Eli's birthday party was the Saturday after his birthday. I invited all our friends in playgroup, a friend from JR's work, and our neighbors. I planned everything a few weeks before his party. That's the fun part right? The only part I saved for the last minute was baking and preparing the food. Just like last year, I made his cake. The theme of his party was barnyard animals. I picked up some plates and a tablecloth at Party Galaxy with animals.
I was browsing the internet for party favors and I came across these really cute finger puppets! I had never been on Etsy before but I think that's my new favorite website. It's basically a site where you can buy handcrafted items. I also saw some really cute party decorations but they were so expensive! I had a few weeks until the party and I came across this birthday banner on the site. I'm not usually a super crafty woman but I thought to myself I could make this. Here is the result!
I also made little candy keepers for the party bags.
Ah, and now onto the story of the cake. I started on Eli's birthday. He got to have a little piece of cake (mostly frosting) on his birthday. In total, the cake took about six hours to make. I made the frosting from scratch, lemon buttercream, vanilla cake. I couldn't get the vanilla buttercream to taste just right so i added some lemon and it was pretty good. The base was two round cakes. The barn was supposed to be make from poundcake but I made it out of rice krispy treats, as one reviewer suggested doing (it sounded good to me). The silo was supposed to be made from cupcakes, but I chose to do this in rice krispy treats also. I secured them to the cake with bamboo skewers. Everything seemed to be fine. I decorated the barn and silo with frosting and twisslers. It seemed to be leaning a little but I kept checking on it every so often and it was fine.
When I woke up in the morning to check on it......disaster! I almost felt nauseous. The barn, had indeed, fallen apart. I was so, so sad. Had worked two hours just on that barn. I texted my friend Michelle. She talked me down from the ledge (exaggeration, kinda). I was able to hold back the tears and took some of the rice krispy treats and scattered it where the cake was missing. Sprinkled some chocolate sprinkles on there and it looked like hay or something. It looked okay. Certainly not as good as it had, but Eli still loved it. That's all the mattered to me. The animals were the cutest part of the cake anyway and they were fine. In hindsight, I would have done a few things differently.
I tried, tried to get as much stuff done the night before, but could only do so much. I stayed up until 2:00am cutting strawberries. Clearly becoming a tradition cause I stayed up until 1:00am the year before. I started making the hashbrown casserole. It was smelling extremely delicious in the house. Bacon was frying in the pan and I had just finished making the cream of chicken soup (for the casserole) when JR headed out to Dunkin' Donuts to pick up the coffee and a few donuts. By the time he got back, I had put the casserole in the oven, decorated the kitchen, vacuumed the living room, taken a shower, got myself ready and got Eli ready. Phew! All in an hour's work.
I was scrubbing the last of the pans right up until our guests arrived. Once everyone started coming in, we had some food, coffee, juice and conversation. It was fun to see the kids play together. Eli wouldn't really leave my side and actually spent a good amount of time in my arms or JR's. Not sure why, must have been too much commotion for him. He's used to large groups so it must have been the excitement of everything. He kept showing everyone his cake, saying E-I-E-I-O and pointing to it. He was so excited.
After playing for awhile, we started opening presents. Eli loved everything he got. He did a good job opening presents (I'm excited to see how much better he gets by Christmas). A few of his friends tried to help him :) He got some books, a magna doodle, leap frog alphabet magnets for the fridge, dinosaur train book and toys, dinosaur bath toys and stamps, a talking play grill, bubbles and tractor. T-rex socks from Toy Story!
After opening his presents, we moved onto the cake. Eli picked the piggy cupcake as his own, so I put the two candles in (one red and one blue....the colors he can say). We all started singing and he loved it. He knows the birthday song so he was singing it afterwards for awhile. He didn't eat much cake. Actually he saw my regular piece of cake and wanted that instead of his animal cupcakes. Silly boy.
Eli tells us he's two now. It's adorable. He even tells you he has two of something (usually two paci's).
After everyone left, we played with our toys. Eli was pretty fired up so he didn't nap right away.
I was so happy with the way everything went. It was a lot of fun and just so nice to spend the day with our friends. Eli is a lucky boy!!
I've been done with this post for a while (almost two weeks) I just need to get the pictures up. I'll probably put them in a separate post.
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