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Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Emmeline's Third Birthday : Candyland

Emmeline's birthday is harder than it should be. It's December 12, so I have three choices as to what to do with Christmas: 1. Wait to decorate for Christmas until after her birthday; 2. Ignore it and pretend it isn't there and decorate around it; or 3. Try to incorporate it somehow. I guess I could add number 4: have her birthday somewhere other than our home, and I actually am possibly thinking about that for her fourth birthday (OMG FOUR NO FREAKING WAYYYYYY). But for her last three birthdays, I've tried to incorporate it a bit and also just complete ignore it. 

The one thing you have to know about Emmeline is that she is a sweets FIEND. She will sneak a piece of candy like a friggin' pro. She'd eat candy literally all day every day if I let her. She can have a cupcake, and then ask for "dessert" two seconds later. Hopefully she grows out of this at some point. O_o 

So Candyland was an obvious theme. We have the board game and the girls like it, but the theme was MOSTLY chosen due to her candy obsession. 

Almost everything was purchased from Amazon or Oriental Trading Company. I used a lot of the pieces from our games, too. And lots and lots of cellophane wrapping and balloons.


Chris 3-D printed these classic game pieces at his work and I painted them. They're basically my favorite.




Floor decals were really cute (and reusable!). I wrapped a ton of balloons in cellophane to make wrapped "candies."



Lanterns wrapped in cellophane to make wrapped "candy." Things wrapped in cellophane were about 90% of the decor.


 

How long did I spend hot-gluing gumballs and gummy bears to this E and 3? TOO LONG.






Super simple cake made to look KIND OF like a Candyland game board. I had big plans for this, but....um....yeah. Somehow I ran out of time. I can't imagine how. It's not like I EVER wait til the last minute for anything. 




LOL why did I put that lone "3" there? It looks awful. Literally I should Photoshop it out and pretend it never happend.



The candy necklaces were a big hit!









Carys picked out a Moana costume for herself Emmeline.


At the end of the party, the kids went absolutely bananas with the balloons. So next year's party will probably be "room full of balloons" themed and BOOM done.





Monday, April 24, 2017

Carys's Fifth Birthday : Lego Rainbow

Let's see - it's been nine months since this birthday party, a length of time during which I could have gestated and delivered a baby, so it's probably about time to blog about it.

Carys has her birthday parties for the next few years already planned out: Moana, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Unicorn, Hatchimal (?!?! we don't even have one ?!?!), zoo, ballerina. She sometimes alternates WHEN she wants WHICH party, so it's a little touch-and-go when starting to plan a theme: yes, she wants Lego rainbow NOW but what will she want in two months?! So I have to latch onto a theme and then just hope that she doesn't change her mind, because once that box of birthday stuff starts getting filled up, that sucker is set in stone and I am not re-doing everything on the whim of a preschooler.

However, Carys LOVES Legos [side note: I know the proper term is Lego bricks but OMG I'm just going to say Legos and please don't write me angry fan mail about it] [LOL as if I have fans] and has been really into them for about two years, so once she mentioned it as a theme, I went ahead and started planning - knowing that her love of the toys probably wasn't going to go away in two months' time. I tacked on "rainbow" as part of the party since Legos by themselves are a little limited in terms of decorating possibilities (for this lazy mom, anyway).

I'm going to be REAL honest here and tell you that I don't remember where most things came from or details about the party other than what I can see in pictures. I do know almost everything was purchased off of Oriental Trading or Amazon or my beloved Target Dollar Aisle (yes, that needs to be capitalized to give it the respect it deserves).


One of the things I was most excited about was this minifig photo prop. I freehand dresw it, then free-handed the letters and number and WHOOPS does that lettering ever look awful. OH WELL.


See the shirt she's wearing in this picture? I COULD NOT FIND IT ANYWHERE come party day. That's what I get for being behind in laundry, I guess.



I LOVE those forks and spoons. They're dishwasher safe so we kept all of the extras and still use them.



Dump a bunch of frozen fruit into lemonade = heaven. Hint: don't use a dispenser like this; use a pitcher. Otherwise the fruit will get stuck in the spigot and clog it.


Goodies! Lego straw cups, and a little baggie with a Lego keychain, some Target Dollar Aisle fake Lego bricks, Lego minifig crayons (omg so cute), a little rainbow striped blank notebook, and I honestly don't remember what else, nor did I apparently take a picture of the contents. #fail


I covered all the doors in tablecloths and paper plates to make giant Lego pieces.


Rainbow window cling for the front door. Which we left on for MONTHS until a letter fell off and was lost forever because who doesn't need a reminder to be awesome today?



My dad created these CARYS letters and they were basically my favorite thing ever.


 

This rainbow tassel banner gives me life.


Rainbow popcorn, rainbow fruit skewers, rainbow suckers, rainbow skittles.


The giant cardboard Lego blocks were perfect.


We have this gorgeous printing press drawer and I have no idea what to do with it. For the party, I filled it with Legos.



So I thought I'd use white chocolate and then food coloring and make these chocolate cupcake toppers in Lego colors but HEY WHADDYA KNOW you can't use water-based food coloring with chocolate because it'll seize up. You need special chocolate candy coloring. Which I did not have and was not going to go out and search for since I was doing these the day before the party. So we ended up with just regular chocolate toppers. These molds are from Amazon.



I'm pretty proud of this cake. Made using marshmallow fondant, which I discovered with Carys's third birthday and have used for everything since.



Blowing out the candles! (And how amazing is that "5" picture in the upper left??!?!? It was yellow, but I photoshopped it to be rainbow for the party.)

 

I don't have a lot of pictures of the kids at the party, because apparently at this age they all just run off and play independently without you.





 I made EVERY SINGLE PERSON at the party take their pic inside the minifig photo prop. But I'll only humiliate my immediate family by sharing our pictures.



Hey look! The post is finished and we haven't even reached Carys's sixth birthday yet so all in all I'm going to call that a WIN.