Halloween Creepy Crawlie Birthday Party

Over the weekend, we attended a Halloween Birthday party for a friend of our boys.  The birthday boy is turning 8 in early November but asked his mom if he could have a Halloween-themed birthday party - so she delivered just that this weekend. 

The kids and adults were all invited to dress up in costume - along with the kids, most of the adults came through!  Her decorations were, of course, all Halloween themed - they all looked awesome!  We enjoyed pizza for dinner and she had the buffet decorated with Halloween cookies and cupcakes. Her son was fully responsible for decorating the cupcakes - don't they look great?

Everyone was entertained by Jungle Jill who brought all of her "Creepy Crawlies" to show (and scare!) the party guests.  There were friendly ones too - like cool turtles and harmless snakes, but a few that stayed in their box like the scorpion and tarantula.

Yes, that gigantic snake on the right is a boa constrictor!

The birthday boy was able to hold a number of the critters - he did great!  He only panicked while holding the boa - he didn't hold it long enough for me to get a photo!

After the show, each child was able to choose one of the "safe" critters for a photo op.  My two boys opted against this!  But a friend of mine gave me the A-OK to include this adorable picture of her daughter holding "Teeny" the 1 year old turtle.

The party favors were perfect.  Cute jack-o-lantern takeout boxes filled with mini Halloween flashlights, spider rings, and goozing eyeballs candy - all from Oriental Trading Company.  Note that the flashlights were packaged and did not include a battery.  If you use this, I would recommend opening them and filling them with batteries before the party.  Our hostess saved the day with a large package of batteries and was able to quickly fill each flashlight with one as they were opened.

More great work from the {almost} 8 year old birthday boy - he was responsible for filling all of the goodie boxes.

It was clear that the adults and kids all had a great time at this party.  What a fun idea to make a birthday party into a Halloween party too!

Candy, Cupcakes, and Beer | Photographed & Styled by Gretchen Wakeman Photography

This post is just a tad later than the actual event.....I just realized I still had it sitting in draft mode, what is wrong with me? This party was amazing!

My friend...and neighbor, Gretchen recently styled and hosted a birthday party for her little girl who was turning the big ONE! I was pretty excited when I received the invitation telling us this was going to be a birthday happy hour. The invitation read that the birthday girl's favorite things included: after-nap playtime + bottle + snack....which = happy hour!

Beer and cupcakes were served and a candy bar was available for the kids to attack and fill up their goodie bags with delicious treats. We also enjoyed chips, salsa, chicken burritos, rice, and beans as part of our happy hour.

There was a batch of lemonade for the kids and of course a tub of beer on ice for the adults. I brought a bottle of Wilson Creek Almond Champagne for my friend - one of her favorites. She was so excited she added it to the beer tub and enjoyed during the party. Oh, and I can't forget the chocolate fountain complete with pound cake, fruit, and marshmallows. This was the appetizer for the kids....at least, that's how they understood it!

Gretchen's mom made the gorgeous smash cake for her granddaughter....unfortunately, the birthday girl wanted nothing to do with it. Couldn't even get her to dive into one of those beautiful cupcakes made by my friend. The one year old did manage to eat several of the Oreo pops!

What are 5 year old big sisters for? Well, they are there to hug you when you don't want to have your cake and eat it too.....they are also there to set up an impromptu craft table for your party guests after the cupcakes are consumed and gifts are opened. They are available to walk around offering various treats from the candy bar to your guests throughout the party. It was so cute - and tough to resist her generosity. I never had a big sister - they seem pretty cool! I do have a sister-in-law who is older and have considered her MY big sister for the past 16+ years, she's awesome! This 5 year old is definitely a hostess in the making - her mom sets a great example.

I have included a few photos from the candy bar courtesy of Gretchen below - you'll have to check out her blog to see the rest. I took the photo of the wrapped gift and wanted to share, since we knew there was going to be a candy bar ahead of time, I topped off the packaging with a giant Whirly Pop in hopes that her mom will get some great photos of her with it. I love adding a little something extra to the top of a gift.

