Bailey's Super Sweet 2nd Birthday Party
Saturday, December 11, 2010
For Bailey's 2nd birthday I went all out on her Olivia the Pig theme. I crafted some awesome piggy party hats, a really cool Happy Birthday banner... gosh I wish I had a cricut machine! and set up three tables.
Table 1: Nacho bar w/ queso, taco meat, RED salsa, RED and Black chips (and some normal ones), sour cream, jalapenos, guacamole. The nacho bar was mostly for the adults... a nice change after eating turkey all weekend. and for the kids we had PB&J sandwiches cut into star shapes with RED strawberry jelly, a fruit tray, and Pigs n' a blanket (all beef little smokies, so no pigs were hurt in the making of this buffet). Olivia Party hats each in its own special design, and awesome RED and WHITE striped cups with twisty straws for each of the littles to enjoy juice, water or milk.
Table 2: Present table with Bailey picture books for guests to view and RED and WHITE striped party bags. Party bags were filled with Olivia coloring pages printed out from the Nick Jr web page, play doh, Crayons with Olivia sticker that said thank you for celebrating Bailey's 2nd bday, and Olivia stickers. Guests were also encouraged to fill up their bags with treats from the dessert table.
Table 3: Dessert table! Three tiered Olivia cake featuring the episode where Olivia pretends to be a vet. On the top tier she is checking on Edwin the Black cat and on the bottom tier shows Ian, her brother chasing after Perry the dog who is wearing a nurses hat. The middle tier reads Rule of Life #38: Just because your dog looks cute in a nurses hat, does not mean he is a very good nurse. I did a custom topper of a Black painted 2 with a tiara and pig ears. She had two custom cupcake stands made out of Holiday hat boxes. Each cupcake was individually wrapped with custom cupcake sleeve made out of scrapbook paper. Found a free scalloped template on Cake Central and spent a night catching up on DVRs as I cut out the wrappers. Some of the kids were upset when they had to be removed for eating LOL. One set of cupcakes were RED velvet and the other set were BLACK and WHITE cookies and cream with fondant puppy and kitty toppers inspired by Edwin and Perry. I had two candy jars filled with WHITE chocolate covered pretzels with RED and BLACK drizzles. Two buckets of Popcorn from the Mom and Popcorn shop in Mckinney one was RED, BLACK, and WHITE cotton candy flavored for the kids and the other a Cinnamon Bun for the adults. And the two biggest hits were the giant Olivia Sugar Cookies and the RED, BLACK and WHITE whirly pops (kids went nuts for them!). Believe it or not I didn't have much left over except popcorn because the bags were excessive.
Some of the cool crafty party features aside from the Olivia Party hats, cupcake wrappers, and birthday banner were the toddler sized Olivia cutouts that I painted. I did 5 total each in her different wardrobes from the show. The one of her in her ball gown and tiara I cute the face out so the kids could pose as Olivia. I'll post those pics whenever Candi edits them. The kids really loved that! The backside was painted as her brother Ian so the boys could play too. Bree had created custom Olivia menus for each table and Olivia food labels... each one had a different one of Olivia's rules of life that applied to the food in some way. I had two kids tables in the food room with Olivia coloring pages taped to it for the kids to color as they snacked.... they loved that. And Candi had created her custom Olivia birthday outfit, along with another matching Olivia outfit that are the cutest.
and then after I had successfully gotten each kid on a sugar high I threw them all outside to run wild with 20 or so beach balls in the RED, BLACK and WHITE colors theme. It was organized chaos. We had close to 15 kids there of all ages and they played wonderfully together. Bailey is not around a ton of kids ever so she had the time of her life running around being a monkey. Only one injury... Skylar got poked in the eye, it's not really a birthday unless somebody gets poked in the eye LOL. But aside from that the kids really enjoyed themselves and it was fun to watch. I didn't set up any games because I didn't think I could hold any of their attentions for that long, so we were just set up for coloring, ball time, pics, food and presents.
