Everyday working mom life

Poppy turns 3!

3/1/2014

Poppy the Birthday Girl!

Living in California, the Bay Area to be more specific, the weather tends to be nice however sometimes unpredictable in the early Spring. This year was no exception. We had been having fine weather - overcast maybe a bit chilly, but minimal rain. I planned for Poppy's 3rd birthday party to be outside in our backyard because the entire week before the weather forecast promised a 25% chance of rain. Well. 25% was all we needed, apparently! I had set up the whole party; everything was good to go outside, than the rain started. At first it was drizzling. Than it was a downpour. Clearly this rain put a huge damper on all of the cute activities I had planned for outside. Not to mention, I didn't get a ton of pictures of the decor/activities or even of the birthday girl because she was running around in our super-packed little house! Stupid, Stupid rain! On a more positive note, the kids still had fun running around and playing in the house and thank goodness for the big playroom upstairs so that the 30 kids (and adults) could be some-what dispersed throughout the house. As I have said for every other birthday party I have blogged about, I like to keep the themes gender-neutral while I can. Pretty soon the kids will be (likely) asking for specific birthday party themes so while I get to choose, it will be a theme that works for both their boy and their girl friends. For Poppy's 3rd Birthday party we went with a "Cowboy & Cowgirl" theme because Poppy just loved seeing Jessie the Cowgirl at Disneyland! Here are some of the shots I was able to get of the party & the details about them... One of the outside activities was "Horse Wranglin" where I had a wooden rocking horse and a stack of hula-hoops and the kids could try to get the hula-hoop around the horse. A few kids were able to play when the weather cleared up for a little bit, thankfully!

I hand-painted Jessie & Woody cut-outs from 4' tall standing cardboard as a photo-op for the kids... here is the Birthday Girl posing as Jessie! I didn't get any shots of Woody, sadly :-( But I still have both of them - in case anyone wants them ;-)

I love getting the kids into the party theme so I had a galvanized bucket with handkerchiefs, cowboy hats, and Sheriff badges for the kids to grab and dress up with!

For the inside decor, we kept with the blue (denim), red, yellow, and cow print themed decor. I know I sound like a broken record, but I do a lot of Amazon & Oriental Trading shopping for parties. Their prices are truly unbeatable. Between the two places I found almost all of the decor. Some of it I got from the Dollar Tree (who doesn't love it there?!) And some I made or had custom-made on Etsy. For my entry table - which is seen straight ahead when walking in the front door - I made a fabric-scrap banner with the theme colors/patterns and hung it from the front. A plastic cow print table cover lined the top of it, and then I scattered small bales of hay & small galvanized buckets to help create the high-low affect and be utilized for various stuff. One of the buckets was filled with small plush horses as a favor for the little babies/young kids who came while the other bucket was filled with small drawstring linen bags that had either Jessie or Woody on the front and I filled them with a "S'mores trail mix" which consisted of Honey Graham cereal, mini marshmallows, and mini milk chocolate chips all mixed together. Delicious! I called it "Pony Food". The balloons are all from Amazon.

This balloon was so darn cute and both the kids loved it so we kept it up for at least 2 months afterwards! Western/Cowboy/Cowgirl Party Decor

The Jessie, Woody, and Bullseye signs were custom-made by a seller on Etsy. I had small glass milk jugs (the Starbucks coffee ones that you can buy at any grocery store) with random mixes of garden flowers.

The Happy Birthday banner was made out of card-stock paper from Michael's in the party theme colors/patterns and made on the Cricut by my sister.

So, this is a bad picture. Sorry. But even if it were a good picture, it didn't turn out very well. I saw it on Pinterest and tried to recreate it and this, my friends, is one of those Pinterest Fails. It is supposed to look like Jessie's hair, and hat... Well, I totally admit, it didn't turn out anything like the one I saw. Oh well!

On the other hand, this super cute wreath turned out adorable! I bought a straw wreath from Michael's and then proceeded to give my mom the task of making it a cute themed wreath. She used the left-over fabric from the fabric-scrap banner I made and just wrapped it around the wreath and then added some wide burlap ribbon that she tied into a bow with a Jessie and Bullseye doll tied onto it. What is really cool about it is that I was able to undo it all very easily and can use the plain wreath again for something else!

FOOD!!! Keeping in the Western theme, we made life easy and got fried chicken & BBQ chicken, along with cole slaw and french fries. I also had a fruit salad and my favorite super delicious Corn, Avocado & Jalapeno salad which was mostly for adults due to the heat-level! Oh, and a side-note - there is Woody in the background! As you can see, they were brought inside due to the damn rain!

We set up tables outside with milk crate for the kids to sit on which was the perfect height.

Now, the favors! Yet another one of my "WHY OH WHY DID I DECIDE TO DO THIS??" Favors. I decided to make the sock ponies for all of the kids. Never. Again. Ha! IT was super cheap to make but, again, time-consuming. They turned out cute and were a huge hit - I tell myself that is all that matters in the end.

And last but certainly not least in importance - the desserts. Probably Poppy's favorite part - but then again, she is 3 and what 3-year-old doesn't love dessert? Poppy's favorite were the Cowgirl cookies. She doesn't eat cake or cupcakes (just the frosting) so the cookies were a huge hit. She may have eaten two of them. In 5 minutes. But who's counting, right!? My favorite were the pie pops. I will not disclose how many of those I ate... Everything turned out SO cute! The pie pops were in 3 fruit flavors, we also had cake pops in a few flavors that were decorated to match the theme, Cowgirl cookies, red licorice, kettle corn in the brown paper bags (as shown in bottom left of the photo), and Poppy's super adorable Jessie cake!