I wanted to include this party on my blog to give you more ideas for a great event! Enjoy the photos and get inspired!



photo & styling by www.gretchenwakeman.com

photo & styling by www.gretchenwakeman.com

photo & styling by www.gretchenwakeman.com



special touch tied into ribbon for birthday girl

 

Power Ranger Samurai Birthday Cake

Wow.  This cake was not my friend this past weekend!  I really wanted to try to cover a cake in fondant - so I did.  Ugh.   We had a trial run a couple of weeks ago on a small, round, cake - not so difficult.  For this cake, I used a 12" x 17" pan to make two layers of cake.  My son wanted a strawberry cake, so I decided to go with a store-bought cake mix.  Three boxes per layer.  Yep - it was a big cake!

Once the cake was done, I cut it to make it "head-shaped" and I did a quick crumb coat with a store bought frosting - just to seal it overnight. 

I made a marshmallow buttercream fondant a couple of days before I was ready for it.  I used an entire jar of Wilton red gel food coloring and kneaded it into a batch and a half of the fondant - my gloved hands were killing me!

The night before the party, I prepared my work surface, dusted it with powdered sugar, and started to roll out that gigantic ball of red fondant.  I needed it to be about 22" in circumference to cover the cake.  I had problems with it sticking, I kept adding more powdered sugar underneath, the hubby got involved - finally, after the third "roll out" I was ready to put it on the cake.  Then, it tore.  Like, a lot.

It was unrecoverable.  I took it off of the cake and it was covered in frosting and cake crumbs.  In a "rage" I threw it in the garbage and started cleaning up the kitchen - very loudly (did I mention I have Italian and Irish blood running through me?  It doesn't take much to send me overboard!)

The next day, with the little one in tow, I headed to Michael's to buy more food coloring then to Target for more marshmallows and powdered sugar.  While at Michaels, I talked to a store associate as I was eyeing Duff's Buttercream Fondant in a tub.  She said that it tasted good and was easy to work with - I was sold.  I still bought two more jars of the little red Wilton coloring.  Then headed to Target (quick stop at the bakery for a free cookie for the little one) and bought more powdered sugar along with 4 cans of frosting in the event that I had to mix with the red food coloring and frost the cake at the last minute.  I took the hubby's advice from earlier that morning - buy more than you think you need.  As planful as I am, it never fails that I am either at the grocery store or sending someone else to the grocery store to buy stuff I forgot when I am in the middle of party preparations!

The Duff buttercream fondant worked perfectly!  I gently placed it over the cake as best I could - and had to do some "patching".  It wasn't a round cake - it was head-shaped, so it wasn't easy!  The hubby was awesome enough to create paper templates for me to use with the remainder of my homemade fondant that I saved and made half white and half black for the mask decoration. 

Overall - the cake was a HUGE hit with the party going kids.....and most importantly, my oldest.   He overheard me on the phone several times saying that the cake....well, looked...not so good!  Every time he would quickly correct and tell me how awesome it was!

He is amazing!!!

It was all worth it!

Click on this link to check out the Power Ranger Cookies and Party Favors!

Power Ranger Cookies & Party Favors

I made these adorable, um, I mean "fierce" Power Ranger cookies for my older one's birthday.  They were part of the goodie bag for our party guests.  As I have mentioned before - I am not a baker, I really thought these were going to be harder than they actually were!  Sadly, I was so busy getting all of this baking done, a few of the photos were only taken by my iPhone (at night) - and I never remembered to go back and take a good photo of the cookies with my Canon before putting them in the favor bags!  Lesson learned....

The cookie cut outs were from Target, Ninja Bread Men Cookie Cutters.  These were courtesy of big bro who found them and ended up buying them for me!  Thanks brother!

I used a straightforward sugar cookie mix - I had enough going on, I didn't need to make sugar cookies from scratch too!

Icing cookies is not something I have done a lot of - so I found instructions on how to use royal icing to decorate cut out sugar cookies from another blogger,  Brown Eyed Baker.  They were great, step-by-step instructions and helped make my cookies turn out to be a success! 

