party – Thinker Mommy

Planning our Itsy Bitsy Spider First Birthday Party

Unbelievable. It’s almost time for Number 2 (aka Oren)’s first birthday. I admit I used to roll my eyes a little every time someone said it with a nostalgic sigh, but one day it’ll hit you – the time really does fly! Funny thing about time though: when you’re looking forward to something it can move faster or slower depending on what you don’t want it to do. Ten more minutes until the school bell rings takes forever because you want the day to be over. But I’m so excited to be planning this party and loving every minute of it and then all of sudden I’m like, “Wait… what?! It’s already Thursday?!! I only have how many weeks left?!”

Anyway, Grandpa in California decided he wanted to throw the big 01 party this year and we needed to check off a long-overdue visit on our end, so that decided things quickly. Nana Mark’s monster theme is going to be spectacular but I obviously don’t want to miss out on a second opportunity for cake… I mean, I don’t want to miss out on having a party with my east coast friends masquerading as a party for my one year old who won’t even remember it (except in pictures – which is what I have to keep reminding my husband to prevent it from turning into a lame single balloon and sheet cake type of event). So… we’re having 2 birthday parties; bi-coastal celebrations!

P.S. Since I’m so cool to be having an east and west coast party for my son, I’m also going to pretend to be a movie star as we schlep car seats, a stroller, diaper bags, gobs of toys, suitcases, 2 children and god knows what else through the airport. I’m pretty sure all I need is a funky new infinity scarf, big sunglasses, new books on my Kindle and a secret Godiva stash. I have an excellent imagination.

The Itsy Bitsy Spider theme for the east coast party came about because it’s the first song that ever really caught Oren’s attention – stopped him from squirming on the changing table or fussing while getting into a car seat – and it became a favorite. Unfortunately, the minute we stop the song he usually goes into hysterics, so there have been some memorable never-ending musical adventures. Plus spiders are cool (and my 3 year old is totally into bugs right now – every time we go outside she tries to force an ant to hitchhike on her hand to destiny unknown).

Sorry this post has serious ADD! Anyway, when I started buying things for the party, I realized that most of the adorable shops I love that sell printable invites, etc., didn’t offer Itsy Bitsy Spider themed items. For such a popular nursery song, I was really surprised. Most of what I could find was in Halloween oranges, purples and black – not the happiest colors. But I had already fallen in love with the spider idea and nothing else seemed right for Oren.

So, I made this Pinterest board and decided to emphasize the “out came the sunshine” and “down came the rain” parts of the song. First, I made the color scheme bright blue and yellow – nice, happy colors for a little boy’s birthday party. Then, I focused on those 4 visuals: rain, clouds, sun, spider (I’m pretty convinced there’s no way to make a water spout look good on anything but the invite). There are actually lots of “You are my Sunshine” themed party printables so I tagged a few as something I might be able to use with slight alterations (just add spider, right?). But eventually I decided to enlist the help of a talented graphic designer on Etsy to design something original and adorable for me. Etsy has this great feature where you can request a custom order from sellers that are willing to do accommodate them – so no matter how crazy your idea, someone out there will probably help you make it happen. Luckily my idea wasn’t so crazy (for once). ;)

Here’s what Mia at thepartyfairydesigns on Etsy, came up with for me (also pictured at the top of this post):

clockwise from top left: invite, t-shirt iron-on design (!), treat bag toppers, party hat

And this is just a VERY small part of what I got for only $32 ($12 for the invite and $20 for the rest of the custom party package). Mia even made me a personalized coloring book page for Oren and his little guests, a welcome sign, a custom happy birthday bunting, and more. Click here to see the amazing amount of stuff she’ll make for you in a custom party package.

So the decor is mostly done, just need to do some printing and cutting, buy a tablecloth, plates, streamers and such. Now I can move on to trying to figure out what we’re going to serve our guests to eat. I give Mia total credit for coming up with rainwater as a beverage idea (and I’ve got a cool label to go with it) but I’ll need a bit more than that. Wish me luck! And please, comment if you have any ideas – I’d love some suggestions!

