We had such a wonderful time with friends and family at baby A's party on Sunday. I have a lot of fun planning the decorations, outfit, and food for parties. After the rainbow cake near-disaster, Chad asked me last year to order the cake from a bakery to save ourselves some stress. This was a fantastic idea, making this year's party much less stressful to plan! Last year was fun but I went a little over board and I wanted to pull this back a hair this year (and hopefully a hair more next year!).
For posterity, here is her invitation (sans identifying information).
As I mentioned previously, other than baby dolls, A wasn't really super "into" anything when I started planning her party (though if I was planning it now, I am sure she would have been thrilled with a Frozen party, along with every other girl under the age of 6). However, she loves making animal sounds and is pretty excited when she sees cows, sheep, and pigs. That lead to her adorable invitation. I wasn't really excited about doing farm animals but once I realized all the cute possibilities and combined animals with "farm stand" ideas, I had a ton of fun.
My amazing and talented friend, Lori made her ridiculously adorable shirt and bloomers, just like last year. Another friend made her hair bows. We reused her tutu and got the footed leg warmers on etsy.
Given that work is still crazy and A keeps me pretty occupied on weeknights and weekends, I had to start thinking about things pretty early and I generally worked on things after she went to bed at night (on nights I wasn't falling asleep!). I am happy with how everything turned out. I shared these photos on Facebook but I know not everyone has an account (or ever checks it!) so I wanted to make it seem like you were actually at the party. So there will be lots of pictures. :) My sister Kristin got so many amazing shots!
Chad was definitely right about the birthday cake. Baby A was completely enamored with it. It was definitely a focal point for the party. Bella Marie's Bakery did a great job! It also tasted yummy (like a homemade ho-ho!).
Pinterest had lots of ideas for farm-themed parties. I decided to get fruits and veggies (with homemade dips), pretzels, chex mix ("chicken feed"), and animal crackers, make pigs in a blanket and butterscotch haystacks and call it a day. I made little labels with pink gingham in the background and cute little farm animals to identify the food. I loved the little fruit baskets I found on Amazon! They really added to the farm stand feel.
For drinks we had coke, juice, raspberry lemonade, and water with personalized labels I created in powerpoint.
For favors, we included temporary tattoos of farm animals, fruit snacks, a "cow tale", and a farm animal themed rubber duck (I'll be honest, the ducks are cute but some of them are kind of creepy!!).
Baby A thought she should get a favor bag, too. Each bag had a farm animal sticker identifier on the outside.
As many of you may know, I've never had hobbies other than binge watching television shows. Planning stuff for a party is a fun hobby that was pretty stress-relieving, though I'm sure it will be good to get some of that time back so that I can get to a few work-related things that I'd like to accomplish before the semester ends.
For decorations, I decided to hang a streamer wall behind the food table, put balloons on the windows, and got a couple of those big tissue paper pom poms to hang by the food. Our house still looks mighty festive. ;) I also made two signs. I had seen all kinds of cute birthday banners on etsy and thought they looked pretty easy to recreate. This is a downfall/common theme of my life. :) However, in the end, I thought it was totally worth it to make and it really wasn't hard (I just used scrapbook paper and printed letters on computer paper; there's a fabulous tutorial here). Cutting letters by hand is a tremendous pain, though, especially with so many letters with 'holes'...In the moment I said "never again!!" but I'm feeling less certain I will stick with such resolve for future birthdays because it was just so stinking cute.
I really loved making the chalkboard for A and my only regret is not making one last year as well. It's so fun to think of all the things you really want to remember about this age.
We were so excited that so many little friends were able to come and play. Because I'm not great at the actual party throwing (party planning is way more fun in my book!), I opted not to have any structured activities. Instead, I set out things that the kids could do. I had little stations around the house. One included a table with tractors, farm toys, and books about farms; A's little table served as a place for kids to color sheets that I had printed of farm animals and farm stands (we also completely serendipitously purchased Mickey Mouse stickers that were farm-oriented so the kids played with those). I also saw a cool idea for having kids put cotton balls on sheep drawn on contact paper (we also included a cow, using gift tissue paper--the kids loved this and we are still picking up pieces!). I also set out two sensory boxes--one was shredded paper with little farm animals hidden inside and the other was a coconut-lime dough that the kids could play with (it was messy but it smells so amazing!!).
Baby A was pretty overwhelmed by all the people and excitement so she really wanted me to hold her for the first 30-60 minutes. However, realizing she would get cake seemed to warm her up to the idea of her party. We were so impressed that she actually blew the candles out herself and she didn't cry when we sang happy birthday!
She got a little help from Daddy and her friends in opening presents. She got so many fun toys and books!
It was nice to get to hang out with Daddy on a weekend. She definitely misses him while he's at work.
We were so lucky that Papaw was able to come hang out. We wish that all A's grandparents and our friends and family could be here with us for these moments! We also really want to go visit everyone in the near future.
Overall, we couldn't have asked for a better party. It ended up raining (torrential downpour!) and hailing a bit but we were glad we didn't have to test the limits of the new storm shelter. I'm not sure how many balloons would have fit down there. :) I thought it would be fun to include some of the other pictures Kristin was able to get, which are a nice representation of her range of happy facial expressions.
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