Lets go on Safar... Devin turns 10

Well another year has passed and we have had another big birthday bash!! When I sat the kids down and said OK its party planning time what themes do you want Devin was up first! He said something with animals so we did a safari! Devin is my step son in case you didn't know and so we decided to combine parties with his mom and her family to make it extra special this year! It was a HUGE success and we had a huge turn out! Lets jump right in shall we?

I am all about cheap, crafty, DIY , and trash to treasures! so I took a trip with little money to Michael's,  and Joann's and found this lot of goodies for little $$ in fact most of this was in the dollar section and it was 40% off... yeah God coordinates with Michael's for me when I have parties.. it never fails their dollar bins have my theme... can you believe they had Nat Geo animal stuff!! (cupcake liners.. yes I know!) My mom spotted the zebra burlap at Joann's and I was off to a great start!

Welcome to the safari... of course we start with the front door :)

So this is the most last minute, easiest wreath ever, your not going to believe me but its literally just coffee filters wrapped around a hay wreath then a bunting i had left over from his cake bunting and a card that was in the pack of cards I bought at Michael's in the dollar section. I had not planned on even doing a wreath but had the stuff laying around so I put it together in literally five minutes.

I have this pallet on my porch and as the seasons change I add buntings and decor to give some life to the porch so I just clothes pinned the cards (out of the stack from Michael's dollar bin ) to twine.

One thing Veronica and I (Devin's mom) had trouble with from the get go was finding a location... Since Devin is a March baby the weather does not always cooperate, hot or cold?? We just couldn't bank on either... So we needed in doors after searching and searching and searching.... we finally had to land at our house BC everyone else had the same idea as we did for march parties. With us combining parties we were looking at anywhere from 50-80 people.. um I have a 1500 square foot house y'all.. how will this work... So I took out my couches and coffee table and big chair and put them on the porch and set up three tables just like this for the kiddos.

I wanted something that cost me little money but was safari themed as a center piece.. I have collected coke bottles and have them on shelves in my kitchen for some time so i thought i want buntings , cause I LOVE THEM so I wrapped canvas around them, twine ropes and made little buntings.. it actually cost me no money although it took some time it was very simple.

 

and the adults come to our little section over here for their tableware. I LOVE my old ladder, I change this out with decor as the seasons change as well :) it works great for party decor.

now on to the main table.....

the bunting.. one of my favorite things and a must at every party!! It was literally pics i found online, printed them off attached them to twine and a coffee filter with a clothes pin and then cut up that PERRRTY zebra burlap we found at Joann's! WALLA!

enough with the bunting, lets talk about the goodies on the table... remember those fun little cupcake liners! well here they are! Cute little cupcakes or "snake cakes" as I named them... 

 

 

 

 Jungle juice aka lemonade

aren't you just loving all these cute little labels?? I found them for free at pottery barn!! here is the link if you wanna throw a safari party of your own they have a whole kit!!

duct tape and water bottles equals winning.

Safari cake, with a new baby around I didn't want to do a bunch of fondant and time consuming hard cake, so I started searching pinterest and found one similar to this and just knew it was perfect! I added crushed vanilla wafers instead of peanuts like the other cake and I added a little green twine hay stuff (not sure what its called but its at Joann's for two bucks!!)

safari party favors! Bubbles I found online for super cheap and peeled the labels off and wrapped card stock and twine around them, snakes , tattoos, stickers, and safari coins!

stored the favors in this super cute bird cage of my moms! Its march so the Easter stuff is everywhere so I bought a bag of 35cent Easter grass :)

set up a little station of safari bug tattoos for the kiddos with my baby wipes (we have a four month old so I had bought these for around the house to put on the coffee table some time ago and thought hey that would be perfect for the kids to put tattoos on with so I don't have to mess with water or cold rags!! ) wrapped in canvas twine and duct tape :)

Jungle Face Painting!!

Kaitlyn and Parker! (Parker refused to smile after he got his face painted like a tiger.. he was in character!)

is Bradyn not just adorable??!

and the main event!! we had the zoo bring out and animal and the birthday boy picked a hyacinth macaw. Her name is Glory and she was a blast to watch and learn about!

all the kids were a little intimidated by her!

 

She was a hoot :)

I hope you enjoyed our Safari party I know the Birthday boy did!

Happy 10th Birthday Devin!!

