I am officially ready for spring. Its snowing here, again. I can probably count on one hand the number of days since Christmas we have had where there was no snow on the ground anywhere. Valentine's day is over now and I'm ready to get started on spring projects but it just doesn't seem right. So I've decided to take some time to work on some posts from past projects and parties that I've done.
Today I'm going to post some pics from my niece's 2nd birthday party last October. She's a huge fan of the Candyland movie so my sister and I thought this would make a super cute party theme. I'm the party planner in the family but I was in the process of selling my house, moving 3 hours away, and finding a new job so I feel like there is so much more we could have done but the time just wasn't there. But the weather that day was perfect and my niece adored it so I guess that makes it a success. My camera battery died right before the party started so my friend Rebecca (who is a wonderful photographer) took pictures and I'm very thankful for them!
Today I'm going to post some pics from my niece's 2nd birthday party last October. She's a huge fan of the Candyland movie so my sister and I thought this would make a super cute party theme. I'm the party planner in the family but I was in the process of selling my house, moving 3 hours away, and finding a new job so I feel like there is so much more we could have done but the time just wasn't there. But the weather that day was perfect and my niece adored it so I guess that makes it a success. My camera battery died right before the party started so my friend Rebecca (who is a wonderful photographer) took pictures and I'm very thankful for them!
The Invitation-This is the invitation that we used. I generally like to hand-make invitations but since we were in a time crunch I found a cute photo invite that I had printed and then I glued the pics on sparkly card stock. 
The Cake-We always make my niece her own special little cake. My mom is the baker in the family. I like to decorate cakes but I don't like to bake ones that actually need to look good and taste good. So mom made the cakes and the icing (homemade chocolate cake and cream cheese frosting). Last year we used fondant to make the cake. It turned out pretty good but was extremely time consuming. (You can see pics of her 1st birthday party and cake here:http://anythingthatglitters.blogspot.com/2008/10/more-princess-party-pics.html)
So this year we took the easy route. I sprayed the bottom layer with pink airbrush food coloring and covered it with pink and purple sprinkles. The I covered the top layer with multi color cake sprinkles and places gum drops at the bottom of both layers. Hobby Lobby had some wonderful candy themed Christmas ornaments and that is where the lollipops and the gum drop topper came from. This cake definitely wasn't as professional looking as the cake we made last year but it only took about an hour to decorate.
The Food-The party was on a Sunday afternoon so we mostly had colorful finger foods. My mom made her famous "Crack Cakes". They are the most addicting cupcakes I've ever had! I used the same multi-colored and pink/purple sprinkles on these that I did on the cake. On some of the cupcakes I used the lollipop ornaments that I also used on the cake. I also found some pink and purple castle picks that looked like the Candyland castle so I used these on some of the cupcakes. On the other cupcakes I used gumdrops or decorative candies.
We tried to make cookie lollipops. They were a challenge. The sparkly gel that I used to draw the center was extremely difficult to work with. The cookies also kept separating from the sticks and breaking. They tasted good though! We had a bowl of colored gold fish and I made my signature Marinated Mozzarella.
We filled ice cream cones with chocolate mousse and topped them with ice cream sprinkles.
We served Kool-Aid in my crystal beverage server with a BIG bow on top!
The Decorations-I had some much fun with the decorations for this party! Luckily, Hobby Lobby has their Christmas decorations out in August and they had a lot of the pink/purple/green/blue candy color scheme that I wanted. So that's where the majority of the party decorations came from. At one end of the deck I set up a gift table and at the other end there was a Candy Bar (pics on that in a minute). For centerpieces on these table I put large glittery flowers in clear glass vases filled with multi colored glass pebbles. From the branches of the flowers I hung glittery gumdrop ornaments.
The Decorations-I had some much fun with the decorations for this party! Luckily, Hobby Lobby has their Christmas decorations out in August and they had a lot of the pink/purple/green/blue candy color scheme that I wanted. So that's where the majority of the party decorations came from. At one end of the deck I set up a gift table and at the other end there was a Candy Bar (pics on that in a minute). For centerpieces on these table I put large glittery flowers in clear glass vases filled with multi colored glass pebbles. From the branches of the flowers I hung glittery gumdrop ornaments.On the center tables (the food table and activity table) I used two smaller arrangements with a party hat in the center. The arrangements were from the Christmas pick section at Hobby Lobby. I hung smaller lollipop ornaments from them. The butterflies were also from Hobby Lobby. The party hat was made from cone Christmas trees I found at the Dollar Tree. I also found some purple garland at the Dollar Tree (it was Halloween garland that had to have the skulls removed before we could use it) and we hot glued it to the bottom of the cones. 
We made giant lollipops and gumdrops to decorate the deck. The lollipop were created by painting large wooden circles and wooden dowels (both from Hobby Lobby). Then I swirled glue in the center and sprinkled glitter on it. Then we dusted the circle with a clear glitter. We also lined the driveway with the lollipops. The gumdrops were my attempt to get the most decorations for as little money as possible. I got a package of metallic balloons which we blew up (luckily I had a lot of help for this project!). We wrapped the balloons in clear cellophane and tied the ends with curling ribbon. They were super cheap and super cute!
The Activity Table-I knew there was going to be a large age range of kids at the party so I wanted to have some things set up for them to do on their own instead of organized games. I set up an activity table with a Candyland board game, coloring pages, and supplies to make Gingerbread people. The gingerbread activity consisted of foam gingerbread shapes, pom pon balls, googly eyes, and glitter glue. It was a HUGE hit!
The Activity Table-I knew there was going to be a large age range of kids at the party so I wanted to have some things set up for them to do on their own instead of organized games. I set up an activity table with a Candyland board game, coloring pages, and supplies to make Gingerbread people. The gingerbread activity consisted of foam gingerbread shapes, pom pon balls, googly eyes, and glitter glue. It was a HUGE hit!
The end result was one happy birthday girl!
I've never been big on Valentine's Day but I decided to decorate a little for it this year. I didn't want to invest a lot of money in decorations though, so I challenged myself to use only things I already had. I knew I had a ton of brown accessories and hoped I had just enough pink ones to pull together a pink and brown color scheme. Its not a very elaborate spread, but 
I saw this foam cupid at Hobby Lobby and fell in love! He was only $.49 (this was my big splurge!) so I bought him and glued some pink and white glass beads on him. Then we attached him to the middle of the wreath. 
Now I'm ready to decorate for Spring! Too bad there's still snow on the ground...
