"Noon" Years Eve Birthday Party

The craziness of December has come and gone (as has January and February)! Can you believe it is already 2015? Yikes!

Poor Lizzie .. she's my third child AND she was born in December... she is never going to have an all-out-pinterest-planned birthday party! The end of the year is crazy for us (as well as most people I know) - we (1) travel out of state for either Thanksgiving or Christmas each year, (2) we have our annual Christmas Cocktail party at the house, (3) there's the dozens of Christmas activities we try to squeeze in before (4) the big mans visit, all culminating in (5) an end of the year activity of some sort, and now (4).... poor 3rd child's birthday has to get squeezed in.

For the past few years, we have gotten together with a bunch of friends for a "Noon" Years Eve party at a park. With the craziness of this year, I decided I'd throw in a cake and some lunch and call it Lizzie's birthday party.

FOOD
I ordered pizza for lunch, but had a cheese/crackers and veggie tray, cheetos, pretzels, and jello jigglers.

Side note about the jello jigglers - I got the idea here (pretty huh?) -- they didn't turn out as nice. It looked pretty cool when I sprinkled the big sugar crystals and the gold glitter on it... but it started to like melt my jello. Big boo! So just a warning if you try that -- doesn't work as well as the picture showed in the pin.

And you can't have a Noon (or New) Years Eve party without a toast... so sparkling white and red grape juice for after the countdown.

CAKE
I made a "clock" cake using an 8 (or maybe 9) inch cake pan, a dozen cupcakes around the outside for the hour numbers (with 12 more for backups), and I used gold icing spray and gold star edible glitter (picked up from Hobby Lobby). For the numbers, I printed out a font that I wanted onto computer paper, covered it with parchment (or wax) paper, and using Wilton Chocolate melts, I traced the numbers and stuck them in the fridge to cool.

They pealed very easy and I stuck them on top the morning of the party.

I'm quite pleased how well this turned out -- and it was easy!

DECORATIONS
This one was pretty easy -- I stuck to "low-key" and had some plastic table cloths, a box or 2 of the New Years Eve party hats, crowns, and noisemakers... that's it.

FUN
We had a table set up where all the kids could make and decorate their own "noise makers" using clear plastic cups, bells, beads, dried pasta (a leftover from a previous party), and stickers to decorate the outside.

Also, we were at a park, so that sort of took care of itself and this park has a walking path around it so some kids brought bikes and scooters and they had a great time.

But I'd have to say that the best part of the party was...

THE COUNTDOWN
... because, I mean that is what you do at New Years, right?

I picked up 5 large rolls of bubble wrap from walmart, laid them out in lines, and lined the kids up in between the rows. To be honest, it was a bit windy that day so they kept flying up.  All set with New Years party hats and noisemakers we started our countdown.

When we hit 1, the kids blew their noisemakers and jumped up and down on the bubble wrap and - Oh My Goodness - since we were underneath a park shelter, it actually sounded like fireworks. It was pretty awesome and the kids loved it!

and Lastly...
PARTY FAVORS
On top of the noise maker craft that they kids did earlier, they also got to take home a ring pop so they could "Ring in the New Year".

Birthday girl had a blast!

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Girly Pirate Party ::. Food

*Click here for more Girly Pirate Party posts.*

FOOD
I'm not gonna lie; I had fun with the food! I pinned so many things that I had a hard time holding myself back. Luckily, it was all pretty simple to do. The cookies I made several weeks in advance and froze.  Same thing with the cupcake toppers. The cupcakes, jello, and the cake were the only "last minute" things.

1. Gold Nuggets - rolos
2. Cupcakes - I like the cupcake toppers so I made cupcakes too
3. Pirate Ships - blue jello in clear cups with an orange wedge, topped with a "sail"
4. Fudgy Gold Doubloons- using my go-to button cookie recipe with yellow sprinkles

5. Grape Chili Cannon Balls - Grape Chili meatballs
6. Fish n' Chips - goldfish and chips
7.Corndog Peg Legs - mini corndog bites
8. Pieces of Eight - orange jello knox blox

9 . walk the pretzel plank - pretzel sticks
10. Cheesy Cannon Balls - cheese balls
11. Skully want a crack ... with cheese - cheese ball rolled in nuts
12. The signs showed guests where drinks were too

CAKE - A Treasure Chest

While the cake may look SUPER hard and intricate... it's not. (shoot, the secret is out of the bag!). The cake is really just a square, two layer cake, iced with chocolate icing, and decorated using a round tip and a wilton decorating bag. The treasure chest top is not edible. My mom made that with some craft foam sheets, ribbon, and a skull and crossbone print out.


