Bridging the Big Pond: Emma's 2nd Birthday: Part II--Party Prep

Choosing a theme for Emma's 2nd birthday party wasn't hard for me. It was clear we had to do a puppy dog theme, given how much she loves puppy dogs! I made an invitation with all kind of fun puns. I chose to just send it out via email (just didn't have time this year to get it printed and get them in the mail).

The harder part of her party planning was deciding what kinds of games/activities we would do and what kind of food to serve. I chose to hold the party in the morning, so no need to make a full lunch for everyone. However, I figured a morning snack level of food would be appropriate. I scoured Pinterest like I usually do when party planning and saw quite a bit of creativity in food spreads for puppy-themed parties. However, I wasn't feel inspired by much of it, with the exception of puppy chow (aka muddy buddies) and the "pupcakes" (more on the cake later). The best part about puppy chow for a sweet treat was that I could make them gluten free using rice Chex cereal so it would be good for my guests that can't have gluten. Beyond that, I decided to go with some of Emma's favorite snacks...fruit (especially strawberries) and cheese and crackers. Simple, but always good. I also picked up some Scooby fruit snacks and juice boxes to set at each kid's place setting.

The food table.

I went to the local party store to also get some inspiration, and was so happy to find they had party supplies in a puppy dog theme, which made the rest of the party planning a lot easier! Not to mention, the plates with the puppy dog face (with appropriate puppy dog eyes) looking right at you was totally adorable! I knew that Emma would love that!

The place setting for each of the kids. How cute is that puppy dog face!?

The colors of these puppy dog party supplies wasn't the pink and brown that I had originally planned on, but it was a nice color theme and so I chose to abandon my original plan and use the purple and aqua then as the main party colors. These party supplies had a variety of matching party favor options (I chose pencils and small bubbles with puppy dogs and labels matching the theme) and some puppy-themed games too. I got the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey style game, which in this case was a huge poster of a super cute puppy dog wearing a party hat and there were numbered stickers of paw prints for kids to stick to the poster, ideally on the spot where the puppy was holding a puppy paw print card in his mouth. I loved this for a game mostly because in my mind it was part of the party decor having such a huge and cute puppy poster on the wall. I decided for the other activities we could just let the kids blow bubbles and then we could make balloon animal doggies too. We had done this at Evan's 2nd birthday, so I resurrected my instructions on how to do this and John refreshed his balloon-animal-making skills and got really good at making a lot of balloon puppy dogs for the kids. Some of the other parents tried their hands at it again too.

The night before the party. All the decor was out, including the giant puppy dog poster on the wall.

For the party favors, I got some clear favor bags to put the pencils and puppy-dog bubbles in, as well as some Hershey's kisses (regular in silver wrappers and dark chocolate in purple wrappers) to complete the party gift. I set a party favor bag and another small thing of bubbles (for the kids to play with during the party) at each place setting. I also found a few larger bubble wands (in matching party colors to boot!) that the dads used to make big bubbles for the kids. I would have gotten more of those, but honestly those two were the last I found at the store that day (end of summer makes finding these types of toys harder I guess). I thought it was meant to be that they matched the party colors though!

The kids table...with some bowls of goldfish crackers for the kids to snack on too.

Now back to the cake...I usually like to try to do one or two fairly simple DIY things for my kids parties. This year having been so busy I couldn't do much, but since Emma's party was on Sunday and I had family coming in for the weekend (my Aunt Linda has been a big help with party prep in the past!) I had hoped we could do the cupcakes ourselves this year. This was my first kids' party where I felt like trying to do the cake on my own instead of just ordering it. Yet, I couldn't resist after seeing this Pinterest post with "pupcakes". It seemed easy enough for someone with zero cake decorating experience at least given it relied mostly on cookies and other sweet goodies to make it work. We used Nutter Butter cookies for the ears, Nilla wafer cookies for the snout, with a brown mini M&M stuck on for the nose and black gel frosting that I drew on for the mouth, and then mini marshmallows with black gel frosting dots for the eyes. Otherwise, the cupcakes were just chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. After we made them I was so proud and excited about them. I took photos and then hid them from view so Emma wouldn't see them until her party the next morning.

One tray of pupcakes right after we made them

Sadly, when we opened them up the next morning many of them had broken ears (the Nutter Butter cookies got soft and then started sagging where they were not on top of the cupcake itself) and some sagged enough that they broke!). Luckily, at least half of them were still okay (despite saggy ears) and when we first showed the trays of them to Emma she said "it's so cute!". So that was all I needed to hear! I set out the good ones on the front of the cupcake stand and the ones with broken (perhaps "lopped") ears in the back. If I were to suggest anything different, it would be to save putting the Nutter Butters on until right before the party. Anyway, because there wasn't room for a big "2" candle on the pupcakes, I did end up ordering a colossal cupcake from the store just for her to have a candle in it to blow out.

The cakes...you can see the saggy, breaking ears if you look closely.

I had bought a "Birthday Girl" body suit for Emma to wear, and then planned on her wearing a tutu that her Auntie Sarah had given her last year. It was the cutest outfit, except for the fact that Emma did NOT want to wear the tutu. I managed to get one photo of her in it before she tore it off and so I had to quickly find another skirt to go with the outfit. She did enjoy playing with the magic wand that came with the tutu a bit longer than she wore the tutu at least. And, as I figured, Emma loved the puppy dog poster! She saw it right away and went over to it to point it out and say hi to the puppy. :)

Emma when she was still wearing the tutu.

Emma at the kid table before her party with her wand.

Right before the first guests arrived, Emma had a little tumble (I still don't know how she tripped, other than on her own foot) at the bottom of our stairs. She fell face first into the corner of the base of the wooden banister at the bottom of the stairs. Luckily she hit it with her (nicely padded) cheek and not her forehead or else there may have been blood. Rather she just cried (for good reason) and asked for ice (she always says "I need ice" when she gets hurt). Daddy helped take care of her boo-boo, which made for some really sweet photos.