Buggy First Birthday

For Penny's first birthday, I decided to do a Bug theme. I didnt want it to be too cutsie, but I also didnt want it to be too realistic or yucky looking.

I made low sugar banana bread frosted with mashed banana and PB2 to hold kiwi slices on to make a green caterpillar with blueberry legs.

For cupcakes I went with super simple dirt cups (cake, pudding, gummy worms, chocolate rocks and green coconut grass)

One activity was building bugs out of craft supplies. 

At this table we also had some headbands and fuzzy sticks to make antennas. 

We also had Digging for Bugs

And bug jar decorating

this little fella felt right at home

For food I made a variety of buggy foods:

 

the ladybug bowls were leftover from the Ladybug Birthday

 

I was disappointed that this package of butterfly pretzles were nearly all broken :(

I love that I got another opportunity to use my Ant dip bowl! (normally it is only used on Aunts Day)

 

some of them are on bendy straws to be safer for kiddos, 

the rest are on skewers because they were much faster. 

 

A great tip if you cannot find or don't want to spend money on special themed cups, stick a themed sticker to the cups! I had bunches of these stickers super cheap leftover from party favors. 

To drink your beetle juice, you need:

(which is the curly sucking tongue on some bugs)

 

These were Twinkies with white yogurt pretzels as wings. The antenna and eyes were in a kit meant for bumble bee cupcakes I had picked up on clearance. 

These were nestled in some BitOHoney candies

The chocolate bees were just yellow candy melts striped onto pre-made chocolate pretzels. 

To avoid too much sweet, half had cream cheese and diced ham

I used a random collection of buggy stuff for decorations and supplies:

On the tables I laid out astroturf and plastic bugs and flowers. 

(we reuse this astroturf for Superbowl parties, which justified the cost)

I didn't get a picture of the favors but I had bug themed rattles and bee bibs for each of the babies. The bigger kids got a bag of random buggy stuff from Oriental trading. 

Blueberries for Sal 3rd Birthday

I love the book Blueberries for Sal so even before Ellie's 2nd birthday, I knew I wanted to do a Blueberries for Sal Party for her 3rd.

For anyone who doesn't know the book, here is a quick run down.

Once upon a time a little girl name Sal and her mom go out to Blueberry Hill to pick blueberries to can for the winter. Sal has a little tin pail and manages to get 3 berries in before getting distracted eating berries. Meanwhile Little Bear and his mother are eating berries on Blueberries to fatten up for winter. I wont ruin the rest of the book for you.

In addition to the obvious blueberries and bears in the theme, I decided to go with Mason Jars, tin pails, and blue gingham for the decor.

The plan for the cake backfired because my cake girl's daughter was in the emergency room the night before the party and couldn't finish the blueberrry cream-filled cupcakes and large tin pail cake. I bought plain green frosted cupcakes from a local grocery store bakery and put 3 fresh blueberries or 2 teddy grahams(one small one large) on each one.

We also had cheesecake with blueberry pie filling served out of a mason jar. 

(I failed at getting a picture)

Blueberry yogurts on ice in a tin pail.

Blueberry Lemonade

The recipe was literally "Simply Blueberry Lemonade" with a bag of frozen blueberries floating on top. 

I found these adorable little chalkboard mason jar signs at Craft Warehouse. 

You can see the blue gingham in the background, I got a huge piece of fabric at a yard sale for $1. 

Under the cupcakes on on the favor table I put some circles and blue gingham designed scrapbook paper I had bought for the invitations that I didn't end up using. I got the little tin pails at various thrift shops and a bunch from Oriental Trading. 

Teddy Grahams and fresh blueberries (of course)

And for a break from all the blueberries, fresh fruit salad.

For activities, we had teddy bear shaped wooden picture frames to paint:

And a water table full of "blueberries" and tiny pails for scooping. 

(water beads)

The party favors were a variety of second hand teddy bears with blue ribbons and little jars of blueberry jellybeans. 

Everyone enjoyed the party! 

Casino 50th Birthday

I co-hosted a surprise 50th Birthday party for my Aunt. 

We had Kielbasa Kickers

Jackpot Cherries

Texas Holdem Jalapeno Dip

Poker Chips

Roulette Balls

The sweets table 

The cake by Haute Cakes and Creations of Aumsville Oregon

We used playing cards, black red gold and green decorations, poker chips, play money and wrapping paper.

The life of a Cupcaketree

I love my Cupcake Tree. I has served me very well since our wedding 2 years ago. 

Our Wedding 

Cupcake details here. Special thanks to Tresha of Pink Princess Cakes for her help frosting cupcakes and the amazing job she did on our top cake and bride and groom cupcakes. 

The next wedding was Tresha's she did an amazing job on the wedding cake, cupcakes and grooms Reese's cake. This shows how a simple plain Cupcaketree can still be elegant.