THE SPREAD
And here is the entire spread.

Happy Birthday, Jillie!

Click here for more Girly Pirate Party posts.

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Girly Pirate Party ::. Activities and Favors

Since we are coming up on my middle daughter's 4th birthday, I figured it was high time I did a post on her 3rd birthday party (slacker over here).

With three daughters, there is going to be TONS of stuff to fight about over the years; I don't want them to look back and pictures and decided I planned better birthday parties for so-and-so and whatnot... SO my oldests birthday for each age sort of sets the tone.

1st - party at the house (duckie, cupcake, duckie)
2nd - party at the park (Minnie Mouse, Car)
3rd - party at the house, with a bounce house (strawberry shortcake, Pirate)
4th - party at the park (Bike)
5th - party at the house (candyland) (no bounce house, although she expected one because my other daughter had just had her 3rd "bounce house at the house" party) 

I know I can't keep this up forever, but at least I'm trying!

Anyway, so for Jillie's 3rd birthday party we went with a Girly Pirate themed party.

ACTIVITIES
Bounce House - fun for all ages...

... mommies and daddies included

Dig for Pirate Treasure - Wouldn't you believe that probably the MOST POPULAR thing at this party was the cheapest thing? Don't get me wrong, the kids LOVED the bounce house, but there was ALWAYS a line for the treasure hunt.

Line for Treasure Dig

I took two small plastic shell baby pool things and filled them with sand. I put in a bunch of mardi gras beads, gold (and pink) coins found at Party City, Hobby Lobby, etc, and these really neat gem stone things that I stumbled upon at Hobby Lobby like a week before the party. (side note - Hobby Lobby had a surprisingly large section of Girly Pirate things, I wish I had gone there sooner!).

Jillie finding her first gemstone

Playground
This one is pretty self explanatory.

PARTY FAVORS
I love a good favor that goes along with the party theme.

Bag Filled with a pirate hat, a few chocolate coins, and a small plastic maze do-dad that I found at Oriental Trading... and probably a sucker or two (I'm writing this a year late... so I honestly don't know what was in there)

DIY Pirate swords (instructions found here) - Super easy and huge hit! We gave them out at the end.

Click here for more Girly Pirate Party posts.

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Charlotte's Candyland Birthday Bash

I have a habit of going overboard on parties - which means I'm running around crazy at the end. I can't help myself really; I love parties with themes and food that goes along with it all (case in point - strawberry shortcake party). For Charlotte's 5th birthday party, I decided to *try* and do less.

FOOD
I decided to host the birthday party at 1:30pm, well after "lunchtime" and mentioned that we would be serving appetizers, snacks, and of course, cake.

To make things easier for myself, I did 3 crockpot dips. Set it and forget it - my kind of party prep:

• Queso Dip with Chips - plus some sliced and quartered summer sausage on the side
• Chili Grape Meatballs - for substance. Come to think of it, I always serve these because they are SO easy, and people like them to munch on
• Franks Buffalo Chicken Dip (crockpot version) - VERY popular

well... the crockpots are in the background

However, my mother-in-law's biggest fear is running out of food. No joke. I think that is literally her biggest fear. SO.... she brought over some fruit salad and chicken salad with hawaiian rolls and commandeered the oven for pretzel dogs, corn dogs, and various other baked appetizers.

Phew. Clearly, we had more than enough food!

Oh and like EVERY party, I made knox blocks (ie firmer jello jigglers) and they were on the cake table along with some leftover candy and pretzels and munchies.

ACTIVITIES
Life size Candy land game in play room - I spend a night prior to the party going through a package of construction paper and setting aside the purple, yellow, blue, orange, green, red pages.... in that order.  Then the morning of the party I laid out the "game spaces". I put the actual game cards from my game in a bucket for each player to select one. We didn't really think the actual game playing through - the kids never went in their original order. I just started with the person furthest along in the game and made my way backwards until all the kids selected their card and moved. Then I started that process over again until they reached the end of the board and they got to jump into the ball pit (birthday girls idea!)