Happy Birthday to me today I turn 3 : Dr. Seuss Party Part 1

My son Parker's birthday was coming up (and when I say coming up I mean 6 months away lol) and I began to think about a theme for him. I chose Dr. Seuss because this was going to be the last year mommy could pick as he was becoming a big boy with big opinions. I adore Dr. Seuss always have Parker was actually thing 2 for Halloween and my whole family dressed up as "thing _________"(whatever Parker called them, I was thing mommy and so on) so I knew this theme could be awesome. With a lot of pinterest and research my creative juices were flowing. I am just going to throw you right into the party because overboard is an understatement here. I probably am going to have to break this party down into at least two parts maybe more because the party was so detailed and big. Here is Part 1 Lets go inside shall we?

The front door: I made Parker's wreath out of a pool noodle that I duct taped together. It saved me 7$ from the foam wreaths and I found it at Dollar tree for $1 I wrapped it in yarn and decorated it. added a pic of him and a quote and walla. I found this cute door seuss characters at the parent teacher store so they had to be mine. Then I just made a billion flag buntings for his party and this one got hung here. balloons of course to add to it. And Welcome to seussville.

Parker: Today you are you! That is truer then true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!

Next lets walk right into the Favor table because it actually was the next table you would see when entering the house. I decided I wanted to do favors that were a. like Dr. Seuss books and characters and b. have some different stuff. I set  up the favor table as "Seuss Mart" the kids could then go get one of each favor and fill up their "Seuss Mart" bag with goodies.

Ok this is where the huge details and multiple blogs will probably have to kick in. I know we just started. I will post several pics in this Part 1 and then have an actual blog with all of Seuss Mart pics.

I pretty much made everything for his party that I physically could. This back drop is made out of paper plates glue onto one big foam board I got the idea here. The top is wrapping paper draped down with labels, signs, pictures, and buntings added for decor.

"Why fit in when you were Born to stand out" - Dr. Seuss

Here are a FEW of the party favors. Again I will post another blog Here with the entire party favors and Seuss Mart.

The Jar that is holding these silly straws actually says "sip sip hooray its Parker's big day"
I got these free printables for the straws here i loved the idea and it went so well with this theme

I got this cute idea on pinterest from this website.

I saw this cute idea on pinterest too from this site. I found the mustache mold on amazon for like 2 bucks. It was a simple treat and yummy made out of yellow candy melts :)

there were so many more favors but this is all I am taking up on this blog. The last pic of Seuss mart is a pic of the favor bag and every favor the kiddos got.

each child got a toothbrush, a lorax chocolate mustache, a silly straw, a bag of gold fishes, a striped lolly pop, a thing of green tic tacks labeled Grinch pills , a gummy fish skewer, and a chocolate turtle for yurtle the turtle.

another cute pinterest idea was the birthday book. I actually had already ordered Parker this book off amazon and was giving it to him as a birthday present but then I saw that this lady on her blog (cant find the blog now to reference the book sorry lady) had people from the party sign the book for the birthday boy! I loved it!

Ok on to the next decor. I am going to skip to the Photo booth which was out back on my patio. I will have an entire blog with ALL the photo booth pics here because there were so many but for now here is the back photo booth set up. The Photo booth is literally two rolls of Striped wrapping paper taped up on my back porch with a photo booth bunting I made and tissue paper flowers hanging from the top which I also made.

a few of the pictures in the photo booth. Now on to the fun props that were used!

Beside the photbooth was a big dresser we actually lucked out and found the day before for $20 at a yard sale!! here is the Photo booth prop sign for folks to understand what this cute little dresser filled with goodies is all about!

Seuss buntings everywhere to add to the theme a chalk board for the booth to say whatever you want even your favorite Seuss quote and Lorax mustaches I mean really we love Lorax! You can find the template for them here

The last three photo booth props are cat and the hat hats which I found at Michale's during Dr seuss' birthday week and glued them to dowels big money found at the dollar store and then of course my favorite Parker faces!! These were big pictures I got printed off at staples a whole page of them for 5$ (called an engineer print, here is the blog on how to do that) I made little party hats for his head out of cute paper added the "happy birthday to me today I turn 3" label. I just glued these to dowels. I loved them!!

Parker Faces LOVE THEM!!!

here is the pull back of the photo booth props and the activity table which brings me to the next part of the party. The Activity table. we can just jump right into that.

Here is the activity table. It included a bubble refill station. balloon pong which the kids could color their paddles. and a fish bowl of water guns. beside the table were water balloons.

The large picture of Parker is the same kind i did and talked about at my step sons birthday Party its an engineer print from staples it was 5$ its four foot by three foot! this pic was one I took of Parker at my brothers wedding. I love these pics. they add so much to the party!

Activities are fun pick one!