The next wedding was my brother and his wife. The theme was all colors, a rainbow! 

I knew I wanted to use the Cupcaketree for more than just weddings so I devised this set up for our Superbowl party. Thanks again to Pink Princess Cakes for the football cupcakes. 

Next came Ellie's Ladybug 1st Birthday Party. The top cake was a no sugar super healthy cake by Pink Princess Cakes. she made cupcakes of the same recipe for all the other babies and toddlers and it was sooo yummy. 

A Lego Birthday Party (instructions to build at that link) for my nephew. I switched out the risers for posts made of Megablocks for the Lego Theme. The stickers on the rounds have the Lego logo printed on them to make it look like a building base. ( I cannot take credit for the adorable cupcakes or top Lego cake, they were done by my aunt)

The next party was an Around the World Amazing Race party for a friend's birthday. The Dessert table was Europe themed, so the German chocolate cakes got a German Flag inspired cupcake tree.

The most recent use was only 2 of the middle layers to make a platform for the Strawberry Shortcake house cake, also done by Pink Princess Cakes

For a nature-inspired simply decorated wedding reception

I was glad I left the wood theme contact paper on the cupcake tree when I re-used it for the carousel cake: 

For this, I replaced the risers with popcorn tins covered with scraps of a table runner left over from another party, and gold swirl paper straws. The top cake is even on a lazy susan so it spins like a real carousel!  

Most of these uses omitted the bottom level, what I love about the Cupcaketree is that it is flexible like that.

A few tips for decorating. A single table cloth can be used to cover the rounds easily when the bottom is not used, possibly with the bottom if you are careful. Just wrap and tape the plastic or paper onto the cardboard side of the rounds (not the white side). If you tape to the white side, and rip the tape off, it will show through some thinner, lighter colored table clothes the next time you use it. For the risers, I just lay them flat and wrap them like a gift and then cut the wrap for the tabs to stick out and tape to keep taut. The risers do not have to be perfect. Ribbon works well on the edges, just dab hot glue every few inches, spinning the round as you go. The cupcake tree can also be spray painted according to their website. They also sell end caps for the edges of the risers to cover the cut cardboard look. If you paint the cupcake tree, you will want to cover the edges with ribbon or something.

Buy it here:
http://www.cupcaketree.com/

Watermelon Party

I failed at getting enough pictures of the Watermelon decorations, but here are the ones I got. I had some gingham decorations left over from last year's Butterfly Picnic Aunts Day to use.

The spread of food.

 Ham/cheese tortilla rolls, and watermelon/feta/basil/balsamic appetizers (and some with mozzarella)

Fruit salad, heavy on the watermelon

 Watermelon Cake

 Watermelon Punch with a slice of frozen watermelon floating in it instead of ice.

 Centerpieces, individual size watermelons, scraps of $1 shelf liner from dollar tree, some scrap red gingham, watermelon and ant stickers. Bowls of red m&ms with some chocolate covered jelly bellies mixed in (to look like watermelon seeds) and some watermelon Jelly Bellies

Sprinkle Shower Decorations

I got to help a friend make decorations for a baby Sprinkle she was throwing for a friend. 

the cupcake holder came with the scallopped edge trim which we thought looked like clouds. the drops are hearts cut out with a cricut and folded in half. The umbrellas are also cut with the cricut. 

The diaper raffle ticket can 

a banner sign. we used the cricut to cut everything besides the large cloud.

these clips were for a baby shower game where you cannot say baby or someone steals your token, the guest with the most tokens at the end of the party gets a prize. similar to the butterfly ones I made for the Butterfly Bridal Shower

we made tissue paper poms for clouds and hung rain drops from the bottom with fishing line. 

Super Mario Birthday Card (or Invitation?)

My **Favorite** nephew had a Super Mario Galaxy Birthday Party this year. This was his birthday card.

 

 

Instead of a vine piranha plant coming out of a ? block, it came out of a 7 block.

 

 I used my friend's Cricut Gypsy. She had the "rivet block" (I think that's what it was called), the leaf, the 7, the circle and the < shape. I lined up the leaves with dashes to cut out from a tag cut. I cut vinyl rivets out of leftover vinyl. The plant head was cut from polka dot paper and constructed using 2 mirrored heads glued together. The vine is dark green curling ribbon. I hand wrote the message. I cut 2 blocks out and sandwiched the plant in between, carefully taping them together so that the plant wouldnt get stuck.

My original idea was that these could be invitations, but it was a little too time consuming for multiples. The envelop was a reused envelop from a previous card, I had leftover red polka dot napkin rings that I used to cover the previous name, and more ribbon to fancy it up.

You may see some decorations in the pictures re-used from Rachel's Super 25th  Party!