The kids really got into it! One boy told his mom that night, "Mom, I can't BELIEVE we were ACTUALLY in Candyland today!!!".

Make your own snack necklace

Make your own snack necklace station

I saw this on Pinterest as a way to make snacks for a playdate; but I thought it was fitting for our party.
I used: fruit loops, apple jacks, these shortbread like flower looking cookies with a hole in the middle, pretzels, and gummy life savers.

I'm not dummy, I know that if a kid sees gummy life savers as an option for his "snack necklace", he's only going to use gummy life savers. And as the most expensive part of this activity, I decided to do a little prep work.

For the necklace itself, I used ribbon - present wrapping ribbon - pre cut to an appropriate length AND already started with a pretzel tied on at one end. I could just picture kids starting their necklaces and then picking one end up and everything falling off the bottom.  To save us from tears (and my floors from a HUGE mess) I tied a pretzel to one end of each ribbon.

I then set out as many plastic cups as kids we had and placed their "Starter necklace" in each cup. Also, in their cup, I divided out about 9 gummy life savers.  The rest of the snacks were in the center of the table in large bowls. That way, they knew they only have 9 gummies for their necklace, but as many of everything else that they wanted.

It worked well.

Candy Dot Punch Game
Ok, the kids really enjoyed this. I saw this idea (with instructions) online and knew I had to do it. Upon my mothers suggestion, I used foam board, so it would be sturdier than poster board .... holy cow that was a work out to cut it out. I don't have the handy circle cutter tool that she did in the instructions. I had LOTS of kids coming, so I used 2 foam boards and I taped them together in the middle (actually, I ended up making a 3rd that wasn't attached... but that's another story). Then I ran to lowes and got a piece of 1x2in board and taped that on either end so it was really sturdy.

Looking back I could have used the poster board with the wood... but oh well. It's done. Kids absolutely LOVED this.

Backyard Fun

To keep the kids entertained we set them loose in our backyard with the small trampoline, swing set, and several bouncy balls, soccer balls, and hoola hoops.

DECORATIONS
You know that night I spent selecting the purple, yellow, blue, orange, green, and red construction paper? Well, I used some extra to decorate the walls. I put them up with ticky tacky.

Construction paper game spaces

Also, I got some clear cellophane plastic wrap and wrapped some of the colored paper plates (which I was already using for the party) to look like pieces of candy. I stuck those on the walls too.

Cellophane candy on walls

I got 3 each of red, yellow, green, and blue balloons and set them by the front door (in and out) and the cake table. Oh yeah, I like using our easel and making a birthday welcome sign.

Balloons and easel

The thing that I just started doing (and LOVING) is using those rolls of crepe paper/streamers and tieing them to my horizontal blinds to make a back drop. I did it for Lizzie's 1st birthday party in all yellow and thought it looked super cute. So I got red, green, yellow, and blue and alternated them on the blinds in the kitchen and by the snack necklace station.  It took some time, but I started 4 days early and was really casual about it so it didn't stress me out.

streamers in blinds

Throw in a few dollar store plastic table cloths and I was done.

CAKE
I love making my girls birthday cakes; It brings me joy. But for the past 2 years, I have cheated and gotten a publix bakery sheet cake to start with. My excuse last year was we had just moved into our house, like a week prior and i could not find my cake decorating stuff. This year... I did NOT want to make and ice a cake THAT BIG!

There's not much to say about the cake, the picture does a pretty good job describing it, although I will say you don't need as many starbursts as you think you do. I peeled WAY too many! If you have any questions about what we used, don't hesitate to ask me.

FAVORS
Favor Bag
I got my handy handy white lunch sacks, played around and made a "Thank you for coming" tag in photoshop, and glued it on.  The bags were filled with parents worst nightmares.... CANDY! I ordered the old school candy dots (you know the ones on paper), and then some pixie sticks, bubbles, gummies, suckers, a bouncy ball... etc. I figured it was only fitting for a CANDY land party, right?

Well, there you have it. Charlotte's 5th Candyland birthday party. The weather held off and everyone had a blast.  Contact me if you have any questions!

On a side note, I learned that I can manage about 80 people in my house for a party. Yikes!

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