Disney.  I decided that the best option for me was to use a little of the Disney stuff and a lot of the homemade to find just the right balance.  I also used the colors red, black, and orange.  Here are some of the non Disney decorations I used.  I found red felt cars that I put around our dining room with pictures of my son at the age of 1, 2 and 3.  I put a lightening rod and the age that he was in the picture on the side of each car. I hung black chalkboard stars around the big screen and wrote the names of each of our guests on them.  I also got black star shaped balloons that I tied to the back of each chair.  All week I be sharing more about the food and favors and some other fun details.  I hope you will come back to check them out!

halloween play date continued....

Yesterday was our Halloween play date. After our mummy munchies the kids watched "The Great Pumpkin" which gave me time to set up our activity- decorating haunted candy houses. A few days before the play date I assembled the houses using chocolate graham crackers and orange colored royal icing. I put out candy out and let the kids decorate to their hearts content. The kids loved it! Even my two year old was able to make one. At the end of the play date I sent everyone home with some Charlie Brown hot cocoa and Halloween marshmallows. "The Great Pumpkin" is on television tonight so I hope they enjoy their cocoa while watching it. It was a fun afternoon and my daughter told me "it was the best play date ever!" That made all the time and effort worth it. If you don't have time to do a whole Halloween party consider doing it on a much smaller scale with a play date instead.

mummy munchies

(photos courtesy of family fun)

For our Halloween play date this week I am going to make pizza and hot dog mummies. They are simple enough to make and hopefully will be a hit with the 4 and under crowd. You can find the directions on how to make these here and here.

trick!

Halloween falls on the weekend this year and I would love to have a big party. However, since I am 6 months pregnant with baby number three, I knew that a party would be to much. Instead my daughter asked a few of her pre-school friends to come over after school for lunch and a play date. Since we are only having a few kids over I am able to add some fun personalized touches like these candy place cards. I got the idea from here and adapted it for Halloween. Stay tuned for our menu, activity and favors.

farm birthday party

I have been so busy with planning my husbands 40th birthday (which is this Friday) and making the out of town bags for a wedding that is next year that I have not had a chance to add anything new to my blog. I decided that I would share some pictures from my son's first birthday last year that was a farm theme. For young children I like to have activities out and let them explore at their own pace rather than having more formal and directed activities. Some of the things I put out were a farm stand and a duck pond (just some rubber duckies floating in a water table.) As I have mentioned before I am much better at adding things to cupcakes to "decorate" them. In this case I found a small picket fence at the craft store and perched some small plastic farm animals on top. I think they came out very cute! For the cow cookies I made sugar cookie dough and put small balls of chocolate cookie dough on top. When I rolled the dough together the vanilla and chocolate combined to make a marble effect. We served lemonade in mason jars and used bales of hay to decorate. For the favors I put petite white piggy banks into red and white gingham take out containers and also included some chocolate pennies. I tied some raffia and a wooden pig to the handle.

After Friday I will start sharing some of the details from my husbands birthday.....

every teddy bear who's been good, is sure of a treat today

For party favors we gave out petite picnic baskets and chocolate (bear shaped) lollipops. In the baskets were all sorts of tiny treasures including treat size bags of gummy bears, picnic themed stickers, miniature magnifying glasses to look for bugs and erasers shaped like ladybugs and watermelon.

let them eat cake

So I have to admit that I am not very good at decorating cupcakes. They never seem to turn out how I imagine they will. So, I have learned instead to just find things to put on top to decorate them. For the teddy bear picnic I found red/white gingham cupcake liners from "Bake It Pretty" and then used some small chip wood baskets (to look like miniature picnic baskets) and filled them with some petite fruit shaped candy. I was going to put on some plastic ants that I had- but, since this was for 2 year olds I decided not to. I found the red cupcake stand at Target a while ago and love how the cupcakes looked when displayed on it.

catch my party

My Monet party is featured on catch my party today as the "Party of the Day." Check it out here.

the very hungry caterpillar

Yesterday we went to the cutest birthday party that I had to share with all of you. The theme was "the very hungry caterpillar" and my friend Lauren included such fun and fabulous ideas.
When I asked her if I could share it on my blog she said she didn't mind because she found a lot of her ideas and inspiration from other blogs. There were pom pom caterpillars to find and personalized butterfly nets to catch them in. She also had a cute butterfly pinata filled with candy.

A caterpillar photo collage that had pictures of the birthday boy with friends that attended the party.

The food table was amazing. She had all of the food from the book labeled with words from the story.

Lollipop favors with personalized stickers.

And the cutest caterpillar cake! Thanks for such a fun party and for sharing your ideas, Lauren! We loved it all.