Birthday Party Fun!

I am wayyyy behind on posting so many things, but I finally uploaded all our birthday party pics to the computer so I thought I would get this post up!

We knew we wanted to have a Sesame Street themed birthday party for the boys as Spencer loves Elmo's World, and we often sing C is for Cookie as our brushing teeth song (I've even made up new words with all his friends names in it b/c I got sick of the original version!). Plus, the colors are fun, the ideas are plentiful on Pinterest, and it is easy to find Sesame Street themed things in the stores.

I took Friday off work to make/organize all the food and do all the last minute shopping that needed to be done. Our menu consisted of the ever popular Ham and Swiss sliders that are all over Pinterest, Pineapple Chicken Salad, fruit kabobs, veggies (some with hummus and some with ranch), goldfish (where would Elmo be without Dorothy??), Italian rice salad, applesauce pouches, chocolate chip cookies, whoopie pies, and 2 kinds of cupcakes.

The food was all arranged on the kitchen island

(Please put this recipe on your list of things to try this summer. It is AMAZING!!! We make it all the time for parties and everyone always loves it! It also is wonderful as leftovers for lunch for a few days afterwards!)

Bar Cart- we had beer, wine, blackberry margaritas, soda, Izze fruit juices, mini waters, and juice boxes for the kids

Desserts were in the dining room on the table and on the buffet

The boys were dressed in shirts from this darling boutique on Etsy. I wanted them to match but not perfectly and I loved that the colors were similar but they each got their own character. I thought they looked just adorable in them!!

For Decor, I made letters for the front door, we put up banners (one in the dining room and one in the kitchen) that I bought from Party City, we did favors on the front table, and all our signs for the food and the games were created by B on the computer at work. I bought polkadot ballons and had them filled with helium the morning of the party. We placed them on the deck, on the mailbox, and around the house for the kids to play with.

One of the activities for the kids was Ernie's Duck Pond. I got a cheap inflatable pool, 12 ducks, and a few fishing nets for kids to fish out the ducks. I think more kids made it in the pool than ducks made it out, but they enjoyed it!

I ordered the treat bags from Zulily and stuffed them with a coloring book, a sesame street plastic cup, and a maraca from the dollar section at Target.

We had a bunch of bubbles out on a table for kids to play with. I forgot to get pictures of the other games, but they included Oscar's Trash Toss- a garbage can and crumpled paper for kids to aim for the basket and Cookie Monster's Cookie Throw- Blue solo cups with a Cookie Monster decal stuck to the front and then I made cookie shaped beanbags to toss at the pyramid of solo cups. It was really cute and I'm mad I didn't get a picture!

Here is a picture of the cups- now picture them in a pretty pyramid with cute cookie beanbags to throw at them!

Spencer wanted cupcakes instead of a cake, and I was fine with that. I made both chocolate and strawberry  cupcakes both of which got a fabulous vanilla buttercream frosting that was not at all too cloying or sweet. As necessary for any 1st birthday party, below are some pics of Peter with the cupcake. I was nervous about not having a true smash cake, but honestly, he doesn't need all that sugar and he didn't even eat all the cupcake that he had!

(don't you just want to eat him up!!!!!)

Overall, the party was really fun. We were glad that we had so many people who wanted to spend the morning with us celebrating are sweet boys. While we definitely aren't birthday party every year kind of people, this one went off well, and I think I'll be ready in 2 or 3 years for another joint one!!