Reptile Swamp Birthday Party

So I have decided that I have been a very bad blogger, as I have not had a post in quite sometime. Oh, how I wish that there were more hours in the day, but sadly there are not.  Thankfully I was inspired recently by our youngest to create an alligator/swamp birthday party so I can end this blogging drought.  He loves alligators and all things creepy, and absolutely loves The Wild Kratts...so naturally we had to create a swamp themed birthday party.  We had a Snake Egg Hunt, made swamp slime, created a reptile garden, and let the kids play in the backyard.  It was a perfect party in my book.

For the Snake Egg Hunt I was able to find some plastic Easter eggs after the holiday and spray painted them and then speckled them with acrylic paints.  The spray paint came out with a texture on some of the eggs which was completely not expected, but worked just fine for this project.

For the egg hunt I made little brown bags for the kids to decorate with some swamp (jungle) themed stamps our son had.  I printed their names on some cardstock for the handles...I have found it is always good to have everyone's things very well labeled...less likely to have any tears over misplaced items.  Not that I know this from experience.  :)

When having a swamp party there should definitely be some swamp slime!  We made our slime using the recipe from this blog...this recipe was perfect.  When adding the 4 ounces of water to the glue we just filled up the glue bottle, which was conveniently 4 ounces, and shook it and poured that into the bowl.  Super fun craft and I would say it was quite the hit.  We just packed it up in ziploc bags and sent it home with the boys.

We also made reptile gardens using glass candle holders from the dollar store, I just love the dollar store for party supplies!!!  The bottom layer is some river rocks from the dollar store, then some potting soil, a few chia seeds and a reptile of course. A perfect little reptile garden!

The alligator cake was absolutely adorable and I found my idea here, but truth be told...I will never be a professional cake decorator.  Anything that can go wrong with frosting will go wrong for me. Despite all of this the cake came out looking as it should despite a few mistakes here and there.  :)

There were also Chocolate Frog cupcakes.  I made the chocolate frogs using a candy mold that I found on Amazon and just placed them on top of the whipping cream frosting...super easy!

One of my favorite parts of this party were the party favors.  They were super fun to make and I hope all of the kids enjoyed them.  I know our little one has been enjoying his.  The favors included an Adventure Notebook which was found at the dollar store....surprise...surprise!  They were just perfect with the alligator/snake skin look.  I printed out labels and stuck them onto the notebooks. I included a pen to write in their notebooks.

There was an alligator brownie that I made using an alligator cookie cutter that I found on Amazon.

Our little adventure loving boy really loves these wish bracelets/necklaces that we made.  I found the adorable alligator charms on Etsy through the cutest little shop.  Absolutely loved the shop owner and loved the beads.  Just used some hemp twine and printed out the wish cards.  

There was also a  fruit roll-up, a bug container which held a little plastic lizard or frog, a nature scavenger hunt game which I found here.  I loved how these turned out and her printables were absolutely adorable!  I just printed them four to a page and used both of her designs to make them double sided.  We made the little Snake Egg labels for the TicTacs using a template from here.  I was quite pleased with how these turned out.

Here they are all wrapped up and ready to go home!

If you would like more ideas feel free to check out my Wild Kratt Birthday Party board on Pinterest.

This was a fun party to plan and enjoy with the boys.  While I do not love reptiles, I love how much our little creature lover does!  This was another super easy backyard party!  Hope you enjoyed stopping by! -Robyn

