Look Whooo's Turning Two!!

Twice a year I get the pleasure of planning birthday parties for my 2 special little princesses. And each year I'm torn between what theme I should choose, types of goodies for the kids, decorations, etc.  I also always feel a lot of pressure planning parties for our youngest because she's 3 months after all the Christmas hub-bub, and it sort of sneaks up on me.  This year Miss "Buggy" was turning 2. After a bit of searching online I decided on an owl theme.  Funny how quickly things seem to fall into place once that theme is decided on!!

A lot of my inspiration for this party (like the color scheme, pink &green) came from this blog. Once I found it, everything else was cake!

I'm just going to share pictures of "Buggy's" party to start off with, since I didn't take step by step pictures at the time. Our parties really are done on a budget, and I hope others will get some inspiration from me, and know that it doesn't have to cost a lot to be spectacular!!


We started with the invitations. I found an owl SVG online and was able to cut it out with my Cricut. I then layered all the pieces together and glued a piece of paper to the back with all of the party information.

THE CAKE.. For some reason, the cake stresses me out every year.  I don't know why I have this compulsion to make the cake, but I almost feel like if I don't, all the other things I make don't matter?? Yeah, crazy, I know.  I was up the night before the party until 4 am working on this cake. I was extremely happy with it, even though it didn't look exactly like the vision I had in my mind.

The food table. I made the ribbon topiaries, the tissue paper flowers, all of the party hats, miniature fabric owl for all of the kids to take home after the party, owl goodie bags filled with pink, green & white M&M's and Hershey Bars covered with owl wrappers. Whew, that was a mouthful! LOL

I also made owl masks for all of the kids to wear. I don't know why, but I was so excited for these and I think they came out adorable!!

We couldn't get Buggy out of hers! So sweet!

I appliqued an owl I hand cut onto a party dress for Buggy. This was actually my first time w/ a satin stitch on my sewing machine (my husband just got it for me for Christmas to replace the 35 year old machine I've been using) and it certainly didn't come out perfect but I love that she matched the party theme.  She also had these bloomers to go under her dress. Her older sister had to match as well so I ordered her this shirt. They were both made BEAUTIFULLY and I would definitely recommend StickyNoodles to all of you!!

The room looked so pretty after the Hubby & I finished decorating it the night before. Streamers from the ceiling, huge tissue paper flowers that I hung from the center of the room.  We lined the tables w/ tablecovers and I had found this awesome hot pink w/ white polka dots wrapping paper that we used for a runner on all of them. I found all of the owl cups/plates/napkins on Amazon. This line is actually for a 1st Birthday, but most of it didn't have the number on it so I was able to use the dessert plates, the luncheon napkins, balloons, cups, and I even used the Thank You cards (they were folded cards, so I just cut off the front portion and wrote our note on the back of it.)

I made her Happy Birthday banner similar to the invitations. It's actually for sale in my Etsy shop because we have no more use for it, but I'm hoping someone else does.  I also made a smaller banner to go over the food table that read "Look Whooo's Two".

I usually try to make the food match the theme as well, but this year I just decided to do hamburgers & hotdogs since I had so much else to make. Of course, I did make owl cupcakes for the kids to have using this recipe. They were a hit, as well as the owl butter cookies I made:

(please ignore the cookie in the bottom right that appears red. For some reason I could NOT get my meringue powder tinted pink. This is all that would happen) =(  Only my 2nd time making frosted cookies, and while they're still  not perfect, they're a WHOLE lot better than the hot mess the last set of cookies turned out as!

 
All of the kids played "Pin the beak on the owl", & we had wooden owl masks to color after we ate which kept the kids really busy and they loved it.

This was definitely one of the parties I'll remember most. Everything turned out beautifully and I was so proud to be able to provide this party to our baby.  Now, onto the next Birthday......Strawberry Shortcake is it?? =)