Orange Butterfly 3rd Birthday Party – Part 2

construction paper birthday chain countdown

To start off O’s birthday celebration, I found this awesome idea for a paper chain countdown from Big Day Chains. Due to my extreme procrastination, I didn’t have time to order one from them and had to DIY a version for myself, but if you can, I highly recommend ordering from Big Day Chains – their printed version is super adorable, can be colored by the birthday kid on one side and comes with a commemorative card for the scrapbook. O LOVED tearing off a chain every day (I recommend adding a little pre-tear to the day’s chain link before your child gets to it if they’re younger or just a really enthusiastic ripper or else you might need to keep scotch tape handy for repairs).

Moving on to the party planning. We decided to do an orange themed party with butterflies this year. I wrote a little about my ideas in a previous post here. But when I showed off my cake idea, my husband, mother and multiple friends all vetoed fondant (really? you want the cake to look good and taste good? geez. haha). So, the cake design had to be changed. I also found some amazing edible butterflies from SugarRobot on Etsy (made from potato starch) that I just had to use (originally I was going to put 3 frosted butterfly cookies on the cake).

Originally I was also thinking of doing an orange and blue color theme, but I realized that finding the exact shade of blue I wanted was probably going to take some special ordering. Since I wanted to stay on budget, I decided to change the party colors to orange and pink instead. Every store with party supplies has at least 2 shades of pink stuff, a pastel and a hot pink – so that made stocking up on basic things like balloons, streamers and utensils from the dollar store super easy.

Left to right: the original cake idea, the final cake design, the party table layout

Referencing my party table drawing above (yeah, that amazing piece of art is all me), I also decided early on that I had to have these adorable glass mason jar sippers from the Acme Party Box Company and their orange striped paper straws. I filled them with Celestial Seasonings Country Peach Passion tea with ice which everyone loved and without a drop of sugar added.

To make the peach iced tea:

Take 6 tea bags and steep with 1 cup boiling water for about 10 minutes.
Then add cold water to fill your pitcher.
Add ice to each mason jar right before serving
Note – other brands of peach tea are not as good.
Note – Do NOT use Celestial Seasonings Peach iced tea – it’s caffeinated black tea with peach flavor added. The Celestial Seasonings Country Peach Passion tea is herbal, caffeine-free, safe for all ages and tastes way better.

O discovering her butterflies on the morning of her birthday

On O’s birthday morning, complete with butterfly PJs, we hung a curtain of butterflies outside her room (from Oriental Trading) which she loved (and then had her toy dinosaur eat, haha). We went out for a pancake breakfast and by the time we were done, the weather had warmed up enough to kick everyone outside to play while I set up the house for the party. We bought a bean bag toss and a ring toss from Oriental Trading, bubble wands (dollar store!) and we had a ball pit from last year to bring out too. The bean bag toss was a huge hit with the adult guests by the way.

For food, my former-chef sister chopped up an amazing goat cheese and mixed veggie salad which we paired with this recipe for an Olive Garden copycat salad dressing which turned out fantastic and a fruit salad that I’m pretty sure included every fruit known to man (she even stuck fresh figs in there). We ordered BBQ pizza too for the meat-eaters in the group.

Next, the party table. I ordered a strawberry sunrise (love that!) butterfly mobile kit from littledreamersinc on Etsy which took WAY longer to put together than I anticipated, but turned out really lovely (no wonder she charges $75 for the completed versions). I also found some amazing orange buckets with a number 3 on them completely by accident at Michaels and filled them with white and yellow daisies, orange carnations, and something pink – youthful (and, by happy coincidence, cheap) flowers. My amazing sister baked and decorated a bunch of butterfly shaped sugar cookies for us (which was actually what Olyla wanted instead of cake). But we did have cake: one layer of yellow cake, one layer of strawberry cake (from this recipe) with cream cheese frosting and fresh strawberries in the center. (In hindsight, you should never layer fresh strawberries in a cake – it makes things mushy, and even if you layer it between frosting on both sides, the sugar from the frosting will make the strawberries start to leak juice). The mango flavored number 3 lollipop was from the awesome VintageConfections on Etsy.

Normally I wouldn’t show off the gifts my daughter got, but my sister took the prize for most creative wrapping job and I just have to show it off. I was a little worried O wouldn’t want to tear open her robot, but I guess she was just caught up in the paper-ripping moment. All in all it was a spectacular birthday.

Left to right: 1. When told she had to wait for her cousin to finish eating before we could go inside for cake, she responded with the stare down. 2. Oren wanted to celebrate too. 3. Grown guys in pointy party hats is always fun, but that O decided to pass out the “drinks” from the ring toss to everyone was even better.