Outer Space Birthday Party For Pearl

Just in case you're wondering, the kids are still having their birthdays every year. Ha! Life is much busier now though and I don't always opt for crafty parties anymore. Axel wanted a Mario Bros theme for his third birthday and he was absolutely thrilled with the store bought decorations and cake we purchased for that event. You can check Instagram if you want to see a cute photo of him dressed as Mario.

I still occasionally find the time and creative energy to do a little party crafting. Pearl turned 5 at the end of September and chose an outer space theme for her party. I already had so many items from past projects that we could re-use and I generally prefer to do that than buy something new. I definitely cut corners by buying store bought cupcakes and had plenty of friends and family to help out with food.

My friend Sarah owns a bakery and made cute cookies inspired by a photo my mom found on Pinterest. I bought cupcakes at Safeway and decorated them with pretty sprinkles because Pearl thinks sprinkles are the most amazing thing ever.

I have a bunch of cheap paper lanterns that have been used for quite a few parties since Pearl was born (including her first birthday where they were made into hot air balloons). This year the lanterns were planets! I just added some cardboard rings around a couple of them.

My sister-in-law made the cutest fruit tray to fit the theme.

The kids and I worked on a construction paper star garland and I made a couple moons out of cardboard, gold paint, and black chalk markers.

I mostly just decorated the area around the dining room table, but added in a few details in different areas around the living room space.

I only spent around $5 on decor and about three hours putting things together. Doing all store bought decorations is nice sometimes, but it feels pretty good when I can save some money and do a little crafting too. The kids really don't care either way.

-Kira

Flora's Floral First Birthday

 Flora's birthday party was two months ago, but I find it increasingly difficult to carve out blogging time these days. I figured posting her party super late is better than never posting about it at all. I was planning on keeping it pretty low key and had no intention of creating a theme until I felt a wave of creative energy come over me about a week before her birthday. So a theme party did end up happening, but I really didn't go overboard this time. We went with the most literal theme ever, a floral party for Flora! Since I have thrown many birthday parties and baby showers at this point, I had a whole lot of party crafts already done that I could use. I kind of hoard that stuff.

The only decoration that I purchased that wasn't already in my craft closet was this awesome Martha Stewart tissue flower kit. Those flowers were so fun to put together. Seriously, all the fun of crafting without the lame tedious work of cutting everything out first. The flowers are so pretty that I still have them up in our living room.

We have amazing family members who offered to bring food so it ended up being a potluck style party. All of the food I provided were pre-made snacks from Trader Joe's so I didn't have to cook anything. I also grabbed a couple of cheap bouquets to put on the table while I was there. In the past, I have baked cakes for my kids parties, but I decided not to spend the time on it this year. My friend Sarah owns a bakery and makes delicious treats so we had her make cupcakes and a little cake for Flo. My mom even picked it all up and brought it to our house.  Easiest party ever!

Flora had a great time at her party and I think the rest of our family did too. We are so lucky to have such a wonderful, supportive people in our lives who love our kids so much.

-Kira

My Little Pony Birthday Party - Pearl Turns 4!

Today is Pearl's fourth birthday!  We had her party on Sunday.  I was planning on just buying a bunch of food and throwing it together at the last minute because I enjoyed how simple Axel's second birthday party was.  Pearl decided about a week ago that she wanted a My Little Pony theme though.  I also love MLP so we went for it.

If you watch My Little Pony - Friendship is Magic at all, you would know they talk about food a lot.  I saw some parent created food items on Pinterest that they tried to tie into the show, but were not from the show.  I guess I am a MLP purist because that bothered me.  I wanted to do foods that actually existed on the show.  We had Applejack's apple brown bettys, Spike's jewel cake, Granny Smith's apple cider, and Pinkie Pie's rock candy.  I wanted to figure out how to make rock candy necklaces, but there just wasn't time to work on that.  My sister-in-law also made an awesome cheese sandwich platter to honor one of our favorite ponies - Cheese Sandwich.  Since we only had a week and I have three small kids, I delegated out a lot of the food tasks to family because they kept offering to help.  All I really had to make were the cakes.  My mom also arranged the fruit and veggie trays into adorable rainbows.  She was so dedicated to the task that she scoured a farmer's market to find a purple vegetable.

Some of the decor, favors, and plates were store bought My Little Pony licensed stuff.  I made all of the food signs and the Wonderbolts banner by googling the images I was looking for.  I didn't have to crop out background for anything because Bronies are awesome and there was a free vector already created for everything I could have possibly ever needed.  I also found the font for free.  I was in such a hurry to get all of this done that I didn't save links to where everything came from.  I would love to credit everyone out there who helped me (thank you Bronies), so I'm hoping to find time to go back and credit everyone properly (stay tuned).

Pearl had so much fun.  On top of having a pony party, she also received a ton of MLP gear as well as a sweet Anna from Frozen dress.  Thanks to everyone who came to celebrate with us. We love you all!

-Kira

Kitty Cat Birthday Party for Pearl

Today is Pearl's 3rd birthday!  We had a party for her over the weekend so all of our family could come.  Pearl requested a kitty cat theme for her party after attending her cousin Tucker's turtle party.  She was convinced her party needed an animal theme.  She also decided to have "strawberry cake".  I'm not positive of where that idea came from.  My guess is it had something to do with the Strawberry Shortcake coloring book she recently received from a cousin.

