2nd Birthday Party

I can't believe our baby boy is two! People always tell you that time flies, and you don't believe them until you have a kid! We had a great time celebrating our big boy with a construction-themed birthday party at our church gymnasium. I saw the theme last year and wanted to do it then, but decided to wait until he was a little older and could enjoy the activities more. We had kids there of all ages and they all seemed to enjoy the activities. I used Pinterest, Google, and Amazon for inspiration. Here are some of my favorite things about the party:

When the kids first walked in, they could pick up a pink or yellow hard hat (Amazon.com), a Home Depot tool belt (77 cents), and put stickers on them if they wanted. They could also pick out a plastic tool to put in their tool belt (Toys R Us). We made the tool bench from a $15 nightstand I saw on Craigslist. We took the feet off of it and attached peg board to the back.

Balloons from Party City. Our colors for the party were orange, yellow, and black.

The cupcake holders came from Hobby Lobby.

I picked up these buckets at the dollar store last year. Pretzel sticks and veggie sticks stuck with the construction theme. I used shovels to serve a few items.

Cocoa puffs looked like rocks, goldfish and clementines were perfect for our colors and healthy for toddlers!

There were several variations of this cake online. Some of them had the diggers actually digging the cake out, some had chocolate chips, others had oreo crumbs. I found these Nestle semi sweet chocolate chunks and thought they would be perfect. Each of the digging tools had some of them that they were pushing or digging and then I sprinkled them around the bottom of the cake stand.

 I know the cake stand seems a little fancy for this party, but it has been used for birthday parties in my mother's family for years!

I actually don't like reese's pieces, so I picked out the orange, yellow, and brown M&M's from a giant bag from Sam's. I think it fooled some people at first!





Kids eat lots of grapes. And bananas.

Lemonade and Capri Sun in the metal tub for the kiddos.

We were fortunate that our church building has preschool tables and chairs so we didn't have to bring them.










The gift table with pictures of my little construction worker!










As fun as it was to decorate and decide how to display the food, the activities were my favorite thing about the party! I think everyone found something fun to do.

This is my husband demonstrating the wrecking ball. The kids LOVED this! I wrapped all sizes of boxes in a roll of brown paper I got from the painting section at Walmart. It's designed to be a drop cloth for painting, so it's super heavy duty. At first I used masking tape, which did not pass the toddler test so I re-taped them with bright orange duct tape. We already had the rope and the giant purple exercise ball. We draped the rope over the basketball goal in the gym. If you don't have access to a gym, I think the kids would have fun just rolling the ball into the boxes too. If you have a 2 year old boy, you know how much they like to stack boxes (or anything) and knock them down!

The digging pit was also a much bigger hit than I expected. We ended up having to throw he pool away at the end, but it was worth it! We borrowed gravel from the playground at the church and we used my son's beach toys (and bought a few more from Walmart and the dollar store). Add a few diggers, and you have the perfect digging pit!



















It seemed like all ages of kids enjoyed the blocks. I borrowed the mega bloks from my mom's house. The foam blocks were one of my son's presents from us, and we already had the wooden blocks. The carpet belongs to our church.

Warning: very messy! This probably would have been better outside or at a swimsuit party, but the kids LOVED this! The water table was my son's present from my in-laws. We ordered little squirt tools and construction worker rubber ducks for them to play with. My son went through 3 different outfits during the party because of this thing, but he had fun!

He was in disbelief when he walked in! We had him spend the night with my parents so he would be surprised with the final set up of everything!

 Oh, and we had toddler basketball too! It was fun!

We really did have so much fun! Our big 2 year old had a great time! There are loads of ideas on Pinterest about this theme and so much more you could do if you really wanted to. We are very blessed by our family and church family.

First Birthday Party!

Well, it's almost a year later, but as I was looking for party ideas for our son's 2nd birthday, I realized I had not posted what we did last year for his 1st. A first birthday is a big deal! So many changes take place in the 1st year, and making it through a year with a brand new baby is something to celebrate! We decided to have two parties for our son- one for family, and one for friends. We had the parties in our home and our basement was not finished, so space was limited. We decided to do an "Animals on Parade" theme.

I saw this cake on Pinterest, of course, and the whole party kind of evolved from that. I just frosted the cake with store bought frosting, added sprinkles, and then made a tiny banner out of scrap book paper that matched the other colors I was using in his party.

This is his smash cake. My friend had a tiny cake pan I used to make it. We had done pretty well keeping him off of sweets for the first year, so he was pretty excited to finally eat some sugar!

 I also made some cupcakes for the big day! The cupcake toppers and birthday sign came from Hobby Lobby. And of course we had to have balloons!

I bought these wooden letters for his professional pictures and didn't know how to use them to decorate at the party. I decided to duct tape them to paint stirrers that had been painted white. I had the flower pots up here anyway, so I used flower pot foam to stick the stirrers in and then covered it with Easter basket grass.

I had a TON of Beanie Babies left over from my childhood. I picked out all of the jungle animals (same theme as his nursery) and lined them up on parade across the mantle. Some of them were riding the train we gave him from Ikea, which also matched the banner we bought at Hobby Lobby.

Of course I had to sew some things too. This is the birthday shirt I made. You can't see in the picture very well, but the "1" in the truck is actually a candle with a little yellow flame on it.

And a birthday bib too! My parents and brother bought him a red wagon for his birthday so I thought this was perfect! 

Success!

We did not have any special activities planned for the first birthday. We basically ate cake, opened presents, and we had lunch at the family party. We are so thankful for our one year old! (Even if he's just one for a few more days!)