Wizard of Oz Birthday Party

I wanted to share the Wizard of Oz birthday party I threw my daughter for her 3rd birthday party back in June.

The adorable pom-pom garland came from Cupcake Wishes and Birthday Dreams

I had a ton of fun getting the whole family involved in this party! I made shirts for everyone so each family member was a different character from the movie.

Here is my daughter with the tin man (her brother)

Since I did the party 6 months ago, I have no clue which blogs I found some of these ideas on, so I apologize in advance for not linking back. My husband and I made a tornado for the table. He used a wire round tomato cage to make the structure. We then added a snow blanket and wrapped that around the cage. We sprayed it with a little spray paint to give it a little grayish look and added in animals and trees I got at the Dollar Tree and Michaels. I was very pleased with the outcome!

For the take home favors, I made blue gingham number 3 cookies and a small red slipper cookie.

Onto the food....

Twinkies were yellow bricks

Suckers for the Lollipop Guild

Over the rainbow candy in a cute "K" dish I got from Hoopla Events

Butterscotch haystacks for Scarecrow Stuffing

Bugles for Tornados 

Ding Dongs for Ding Dong the Witch is Dead

Over the Rainbow Fruit

Glinda's PB&J Sand-WITCHES were PB&J sandwiches cut with a crown cookie cutter.

Lemonade colored green for Emerald City Punch.

I was very happy with the way the cookies turned out. Sometimes you have a picture in your head but it doesn't actually turn out like that. Thankfully these did!

I love having games and activities at the parties so we did these:

I had the kids make their own rainbow necklaces using Fruit Loops and yarn

Our first game was Scarecrow's Corn Toss. We had the kids throw ears of corn into three buckets. Their prize was birthday cake flavored popcorn.

Pin the Heart on the Tin Man was the next game. I printed a photo of the tin man and some hearts, cut them out, and glued them to a bigger board. The kids were blindfolded and had to get the hearts in the correct place. The prize was licorice hearts.

We then moved on the Cross with Courage. The kids had to cross a board lifted off the ground. The prize was animal crackers (Lions and Tigers and Bears... Oh my!)

Our last game was Melt the Witch. My sister painted a witch on a board and we let the kids throw water balloons at it. The prize for this was a Witches broomstick which was a pretzel with a laffy taffy that had been rolled out, cut at the bottom, and rolled onto the bottom of the pretzel. 

The party was a blast and my daughter enjoyed it so much!! I am already planning next years party!

Mason's 6th Birthday

I will admit that in the past I have always chosen my son's birthday party theme. Now don't get me wrong... he usually is super excited about the theme by the time his birthday comes around but this year I let him make the decision on his own. He choose to have an Oakland Raiders and Texas A&M Aggies football themed birthday party.

If you have read my previous posts about my kids parties, then you have probably noticed I like to have fun with their invitations.... this year was no different! 

I wasn't super stoked about his choice at first because I didn't know if I would be able to do much with that theme, but I soon changed my mind. Here is what I ended up coming up with for the table. I bought turf from Lowes to use as the table cloth and brown felt from Hobby Lobby to use as the back drop. 

Our football player's entrance was through a breakthrough. We had a few technical difficulties, but after a couple tries, we finally got it to work. 

  

And football event isn't complete without a cute little cheerleader??

I had lots of football themed food, and if it wasn't football themed... I still made it fit with the party by naming it with football terms. 

Of course he had cookies 

I love this picture of the birthday boy with his cookies because you can see the joy in his smile! 

My friend Misty with Misty's Cake Box made his cake for me. I had planned to make it myself, but she was a lifesaver!! 

I asked her to do something a little different for the flavor of the cake. Neapolitan! It was pretty yummy!! 

What sporting event is complete without a little Gatorade?? I chose to serve this instead of punch.

I was pressed for time so I needed a simple design for favors. I decided on this since I wouldn't have to let parts dry longer than others and it matched the backdrop. 

We once again had games. We did football bingo:

(I think the adults enjoyed this more than the kids!)

The kids won bags of M&Ms

Pin the football in the goal:

I took white paint and painted football laces on the outside of chocolate pudding cups. ( I will try to do it again and take a photo to post soon)

And we had ring the goal post. The kids won a chocolate covered granola bar and I piped laces on them with white royal icing. 

Lastly... we had a 9 foot goal post. My husband and I made this and it was fairly easy to do! If you noticed in the food table photo,  we also made two smaller ones too! :)

All in all... his party was a WIN!! 

Under the Sea 2nd birthday party!!

My daughter recently turned 2 (Where does the time go??) and we decided to have an Under the Sea themed party! I usually start planning for my kids parties months in advance and really feel like I dropped the ball on this party with that. I had to cram everything into the week of the party, but I still think it turned out pretty good.

I am sure the first thing you notice when you look at that photo is the cake!! The cake was done by my friend Misty of Misty's Cake Box. I got to help a little with the cake and thought it was a lot of fun but that was only because Misty had done most of the boring base work when I started helping. We found some help on how to make this cake from The Artisan Cake Company. This cake was huge! Here is my daughter standing next to it so you can see just how big it is! 

Of course I had to have cookies... and I had a ton of them! I always do! I feel like you can't go to a party hosted by someone that makes cookies and not have a ton of them there! My family and friends love my cookies and they don't get them that often... so I try to make up for it at the parties. I had to try to keep them fairly simple and quick, so I used my airbrush for a lot of them.

If you have seen my posts before about my parties... you have probably noticed I like to have games. This party was no different. I had three. One was called Pin the Fin. I just took the image from my daughters birthday invitation and blew it up on a poster. I taped the posted to foam board and made a few fins. The older kids were blindfolded but we let the younger ones just put it on there.My daughter loved it! 

The prize for this game was a small bag of goldfish with a bag tag I made to match the poster.

The second game was Drop the Shark in the Tank. I found the idea for that game here. I couldn't find the pins she used so I just had to improvise. 

The prize for this game was a package of shark gummi snacks I found at Kroger. 

The last game was sort of a last minute thing (since I waited so long to get started on her party). I just found a little fishing game at my local Dollar Tree and let them play that. I called it Catch the Sea Creature. 

The prize for this game was a cup of water and 2 of those little capsules that disintegrate and have  those little sponges inside. I had the sea creature themed ones. 

The kids were also able to make sand necklaces. I have lots of different color sand and the kids got to choose which shape necklace they wanted to make. 

I made tags for all the food as well. I only got a chance to take a photo of the dessert table, but for the food we had Octo-dogs (hot dogs cut to look like octopus), Sand dollars (Chips for nachos), Shark Teeth (mozzarella cheese cut into triangles), and we even had boiled shrimp and crabs! 

The beverage I made for the punch dispenser was Ocean Water. Everyone seemed to like it and said it tasted just like the one from Sonic. 

Here are a few items from the dessert table:

and we of course had goldfish snack crackers too.

For the party favors, my husband and I made these

 they are soap with little fish in them. I followed the instructions from here to make them but ended up modifying a little as we went along since we found things that worked a little better for us. 

The party was a swim party and this suit just screamed mermaid so I had to get it! I got Kajun Monograms to personalize it for me.

I had taped sea creatures to the ceiling of the carport and also bought a small bubble machine and had that going throughout the party.

Overall, the party was a success and my daughter and all the other children that attended had a blast! 

If you want to check out last years Candyland party, you can find it here.