Once it began to get dark it was too cold for outdoor play. We brought everyone in for the birthday girl to be sung to and to blow out her candle, to eat cupcakes which each child had a definite preference for which animal they would like to eat on their cupcakes, and a few tears where shed over the wrapper removals because they liked how pretty they were LOL. Bailey had figured out the whirly pops at this point and preferred them over a cupcake. Then we opened gifts! She received lots of crayons, coloring books, baby dolls and Olivia loot from all of her sweet friends! Bailey passed out at 7:30 that night and slept all night long. According to the other parents, their kids were out by the time they got home. Yes, I went overboard. But everything went exactly as I imagined. The kids were super excited about each piece the party had to offer and that made me happy. But I was most pleased with how super excited Bailey was throughout the party and how much fun she seemed to be having. Even though she will not likely remember this particular party I know that it was her best night that she's had of her life so far.... and that's how parties should be.
December 21, 2010 at 6:14 PM
Amazing! Love all the decorations, the cake, and those hats are the best!
December 31, 2010 at 11:03 AM
I just did a google search for Oliva parties and your blog came up. You are pretty much super mom for throwing such a perfect Olivia party and you are also my new inspiration and hero. I will be copying many details of your party for my daughter's 3rd birthday. Thank you!!!
December 31, 2010 at 11:10 AM
If you want to see more of the pics check out the album at Catchmyparty.com search Olivia! Glad you liked it! This party was so much fun to shop for, craft for and throw together!
February 12, 2011 at 7:11 PM
i found your blog doing an Olivia search. Would you mind sharing how you made the party hats?
ayana.huff@gmail.com
thanks
February 12, 2011 at 7:12 PM
would you mind sharing how you made the party hats? i found your blog doing an Olivia party search. Thanks
ayana.huff@gmail.com
May 7, 2011 at 9:19 PM
Wow, I would like to show this party on my blog http://kinderplays.blogspot.com with the link of course:)
May 7, 2011 at 11:19 PM
Thank you for the feature!
The hats: you can order them off etsy.com. I did my own because I am a stay at home mom so squeezing in time for crafts is flexible w my schedule. I found a free template for party hats online... not sure what site just googled it. I purchased card stock craft paper, felt sheets in peach and pink, red ribbon, elastic and hot glue. Olivia's ears are not drawn perfectly straight in the cartoon or books so I didn't bother using an ear template, just free handed it using half a sheet of felt for each ear. Cut a small hole on each side of the hat and hot glued the ears to the inside. I hot glued little red ribbons on each of the ears for the girls and left some with out for the boys. Then I attached elastic for neck strap w hot glue as well. The project is easy but the cutting can be time consuming. For my birthday girl I cut out a two for her age, and trimmed the hat with ribbon. Those were worth the time put into them, the kids and parents loved them... or order them on etsy, because they were so fun!! I think next year I will order a a bday banner off etsy, lots of sellers make adorable stuff, so I can free up more time for the dessert buffet... another win!
June 7, 2011 at 7:50 AM
Just found this party on another blog and LOVE it! My granddaughter is having an Olivia party this summer. I love the cookies. Did you freehand draw the pig, or did you have a cookie cutter? If so, I want one!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks!
June 7, 2011 at 10:04 AM
I drew the pic on a piece of wax paper, you could also print one of the coloring pages on the nick jr web page and used the image as a stencil. I traced around the image on rolled out sugar cookie dough with an exacto knife, and i left out the baking soda in the sugar cookie recipe so the shape would stay intact. Once baked and cooled I spread a thin layer of cream cheese icing on the cookie tops. And to decorate I used store bought fondant leftover from decorating the cake, colored it and rolled it out and traced around the same image from the cookie dough. I placed the cut out fondant image over the frosted cookie and then painted on the face details with a paint brush and black food coloring. It was actually really easy and a quick project, plus i had everything on hand from the cake and cupcakes.
Stay tuned for her third bday :) it turns out I like planning bday parties lol