Yes, I've been off the grid for quite some time now. From September through the end of the year, Church, Work, and Home get extra busy and now that I have a happy, growing Bubba in my life, every year is a new experience, with new happy challenges, like how I can squeeze a few more hours out of the day when Bubba doesn't sleep until midnight sometimes, what new menus I need to put together to appeal to Bubba's ever-changing appetites and preferences, and the trillion other little things that we Super-Mom's happen upon.
In preparation for Bubba's first birthday, I was gathering and buying and planning in July for a celebration in October. This time around, for his second birthday, so many things were happening in the months leading up to his birthday that I couldn't really get down to the nitty-gritty until a few weeks before the party.
We didn't have a big celebration, but anyone who knows me knows that I. LOVE. PARTIES. So, after begging the Mr. to have something more than just cake & ice cream, we had a small get-together with Bubba's grandparents, aunties, uncles, and cousins. It looks like we invited a small town to this party, but it's just because my husband has a lot first-cousins with lots of kids. :)
Theme? Well, that was easy. Bubba's current obsession is the little red monster, Elmo (who we still love in spite of the recent not-so-nice things that have come up in the news about the man who puppets Elmo)!!! So...October birthday + Halloween + Elmo =
Yes, it was a SPOOKTACULAR, and with a Pinterest board devoted to Elmo parties and Halloween-themed fun, well, it was hard not to go overboard. :)
Here are some of the highlights from Bubba's special day:
{Treat Buckets} the great thing about having a holiday-themed birthday party is that you can find a lot of great favors and party items for little cost. I have a problem--but it's a problem I LOVE having...any party I throw/plan MUST have some cool favors and/or goodie bags. :) Wal-Mart always has these cool trick-or-treat buckets for $1 and I wanted something more than just plastic treat bags that wouldn't hold much, so these were PERFECT. Also, as you can tell by his invite, I went with an orange/green/purple color scheme so I scooped up a bunch of these babies.
{Tags} I love tags. Tags on everything. Little ones. Big ones. Laminated ones. :) At Bubba's first birthday, I had tags for the kids, and I think it's something I want to do at each birthday party if we have one. Here are the ones we made for Bubba's party:
{Bucket contents & take-homes} When there's a character associated with the theme of the party I'm throwing, I make it my personal mission to find the perfect items for the treat buckets. I helped with a Hulk party once and saw nothing but purple and green and ripply cartoon muscles for weeks because I had found everything HULK-themed within here and the Great Wall of China. :) Again, my personal mission. :) So, for my son's party, I scoured the ebay listings and amazon.com, and even craigslist to find Elmo themed halloween items. I was at my mom's one day and noticed she had these on her desk:
I had been searching for the perfect coloring book for the kids' buckets and was contemplating just printing some pictures off and making my own, but when I saw the Elmo Halloween one with the same graphic I had used on his invite, I about died! And then she said she had bought them somewhere LAST YEAR, I was sad again. :( Later that week, I was couponing at Walgreens and happened to go down the Halloween Aisle and found TONS of the ELMO HALLOWEEN coloring book for 2/$1! I almost {TMI WARNING} wet myself right there in the store, I was SO excited to have found them! Here's a pic of the other goodies I put in their buckets.
Because we all know Elmo loves his crayons, I scooped up some Crayola boxes when they were super cheap at Wal-Mart during their Back-to-School sales, and also put in some Crayola toothbrushes--it was after all the weekend before Halloween and I knew the kids were going to tear it up when it came to the candy-eating. :) The toothbrushes were actually FREE with coupons, and the other goodies were from Wal-Mart for practically pennies because they were already marked down! I also put bubbles in there with tags I had created on Photoshop. I thought it would be super cute to put Elmo's eyes and nose on a jack-o-lantern and I think it turned out way fun!
I had put together some games for the kids to play during the party and gathered some cool prizes (which I didn't get pictures of because I'm a flake) so I didn't put A LOT in the buckets to start with.
{The Cake} While camping on Pinterest for ideas, I came across The. Cutest. Halloween cake I knew I had to make it for Bubba's party and I did. :) I didn't want to buy just any sheet cake from Sam's like we normally do. Especially when the store-bought cake was $40-something bucks, and the homemade one would cost me around $10. Yes, it took lots more T-I-M-E, but even though the colors weren't as bright as I wanted, the cake--ALL SIX LAYERS--came out pretty well and I was super pleased with it! My sister carefully shook out the Halloween Sprinkles onto the homemade (yes, homemade) frosting, and then I topped it off with an Elmo figurine/cookie jar I got at a garage sale for $1! It was SO cute. We tied halloween ribbons around his neck so it matched the colors of the layers, and I think I'll continue to use him as a topper for other holiday cakes for as long as Bubba loves Elmo, and just change out the ribbon color.
{DECOR} Earlier in the year, I was in charge of decorating our church cultural hall for a party and had used white paper lanterns I ordered from the Mainland. To get my money's worth, I promised myself I would re-use them. They've been used in several events now, and were all used in different ways. I wanted to do simple decorations because I was unsure about the weather. I was originally going to paint a bunch of lanterns orange and stick elmo faces on them so they looked like Elm-O-Lanterns (get it? lol), but I didn't have time. I thought this up and liked the end result way better:
We had these babies hanging all over the place and they were a hit!
We also had centerpieces and balloon columns topped with these adorable Elmo mylars. While searching for balloons for another project online, I came across these 38" mylars in the clearance bin of a balloon wholesale site. They were like $1 a piece!!! I found them back in August I think, and bought like 30 of them...when I saw them, I knew I had to have an Elmo Halloween Party to celebrate my Bubba's 2nd birthday.
(Bubba's Gramma and one of our columns. Photography is SO not my forte.)
And finally, {The Treats Table} I love putting candy tables together and had so many more things I wanted to put on there for the kiddies, but they still went crazy over the goodies I did have out. :)
I picked up flat white paper bags from GBC, our local packaging store, and personalized them with Bubba's party logo:
Some of the goodies:
Pumpkin Poop and Ghost Droppings (Cheese Balls!)
The entire spread:
{My 1/2 broken camera didn't do the spread justice. :( Good thing I scored a good one at Black Friday last week. lol)
In addition to eating candy until the wrappers were coming out of their ears, other party activities included a handful of games (pumpkin toss, coin drop, dorothy's fish pond, big bird bowling, and ring toss), pumpkin decorating (i scored a box of baby pumpkins for the kids to decorate with permanent markers and take home), and a costume contest.
It was a great time. :)