John Deere Farm Birthday Party

I cannot tell you how excited I am to share this party with all of you.  When my soon to be five year old stated that he would like a John Deere/farm party I thought...really?!?!?  No way to just run out to the party store and pick up the supplies.  Naturally I turned straight to Pinterest and was overwhelmed with all of the great ideas I found.  If you would like to see how obsessed I was just check out my Pinterest Board for yourself.  As usual I would have loved to have taken more pictures, but that just was not to be.  So sad that I did not take a picture of the Happy Birthday banner that I made...oh, well.  Naturally we choose green and yellow for our colors with some orange thrown in (the birthday boy's favorite color).  I had many games and crafts planned for the day, however I found that all the kids wanted to do was play in the backyard.  So much for all of my planning, but thrilled no one was bored!  The first activity that the kids did was to Plant A Garden, which was my favorite of the day.  I saved a bunch of tin cans and punched holes on the bottom with a nail and hammer, for drainage.  Then I got busy crafting with some cute burlap ribbon and my hot glue gun.  I printed out the John Deere logo from Google Images onto card stock and then cut them out and covered them in clear contact paper to try and protect them.  I cut small slits on the sides and threaded them with the green ribbon and again used the hot glue gun.  I have to say that I was quite pleased with the results.

We set up the wheelbarrow in the backyard with dirt and scoops (found these at Target) and some tomato plants from the local nursery.  We tried to grow our own from seeds as a fun project for the kids, but this just wasn't meant to be.

Then I had made paper pinwheels following these instructions which I had each child's name attached to.

We had a guess the seeds game set up which only a couple of the kids played, however I was amazed at how good they were at guessing the seeds correctly.  We also had a puppet craft and a clucking chicken craft.  The clucking chicken was a huge hit.  I had printed out a bunch of farm themed coloring sheets and had those set up with crayons and markers.  We also had a Feed the Pig game which was simply a cute little pig garbage pail I had found at Meijer and some bean bags we had.  Then there was a Tractor Races game which was just a board set up and some small John Deere tractors to race down the ramp.

We served lunch for the kids which included Pigs in a Blanket, also known as bagel dogs which we kept warm in the crock pot.  Popcorn, watermelon and corn on the cob was also on the menu.  

For dessert the kids enjoyed dirt cups.  I loved the carrots in the dirt which I had found here originally.

While the adults had carrot cake.  This carrot cake is one of our favorite recipes which I make every year for Easter, so I was happy to be able to pull it out again so soon.  You can find the recipe for this Carrot Cake at Taste of Home.  Just a note, I prefer mine more cake like and bake it in a 13"x9" baking dish and bake it for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

The party favors were very simple and included a homemade s'mores snack mix which we made from the Pepperidge Farm graham cracker fish, mini marshmallows and milk chocolate chips.  A homemade chocolate covered oreo with green and yellow drizzles.  My inspiration came from here. Of course we had to include a candy Cow Tale.  

This party was so much fun to plan and host.  Next time I guess I will just host a large playdate.  :)  As always, thanks for stopping by.  -Robyn

Cake Decorating Birthday Party

Choosing a theme for our daughter's twelfth birthday party was much easier than I had thought it might be.  I perused Pinterest for themes that she might like and let her choose from three.  She ultimately choose the cake decorating party, probably since this one scared me the most as I have almost zero experience with decorating cakes.  Well, as they say, no time like the present to learn something new.  I will admit that I was nervous to take on this party, but I am happy to say that I was pleasantly surprised.  

The girls were at a fabulous age for this party theme.

I choose to make each girl their own 5" round cake (they looked so darn cute).  I was very inspired by this blogger's cake decorating party.  I do not own small round cake pans, so I choose to bake 13"x9" cakes and use a round cookie cutter to cut out round cakes.  To make 12 cakes I had to bake 5 cake mixes, each 13"x9" cake yielded 5 cake rounds.  I used one cake on the bottom, and then cut one cake in half width wise and used a half cake for the top tier.  So each cake was 1 & 1/2 rounds.  

I had read that you can freeze cakes which makes them easier to frost.  I am sorry to say that this was not the case for me.  The cake still crumbled while we (my mother was so kind to come save me from the icing debacle that ensued) iced them.  While this did cause some panic, they still did turn out pretty cute.  So sorry that I do not have a picture of them frosted.