Pearl has been pretty fickle about making decisions lately.  I tried to buy her a Halloween costume a few days back and she changed her mind on what she wanted to be four times within a ten minute time period.  She currently wants to be Kristoff from Frozen and shockingly enough, I can't seem to find a Kristoff costume anywhere.  She decided on the kitty cat theme and strawberry cake well over a month ago and continuously stuck with it so I was determined to make it a reality.

I like making silly party posters in Illustrator and Photoshop.  I know those programs well and it's a lot easier for me than painstakingly crafting decorations with two kids who are desperate to play with anything that's in my hand.  I hate using stock photos from the internet though, especially when I want to share my final product on this blog.  I definitely did not intend to have a cat photo shoot either because basically, I'm not crazy.

My final cat photo gathering solution was to ask my friends on Instagram if I could use their photos.  I essentially crowd sourced my cat images.  I set up a hashtag on Instagram and asked people to use that hashtag on photos they were fine with me using.  I also had a bunch of friends tell me I could use any of their Instagram photos and a few even e-mailed theirs to me.  I ended up with plenty of cats to choose from.  I also received tons of help on cat related puns to use via my Instagram account.

I spent no extra money on decorations for this party.  I already had paper and ink for the posters.  The little bit of crafting I did do involved yarn that I already had in my craft supplies.  For the yarn ball decorations, I just wrapped yarn around a few plastic balls that belong to my kids.  That awesome Berkley Illustration cat print usually resides in our hallway, but I moved it to the mantle because it fit the theme so well.

We had lots of fun!  Some of our guests even chose to wear cat related clothing.  Pearl loved it and the rest of the kids seemed to have a great time as well.

-Kira

If you are curious about the strawberry cake, I used this recipe.  The frosting was ridiculously good.  The cake was very dense so I would want to modify the recipe if I made it again.

Axel's (Music Themed) First Birthday Party!

We had Axel's first birthday party on Sunday.  I decided to go with a music theme because all of his favorite toys are instruments.  He loves playing with Jeremy's djembe and has recently started climbing up to play with the piano on his own.  He also loves bouncing around to music.

I went overboard with Pearl's first birthday.  I think a lot of parents do that with their first born.  We just get so excited.  I also had more time to plan back then.  We decided to keep the guest list for Axel's party only to family and I sent the invitation out through Facebook.

All of the little cousins were going to be here so I wanted to do a photo booth for the kids.  I love putting together fun graphic decorations.  I just didn't have the time to work on it though.  I found a ton of cute options on Etsy.  I opted for this one because all of the printables were perfectly sized for kids and it was extremely affordable.

I made the garland by tracing the silhouette of an electric guitar in Illustrator.  I printed them onto brightly colored card stock and cut them out.  If you want to make a garland, you can find a printable PDF here for the guitars.

It was a simple party.  A lot of family members brought food so I didn't have to do much.  I made cupcakes from a boxed mix.  It was relaxed, but everyone had fun.  The kids all had a great time playing together.  I love having our whole family over.

I still can't believe our sweet boy will be one this week!

-Kira

I only took Photo Booth photos with my phone so if you want to see a few, visit my Instagram account @kiraprov.

Pearl's Second Birthday Party

 

Pearl's second birthday is coming up this weekend and due to family schedules we decided to have her party a week early.  I decided not to go crazy with decorations like last year and we chose to keep the party low key and just invite family.  I didn't even have a theme until last week.  I mentioned to my sister that I planned to re-use decorations from past parties.  She realized I had a bunch of sunflower stuff and suggested I go with that as a theme.  Pearl is really into smelling flowers so I knew she would love having fresh ones in the house.  So we ended up with a theme after all.

The majority of the food was purchased at Trader Joe's.  Some family members pitched in and made a couple things and I made the cake.  Pearl is obsessed with birthday cake so I wanted to do that for her.  I don't have much baking experience and for some reason thought I would try my hand at a three tier cake.  It wasn't very pretty, but it actually tasted great so I was happy with it.

Pearl enjoyed playing with her cousins and even started her own dance party after things started to die down.  We loved celebrating our girl yesterday and I was happy to see her have a lot of fun too.

Best family photo we could manage.

-Kira

Bonus photo...

This is Axel (on the right) with his two cousins Emery and Tucker.  They are going to be trouble someday!

Pearl's (Hot Air Balloon Themed) First Birthday Party!

Pearl had the best time at her birthday party.

It was so fun to watch her walk around and visit her guests.  She played with each toy as she opened them and tried to put her new outfits on over her head.  I was so pleasantly surprised by how interactive she was and how much she seemed to understand.  Pearl was well aware that the party was for her.

So many of our family and friends came to wish Pearl a happy birthday.  Many of them even brought food so I barely had to make anything which was so nice.  Thanks to everyone who came!

Now on to the pictures...

I printed out all of her monthly photos for people to view.

Hot air balloons made with paper lanterns, yarn, and party favor boxes I found at the dollar store.

I made hot air balloon garlands by cutting simple shapes out of patterned paper and tying them together with baker's twine.

Homemade party hats.

My mom created a build-your-own caramel apple bar.

My friend Karen made amazing cupcakes for the party.

Pearl's cake which I made from the first recipe on this list.

Checking out her new TOMS from my sister Kacy.

A few of the kids grabbed a fork to try Pearl's cake.  Bennett started feeding her.

I will share more photobooth shots tomorrow.  The original idea is from this blog.

-Kira