SOCIAL MEDIA

Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Lily Grace's Ice Cream Sundae Birthday Party

Good Morning! This past weekend we celebrated our sweet girl's second birthday. I know every mom on the face of this planet says it, but time is a thief. Where did our little baby go?? 


Eating her ice cream sundae with her Dad.
Her "why in the world is everyone singing the SAME song at the SAME time??" face. She is VERY confused and it's cracking me up.

We chose to do an "Ice Cream Sundae" theme for her party and I have to say I was thrilled by how easy it was to pull together. I Amazon Primed about 90% of the things we needed which made life so much easier! These were the invitations we sent out:
(Obviously I blurred out a few things.. that isn't how it actually looked!). I ordered them from Etsy and had them printed at Kinkos. The seller from Etsy had a super quick turnaround and I really recommend her shop if you're looking for any invitations/stationary/etc. 

We chose to have LG's party at the park this year because one of her favorite playgrounds is completely fenced in and shaded, which seemed like a no brainer to us. It's a perfect spot for the kiddos to run around, climb, swing, and play and the parents can relax a little because they can't go too far. They have a pavilion with several picnic tables that you can rent out in advance and it made life so much easier!

We decided to do an "Ice Cream Sundae Bar" and let the kiddos pick and choose their toppings to put on their ice cream. We used these cups and spoons:
I pre-scooped several ice creams right before we let the kids go through the bar. Our toppings were maraschino cherries, Oreo crumbles, sprinkles, chocolate chips, bananas, strawberries, and coconut flakes. I was surprised to see that the fruit went much more quickly than the sugary toppings! We used the same cups and spoons to hold the toppings and each kiddo could spoon out however much they wanted.

I searched Pinterest for tons of inspiration and stumbled across these precious ice cream cone balloons:
I knew we HAD to recreate them for Lil's party. I grabbed her balloons from Party City the night before and put these cones together and slid them up the string. 
I tied a little knot in the string to keep them from sliding back down. Just an FYI, I had Party City put some special liquid (couldn't tell you what it's called) in the balloons in order to keep them inflated until the following morning.. totally worth it. They were starting to go by the end of her party and I know there's no way they would've lasted if we hadn't put that in. 

For her party favors we grabbed these precious little ice cream bowls and spoons:
We put each one into one of these little cellophane bags and used the twisty ties to hold it together. I loved that the twisty ties went with the polka dot theme. The bags were a tight fit, but they worked!


A few things I will take note of for next year's party: 
1. Either hire someone else to take pictures, or have a trusted friend take pictures! Once the party gets underway I am way too busy being the hostess to take pictures and am disappointed at how few pictures we ended up with. I want the birthday pictures but also want to be present in the moment with my guests and not be that annoying person who's making everyone pose for a picture every five minutes. 
2. We thought it would be helpful to have it in the morning so we could wear all the kiddos out before nap time and hopefully give their parents an easy afternoon. It worked like a charm! Lil took one of the longest naps she's ever taken afterwards which gave Dev and I a chance to recharge. From talking to the other moms afterwards, she was not the only one. 
3. Ordering everything online made it so much easier! I do not understand how moms got everything done before Amazon existed.
4. Reserve the shelter WAY in advance. When I called to reserve the shelter the woman at parks and rec told me that particular shelter is so popular it books up 11 months in advance. 11 MONTHS! That's crazy! We were really lucky it was available on the morning of her party, because I most definitely did not have this planned 11 months in advance. 

We had so much fun that I am already mentally planning next year's party. Which apparently is a good thing if I need to book the location 11 months in advance!

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