A friend was kind enough to share her recipe for cream cheese buttercream icing.  This was a fantastic icing which I will absolutely use again in the future.  I placed each cake on a Wilton 8" cardboard cake round that I found in the cake decorating aisle.  I iced the cake with white icing and then divided the rest in half.  One half was tinted light blue, which actually looked more like green (oh well) and the other half was pink.  I used the Wilton disposable icing bags with a decorator tip, there were a variety for the girls to experiment with.  I had seen a tip on Pinterest to use a  twist-tie to seal the tops which helped, but we still had many an icing explosion.  I would have loved to have been able to share photos of the decorating, but I was busy cleaning up icing and sadly was not able to snap any.  However, the girls were very talented, and the cakes looked amazing, much better than anything I could have created.  Every girl had a bakery box with their name on it to take their creation home to share with their family.  I created the labels in Word and just printed them out.  I thought that they needed a little finishing touch so I made some cupcake wrapper flowers to dress the boxes up a little.

After they were done decorating their cakes the girls voted on their favorites in three categories; Most Colorful, Best Design and Most Creative.  The winners were awarded a cupcake wrapper ribbon award. 

  As the girls were arriving to the party we played a Name that Cake game that I found on Etsy.  I altered them so that they were not for a bridal shower, but rather a birthday party.  Again, the girls amazed me at how many of these that they guessed correctly.  The winner took home a sock cupcake prize.

After the cake decorating the girls played Bingo for prizes. I photocopied Bingo cards and then used leftover scrapbook paper from the Happy Birthday Banner that I had made to make them party worthy.

The Bingo prizes were baking themed and were made with baking bowls and utensils from the dollar store and baking mixes from the grocery store.  The girls were very excited to win a prize...the brownie bowl was the favorite.  To ensure no hurt feelings once a Bingo was called they drew a number and all the prizes were numbered with corresponding numbers.  If someone happened to wind Bingo more than once they could keep their prize or trade it in for another prize.

This basket included a mixing bowl, measuring cups, cupcake liners, sprinkles and a chocolate cake mix.

These were the cookie mixes with measuring spoons and a cookie cutter.

This was the brownie basket which included a mixing bowl, spatula, cupcake liners, sprinkles and of course a box of brownie mix.

There were two of the bath poof cupcake prizes.  The bottom is a ramekin dish, and the bath poof is topped off with a lollipop.

These were the numbers for the drawing of the prizes.

I choose to keep the food simple since the party was after lunchtime.  We served little finger sandwiches that were either turkey & cheese or ham & cheese and were marked with little washi tape flags.

Then we served a veggie tray with ranch veggie dip and hummus and crackers & cheese.  Then of course we served cupcakes.

For drinks we had pink lemonade and chocolate milk...the pink lemonade was the big winner.

Here is a shot of our dining room with the tables all set up.

I made a Happy Birthday Banner using the free printables from this site.  I have used her site in the past and love how they turn out every time.

I also made these adorable tulle pom poms using this tutorial and absolutely love them.  They were perfect hanging from our dining room light fixture.  They are now hanging in my daughters room as they were just too cute to put away.

Since they had a lot to bring home I decided to make some cute bags to take everything home in.  I found these on Pinterest and thought they would be easy enough to whip up.  Well, yes they are easy, but took forever to do since I am such a master procrastinator.  In the end I am thrilled that I made them, but they did take the most amount of my time.

We made simple little party favors for each of her guests using a pack of gum and trendy little hairbands that I made using this tutorial.

After the party was over there were a couple of left over cakes for the boys to decorate which I was able to snap a few pictures of.  As you can see the cakes were frosted in white and the decorator bags with the blue/green and pink frosting.  They loved decorating the cakes just as much as the girls, truly this is a wonderful idea for any age group, just depends on how much mess you can handle.

Thanks for sticking with me this long, as I know this is a long post.  Hope you enjoyed reading along.  This was one of my favorite parties and so happy our daughter enjoyed every part of it.