Showing posts with label birthday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birthday. Show all posts

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Rainbow Art Party

Amy & Rose had a great time at their birthday party!  They wanted a rainbow art theme so I got to work scouring the internet for fun ideas. This was a party on a budget so we went with simple food (all homemade) and easy crafts made from items we already had on hand.



First up the cakes. I went with super simple. Plain vanilla cake on the inside for both girls. It's their favourite. I had wanted to have some sort of rainbow decoration on the cakes but hadn't really planned it out. Rare for me since I'm usually all about the cake. I did a quick internet search and found this video. Perfectly easy and fast. I had made some fondant  and just cut their name out.  

Rose's Cake
I had a little cake stand accident at the party. When taking both of the cake stands out of the car I accidentally bumped them together and broke one! I was devastated. The party was held at the school playground so I improvised very quickly and used one of the cardboard cake push-pop stands instead. It was only meant to hold extra cake push pops and wasn't decorated or anything but it worked out OK.

Amy's Cake

I did have a little fun with cake. I tried push pops for the first time. It was super simple. I decided to only use 4 colours to make it easy. I think they came out pretty cute and they were tasty too! The kids just loved these. I will definitely make them again.

Rainbow Jello cups. I was totally going to leave these out and not make them but at the last minute I went for it. They just look so pretty! I actually made about 50 plastic shot glass sized ones for the kids. I used one regular sized package of each jello colour. There was still plenty of Jello left so I made these taller glass ones with some plastic party glasses that I had leftover from a previous occasion.These are time consuming to make since you need to let each layer semi set for about 10 minutes so it takes a while to get all of the layers made. It's not difficult, just tedious.
Here's the party dessert table. I also made some paintbrush and palette cookies. My husband and I decorated them the morning of the party. They kind of stuck together a bit during transport since they didn't have quite enough time for the icing to dry fully. They were delicious though!

The rest of the party food was super simple. It was a late afternoon party - so I just served a few snacks.
The veggies are arranged like a rainbow with cauliflower clouds, and the the fruit is a rainbow stripe. In addition, I just put out a little cheese & crackers, chips, popcorn twists etc. My Aunt really came to the rescue on the morning of the party. She ended up cutting up all of the fruit and veggies! My Mom also helped with baby duty and watched the all of the girls while Ozzie & I were in full party preparation mode. As usual, I was a bit behind schedule at the last minute. Having a party off site with so many little extras meant it took a while to get packed into the car and then setup. It's much simpler to be at home and take stuff out to the tables at leisure. Rose wanted to invite her entire class so we chose the playground because of easy parking and lots of space. It was a good decision, but now I have a better idea of setup time etc for an offsite location.

I had forgotten to take a photo of the food right away so you might notice a few nibbles out of the trays already. 


We had several crafts/activites on hand. Make a collage, paint a rainbow fish, make a hanging rainbow with tissue streamers and some colouring sheets. Here are just a couple of some finished pieces. We hung them up in a tent for our little art gallery  and also so that they could all dry. It was a windy day so this was a good idea. If we would have just laid them out on the table to dry many would have blown away!

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I also setup a little staged photo for the children. My Aunt brought over her easel, some paintings and some brushes and a palette. We let the children choose a painting and then took a photo of them as if they were painting it themselves. The party guests were ages 3-7. I thought only the littles would be interested in this activity but almost everyone lined up for their turn. They really got a kick out of it! Here are my girls' artist photos.


Party bags were very simple for the party. They held a few goodies and I made them in a rainbow of colours. I also decorated party blowouts as one of the items inside each one.

I prefer not to put photos with other children on my blog but I can assure you there were lots of smiling faces during the party. The children had fun playing on the playground, creating some fun art, playing football (soccer) and playing pass the parcel. My girls had to wait a few weeks after their birthday for their party because the school playground was fully booked, but they will tell you that it was worth it! Thank you to everyone who came and made their party a success!

I used a couple of different party printable sets for this party. I liked elements of all of them. They can be found here. I have no affiliation with these designers.

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Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Happy Birthday Amy!

Last week my darling Amy turned seven. I can't BELIEVE it. It seems like my girls are just growing up way too fast!.

This is the lunch that I made her on her birthday.
boiled egg, carrots and cucumbers, Fruit Rainbow, fruit leather 7, sandwich kabobs with leftover roasted chicken

I thought that the sandwich kabobs might convince her to eat the lettuce. No such luck. However, we have made it several days without a ham sandwich so that's progress!

She had a great birthday and we had a little family party at home that night.
Here's a little then and now of my sweet Amy.





Thursday, March 14, 2013

Happy Birthday Rose!

