Lucy's Party

Even though not many were in attendance (I really stink at picking good days for parties!) Lucy had a very nice birthday party.  My father-in-law was nice enough to lend us his house for the afternoon since our house is not nearly big enough for any party with more than 6 people. ;)  I really put a lot of work into the party so I wanted to share it with everyone...maybe I'll inspire someone to do their own owl-themed party.

So yes the theme was owls and the colors were purple and green.  I even made Taylor wear a purple shirt to match (and of course I wore one too!) because I am that much of a dork. :)

It's hard to see but that's the banner I made.  I just took a bunch of scrapbook paper to school and used our die-cut machine to cut the letters and then I used my circle cutter to make a bunch of circles to glue the letters on to.  Of course all the paper I used was different patterns of purple and green.

I made four of these adorable owls using those paper lanterns you can get at party stores.  You can see the tutorial here. I did not use foam or buttons like she did; paper was easier for me to work with.  I love these owls so much that I'm taking them to school and hanging them in my classroom.  No way am I throwing these away!

I wanted to display Lucy's scrapbook at her party but when I got it out I saw I had exactly one month scrapbooked.  So I could either cram 11 months worth of scrapbooking into a day (um, NO) or I could just snag her first year picture frame off the wall and bring that.  So that's what I did.  You can get those at Hobby Lobby if you're interested.  And here's the sign I made for the corner of it:

 

 Nothing too exciting about the tableware.  For the silverware holders, I just bought 2 cheap vases at Walmart and wrapped ribbon around them.  I was going to do this thing I saw on Pinterest that uses old soup cans but we have not used any cans in the past 2 weeks and I wasn't about to open any just so I could have the empty ones!  Besides I like how pretty the vases turned out.

 This is the favor basket.  It's kind of hard to see what's inside.  It's these:

So I saw these adorable bottles on Etsy.  Basically this lady took the PocketBac bottles from Bath&Body Works and made a label for them.  I thought it was really cute but I didn't want to pay $1.45 per bottle for something I know I could make myself.  So I opened up Photoshop, copied the owl from Lucy's invitations and made a label.  I printed them out and made a template for the right shape by peeling a label off the bottle and glueing it on cardstock and cutting it out.  Then I just traced the template over each label, cut them out, and voila! 

 

Some of the goodies that were served.  If you have not made Funfetti Cake Batter Buddies, do it soon!!  They are SOO good (and SO addicting!).   You can't tell but I did tint the almond bark before coating the cereal in it.  But of course once I added the cake mix and powdered sugar, you couldn't even tell.  Oh well.  I bought those bowls from the Target $1 section a few weeks back knowing I wanted to use them for the party but not knowing what I could do with them.  They were the perfect size for holding the snacks!  We also served buffalo chicken dip which is another one of my favorites. 

We also served these:

Owl cupcakes!  Yep I made those from scratch.  Well okay I used box cake mix and a tub of frosting but I did color the frosting myself.  I found these on Pinterest but they used brown M&M's for the pupils.  I used Junior Mints because I thought it looked better (and cuter!) to have bigger pupils.  The nose is an orange M&M.  And no I did not pick out all the orange ones from a bag (which is what Walker thought I was going to do).  Meijer sells M&M's (well generic version) in all different colors in their bulk foods aisle so I just got a scoop from there.

This is the cupcake holder I bought last year when it was on clearance after Easter.  So yep, I knew Lucy would have green as one of the party colors for a long time ;).   Hey, my fellow frugal moms know when you see a deal you gotta snag it!

And now the piece de resistance: Lucy's smash cake.

Yes I made that cake all by myself.  I have to admit I'm pretty proud.  :D  I got the recipe from here.  I did not use a starburst for the bow because they don't make green or purple starburst (well maybe they do actually but there weren't any in the bag I bought to get the orange nose!).  So I just took 3 white chocolate chips to make the bow.  And I don't know how the lady made the "ears" but I just took 2 broken oreos, stuck them in the cake and then frosted over them.  To be honest I almost didn't want Lucy to eat the cake!

Okay now some pictures from the party:

Lucy mostly got clothes and books.  Even though I said "no gifts" on the invitation (I guess people really don't pay attention to that!) people still asked what Lucy would like and I said, NO TOYS!  I'm sorry but we just have too many as it is.  I'm actually in the process of getting rid of some because they just take up a lot of room!  I did get her an adorable felt sandwich set from Melissa&Doug but that's more because I'm trying to replace the cheap plastic food the girls have.  

"Enough with the singing, I want to eat my cake!"

Alright cake, it's me vs. you and I plan on winning.

I should have taken a picture of the cake afterwards but Lucy barely made a dent in it.  Basically she ate a lot of the frosting.  So in the end, maybe the cake won.

So it was a great day for our little girl.  And now I need to start working on Taylor's 3 year bash (ha! just kidding!).