Second Birthday Party Details

Riley’s second birthday party was held at our house this past Saturday morning. The theme was cars and trucks, and I had fun figuring out how to incorporate that into lots of aspects of the party. I actually designed the invitation myself…..

…..and then I turned to Pinterest for a few other decoration inspirations. I think they ended up turning out really great. With Nola’s and Aunt E’s help, I made a felt runner for the dining room table that looked like a road. I pilfered four of Riley’s dump trucks to place on the “road” and filled their beds with kid-friendly snacks (veggie sticks, animal crackers, M&Ms, and pretzels). So cute!

Again thanks to Pinterest, I also joined the world of subway art. I created a custom birthday one for Riley-bean, framed it in a simple black frame, and placed it on the buffet in the dining room next to his framed invitation, along with homemade car-shaped sugar cookie favors and a smattering of Riley’s toy cars and trucks.

I had planned to tie bunches of balloons together and hang them from the ceiling instead of getting helium-filled ones, but I had to scramble at the last minute to find balloons at a place other than Party City, which was closed because of the hurricane. Luckily, Target was open and fairly well-stocked with what I needed. I also had a very helpful crew that blew up all 60 balloons. Then Nopsi tied them together in bunches of 5, and Kenny hung them up around the house. I may not go the helium route ever again; the balloon bunches looked really cool suspended in mid-air. And Riley had an absolute blast running through the balloon-covered floor.

Of course I also had to have a photo element again, but I didn’t want to do another photo banner. So I came up with the idea of a few pictures from each month of Riley’s second year arranged together with tape and craft sticks and stuck into 12 individual vases, which were placed around the house. However, Kenny came up with the best way to tie in the cars and trucks theme with the photos: I filled each vase with his old collection of Micro Machines (remember those???) and that anchored the pictures inside. I didn’t have quite enough machines for all 12 vases, so I had to supplement with the puffballs from last year, but it still worked great. Awesome idea, Ken!

 

Amazingly, I found everything I needed to make the two side dishes (this and this) I had planned for, as well as some sausage that Kenny grilled. I had also planned to order chicken fingers as the main dish, but no one in our area was able to do a large order because of the hurricane. After a number of dead ends, we finally lucked out: Grandpa was able to pick up a large party platter of Chick-Fil-A nuggets on the Northshore. Crisis averted!

As for the cake, Kenny really wanted to do a homemade one again, so that’s what we did. I baked the cakes on Thursday, and he and Grandma were up until 2am Friday night finishing it. They carved out the shape of the red car from the invitation, used this awesome icing recipe, manipulated Oreo Cakester cookies for the tires, and used cupcakes to spell out “Happy Birthday Riley” around the top of the car. It took a really long time to complete, but it turned out really cute.

Everything came together quite nicely, if I do say so myself. The recap of the actual party itself is up next, including a really fun activity we put together for the kids.

Warning: I may not get it together until Friday. Sprout continues to kick my butt. In the most loving way, I’m sure, but it’s a butt-kicking all the same.