Balloon pong.. saw this on pinterest too... remember when you and your brother or sister or cousin or friend or whoever used to hit a balloon back and forth and whoever made it hit the ground died?? here is balloon pong!  this is paper plates glued to sticks I chose to do plane plates so the kids could color them. They use these as paddles and pass a air filled balloon back and forth. Fun right!

another brilliant pinterest idea from this site. So i got cheap walmart cups a cute jug labeled it bubble refill station filled it literally with all the bubbles I could find in my house  then I collected all the bubble wands I could find put them in a cute bowl and walla bubbles!

Ok to be totally honest with you the kids did not TOUCH this table lol.. the reason why?? oh a little thing called a GIANT water slide... so on to the next section of the yard (don't worry we will get back inside to the food and cake)

"the big Kahuna"

This slide was a hit and sooo much fun!! Parker actually picked it out and I love how the colors and two red fish matched his theme!

we had a section of baby pools which I will have pics of below. In front of the baby pools was the lorax and his truffula trees. I know its spelled wrong on the sign :( I  was in a hurry as usual and am not a speller. sorry.Anyway I will have a tutorial up later on how to make the truffula trees they were crazy cheap and easy (messy but worth it) I like these better then any other ideas Ive seen out there. The wonderful little Lorax was drawn by my awesome sister onto card board so he was free :)

I saw this idea here

I will have more pics of this section on the tutorial on how to make the trees.

"Jungle of Nool swimming pools" We actually had a large baby pool that was supposed to be set up here too but we had issues and when we rushed that a.m to take it back they were sold out being Memorial day weekend and all.. so two baby pools is all we had for the littles.

Compliments of my sister again for the wonderful Horton drawing again drawn onto card board so therefore free...Love free.

Isn't Horton so cute :)

next over to the "who ville car wash" Thanks to my lovely husband who built this for the kiddos. I actually had him build this several weeks before the party because it was just soo cool. here is the tutorial on how you can make your own... its all diy and sooo cool!! best sprinkler ever! we added a road to ours to make it cuter and more fun. More pics of this on the tutorial.

So we have a trampoline. The kids love it. decided I would incorporate the trampoline into our world of Seuss. SOOO Dr. Seuss has a book called "great day for up" i covered the trampoline in balloons. I really love the turn out.

Love my Seuss buntings too.. they just added so much to the decor I think!!

Ok now onto the last section outside... this is one of my favorite pieces of decor that I thought the kids would LOVE but they didn't barely pay it any attention either.. that darn water slide....

Have a gander at "Parker's who fort"

we had some issues with the door staying on.. don't mind my sister in the background getting it all decorated up. My dad built this for Parker out of foam I ADORE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I mean does it get more Seuss than this?

Our poor door.. I wish this was made of wood and could be a permanent playhouse for the kids.... hmmmm idea... project gramps ??? Moving on.

here is my DIY lorax pinata... I absolutely loved this little addition to the party and it was pretty easy (messy messy) to make, here is the tutorial on how to make this on your own.

Now back inside... I told you there was alot.

love Dr. Seuss quotes.

soooo I used alot of old soup and food cans (of course I cleaned them out after we used them) covered them in paper and stuck them to things to make levels and stands. Wrapped the silverware in fun napkins i found on sale back at Christmas and walla a cute table of things you must have at every party with food!

Onto the main table. The Food and Cake!

The striped awnings if you will over the windows are that cool wrapping paper again. Tissue paper flowers and more buntings!

Prepare yourself this is about to get overwhelming.. and there is no way I could do all of the food even on several blogs.. so on Part 1 I will highlight some of the food and add some more photos in Part 2

The Cake :) Parker loves balloons LOVES them, and I found a couple cakes on pinterest I loved and so I kind of combined them and made my own. I love how it turned out.. the 3 is a balloon did you get that?

 Parker's Cupcakes. Parker always says P is for Parker... he says it everytime he sees a P and so I saw someone do this for the ABC's of Dr Seuss :)

lots and lots of snacks and food. And it was fun thinking of rhymes and way to incorporate foods with Seuss books.

& of course we had green eggs and ham

& hop on pop chicken

remember the sneetches?? Yummy Star belly cake pops!!!

ok I was soo upset with how these turned out I had a huge vision for them, BUT we could not find the right cotton candy and it was so hot the second I put the cotton candy hair on the icing it starting to melt down. So anyway these would be soo cute for a winter party and with carnival cotton candy which we could not find!

o, you know another food table..... Ok Im stopping soon with the food... I mean really.

Now lets blow out the candles!

we opened presents as one of the first things becuase we got Parker and the kids a puppy :) My camera actually decided to have an error and quit working that morning so I had to use one my mom had it was a good camera but I am used to  my other. So anyway! I hope you enjoyed checking out this party. I know we really enjoyed having it and I know I know I went overboard but anything for my babies! Check back for Part 2 for more pictures and details.

Happy Birthday Parker!!