It's hard to believe that my little Rosie is 5! Her birthday was on Tuesday. A few evenings ago I spent a lot of time looking through photos of her for her birthday circle at school.  Seems like just yesterday she was this tiny little baby. This is her birthday lunch :)

carrots, strawberries and pineapple, goldfish & a ham sandwich with a cherry fruit leather topper

and just because here are some then and now photos :)
Rose at 16 days old

Rose at age 5


Here are some items (or similar) that I used to make this lunch:



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Monday, October 8, 2012

Cute bugs birthday party

Emily is one! I can't believe how fast this year has gone. It seems like just yesterday she was a teeny tiny baby keeping us awake at night. Here are some photos of her birthday party. We had a cute bugs theme.


She had a blast! It was a small, family only party on a budget. My Mom and Aunt helped me get organised on the day and my cousin came and put up the decorations for us :) No matter how small the party is, it always seems like a lot of work when there are 4 little ones underfoot and very excited! I am very thankful for the extra help.

I made these cookies on Saturday. I must say that a made a bit of a mess in the kitchen but it was fun and I think they came out so cute! I used 20 second Royal Icing from Sweet Sugarbelle and the mess was from making all of the different colours and trying to bake and decorate cookies with so many little helpers.

The party food was very simple: assorted sandwiches, veggies and dip, fresh fruit, malasadas (which are yummy Portuguese Doughnuts that my mother in law made -- THANK YOU!), cupcakes, birthday cake, cookies  and some chips and salsa.

A few weeks ago I was browsing the internet for some fun party food ideas. I came across a fruit pizza shaped like a butterfly on Hungry Happenings blog. I didn't want to make that but I thought it would be a perfect way to display some fresh fruit. I really just freehand arranged the shape and didn't use any sort of template. 

The theme was cute bugs and I used some party printables from Cupcake Express to decorate and add a few special touches. These are the party bags, blowouts and Hershey's miniatures that I made using the printables. There really are so many things that you can do with the printables set but I didn't get a chance to make a full use of the files this time.



Emily's older sisters wrote her a nice birthday sign on a chalkboard

I also made a nice banner and some cupcake toppers. I have a lovely photo of the cupcake toppers but there was an icing fail on the cupcakes. I almost didn't post the photo but it's too funny not to share. It was a very hot and humid day and for whatever reason my pink cherry, super delicious icing started to slide right off the cupcakes! I never got a before photo -- so here's an after. I tried to rearrange and put the "best" ones in front. It was only downhill from this point. haha. The ones that semi-survived were very yummy!


Here's the birthday girl enjoying her very own cupcake!

She was very happy all afternoon. 


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Thursday, April 5, 2012

Barbie Birthday Party


Rose and Amy had a joint birthday party with some family and a few friends from school. Here are some photos from the day. It was a blast!

Rose's Cake

Amy's Cake



Decadent Desserts! Cupcakes, Barbie doll cakes, popcorn twists, tropical pudding delight, sugar-free strawberry Jello-O parfaits, cookies, oreo cakesters and part of the candy buffet is shown.


I did not put any candy in the treat boxes, I let each guest choose their own from the candy buffet and fill up a little bag of sweets to take home.


Favour boxes -- very easy to make. Hot glue on the ribbon and thank you tag (my Aunt did this for me while I was doing a lot of paper punching and cutting!). I filled them with some Barbie & princess trinkets and then I tied on the little name tags.

Popcorn twists in little boxes - again we hot glued on the tags

Whey free cupcakes  - paper toppers, Barbie silhouettes, flowers

Another view of the desserts table

Sugar cookies



Strawberry Kool Aid and Sugar Free Lemonade
The theme was Barbie in Princess Charm School. We practiced balancing books on our heads like in the movie and then had a race, we made tiaras, and had some princess themed candy and favours in the favour boxes. We also played the girls' favourite party games -- pass the parcel and freeze dance. 

Somehow, I managed to not have any photos of the regular food! We had pizza, mini quiche, mini sausage rolls, meatballs etc. Several items were whey free to accommodate a guest with food allergies and I put a little smiley face on the back of those food labels. Unfortunately, I burned the special pizza for that guest, but there was still enough extras for her to eat.

There were many other printed accessories from my party pritnables kit but I didn't have good photos of all of them somehow. It was a busy day!!
After a huge morning shower which had me worried, it turned out to be a sunny afternoon and loads of fun for the kids. It was lots of work and I'll probably scale down a bit next year -- but I have been told I say that EVERY year!

Paper boxes, assorted candy, candy bags - Oriental Trading
Party Printables - 505Designs (I HIGHLY recommend - she was accommodating and fast!)
Doll Cakes, Cookies, Cupcakes - Cake Boutique Celebration
Jewellery Organiser  (that held candy necklaces) - Linens & Gifts