I learned that the most important part is to use a large enough tip for the border so that when you "flood" the cookies, you don't have any "leaks"!  I had that happen a couple of times!  Five different colors were used to represent all of the Power Rangers, I used Wilton gel icing colors to get a nice, rich color - always remember to wear gloves when using these!  I learned my lesson with a variety of blues I used for my little one's 2 year old birthday party cupcakes last year.... 

Decorating underway

Red Rangers are ready to "flood"

To finish off the cookies, I took a look at a picture of all of the Power Rangers and iced on the black masks and belts.

iPhone photo!

I loved how these came out!  I went to the party store to get the little ninjas to attach to the favor bags and made the mistake of taking the hubby and my boys.  We ended up buying more Power Ranger "goodies" so the hubby put together another little favor bag that we then tied to the cookie bag. 

Cookies with Ninja attached

Cookies with Ninja attached

Final Party Favors!

Click on this link to check out the Power Ranger Samurai Birthday Cake

Choo-Choo Train Birthday Party

I recently threw a party for my little one's 3rd birthday - at his request, it was a "Choo-Choo Train" Birthday Party!  I had a lot of fun planning and executing this one!  I experienced some "scope creep" in the last few days of the party preparations, but that's to be expected!  Maybe I should just plan for that next time!

I designed the train ticket invitation in MS Publisher, I usually use Photoshop, but decided to give Publisher a try.  It was quite easy!  I found several ideas from the internet and then built it from there!  I used a small hole punch for the month and day to make it even more authentic!

For the cake, I had this design in my head - but wasn't really sure how it was going to come together until I started to decorate it!  My son wanted a white cake with white frosting!   I used Wilton Sugar Sheets to make the tunnel and the black on the railroad crossing signs, a simple black decorating gel for the train tracks, I made fondant from scratch and added some yellow food coloring for the signs, and grabbed a few items from my boys' train table to complete the look!  I also added a train ribbon around the bottom of the cake stand as a finishing touch.

I got the idea for the little round signs from Phoenix Event Planning, I did make those in Photoshop, printed 2 copies onto heavy paper, inserted a wooden skewer in between the two pieces of paper, and glued them together. 

The blue gingham plates and napkins were from Oriental Trading Company, I bought red forks from Party City and found the red bandana ribbon from Michael's. 

For the buffet, I made a train track using tan felt and cut rails out of black felt.  I used small tins to which I attached paper wheels as "snack cars" and lined up a couple of other rectangular plates behind them for serving.   On the menu I served many of my little one's favorites!  We had chicken nuggets, tortellini, mixed berries, watermelon, "train" cheese and crackers, and I made wraps for the adults as well.  The wraps were a big hit, I found the idea from On My Side Of The Room. 

For the favors, I bought red and navy bandanas as well as the engineer caps from Oriental Trading.  I was leery of the whistles from Oriental Trading based upon the reviews, so I ended up buying them from Aero1Toys on Etsy.  We had three babies, under the age of one, at the party, I thought it was a little much to give them the same favors as the older children, so I found some cute, soft, jingle balls with trains on the fabric at the LittleLadybugz store on Etsy.  I wrapped a red bandana around them and they were ready to go!   Lastly, I found these cute tags from Hello, Good Gravy! that were ready to download, print, and cut out! 

Overall, the party was a big success!  Both the kids and the parents had a great time!  Thanks to everyone who helped me pull this together!  Enjoy the photos below - special thanks to Gretchen Wakeman Photography who took most of the photos and I added a couple of my own! 

 

 

 

 

The Buffet!

The Cake!  Photo Courtesy of Gretchen Wakeman Photography at www.gretchenwakeman.com



The Party Favors!  Photo Courtesy of Gretchen Wakeman Photography at www.gretchenwakeman.com





 

Backyardigans' Surf's Up Party

At the time of this party, my son LOVED The Backyardigans' Surf's Up episode, book, you name it!  So, of course, he requested that to be his party theme.   We made a simple cake but added decorative surf boards, drink umbrella palm trees, an ocean, a beach made of graham cracker crumbs, and of course a Pablo candle - sitting on one of the surf boards!  We definitely improvised on this one - but the party goers loved it! 

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