Zoey's 3rd Birthday Party

Zoey's 3rd birthday was the weekend after her actual birthday. Here she is first thing in the morning on her birthday.

Since we were having her party that weekend and Scott had to work on her birthday, we didn't do much that day. However, we did get an ice cream cake for her and let her open a couple of presents.

Well, this was the last birthday where I will get to pick a theme and start planning months (and I mean MONTHS) in advance. Zoey was still young enough this year that she really didn't care about the theme, but as far as picking something that she was interested in and thought she would just love having a party designed around, it was a bit of a failure because her interests are changing so quickly these days. For her third birthday this year, I actually did a theme change midway through the planning. I had originally planned on doing a party themed around the book Brown Bear, Bear Bear What Do You See because she really liked that book and I saw some really cute birthday invitations on Pinterest I wanted to try. However, about 6 months out from her actual birthday she became really into the Lorax movie. She would sing the songs when they came on Pandora and would get excited if we asked her if she wanted to watch it. Plus I could think of tons of cute ideas I wanted to do in terms of party decorations and whatnot. So I went ahead and made the switch. The party turned out pretty cute I think, and she had fun. However, she just wasn't much into Lorax by that point. I think that month was more Scooby Doo (although that was lessening) and Mickey Mouse (thanks to our Disney trip).

Let's start with invitations. I made her a truffula shirt using some colorful pom poms and a sharpie marker. She wore this for the photo shoot I did for her invites, as well as her party outfit. I made some truffula trees using tissue paper pom poms and some small wooden dowels that I painted to look like truffula trunks. I then hammered those into the ground around her playhouse, which I posted a small sign that said Onceler. So the scene was all set for some super cute Lorax inspired pictures. The only problem was that Zoey is not a picture taking kid. She gets that from her dad. When the camera comes out, she immediately stops doing whatever cute thing she was doing or she turns away. So actually getting some pictures was not easy. However, I did end up getting two that were use able. One was in front of the playhouse and the other was on her swing. She loves to swing, so I took advantage of that to get a smile out of her. For the actual invite I used the one in front of the playhouse (the other ended up being the thank you for the favors). I couldn't really figure out a good way to do the invites using photoshop, so I went with the old scrapbooking technique and put the picture on one side of some card stock and the wording on the other.

Decorations didn't turn out quite as nice as I would have liked, but they were still cute. I took the trees from her photo shoot and put them out front in my planter with a little Lorax cutout. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing like crazy that day, so we lost them a couple of times and my sister had to chase them down in the neighbor's yard.We also lost the truffulas I had put on Zoey's Happy Birthday banner.

For the adult party favors, my sister came over and helped me make some cake balls that we transformed into truffula trees and then placed in little flower pots. I then used the other picture of Zoey I mentioned above and made a thank you card.

 

 

The party favors for the kids didn't quite turn out how I wanted them to. I ran out of time, so I wasn't able to put as much detail into them as I wanted to. Basically I took some cardboard seed pots and placed some potting soil in a small baggie and some flower seeds that I thought resembled the seed from the movie. I also made some Barbaloot Trail Mix (Teddy Grahams and mini marshmallows). Then I put a Lorax book or coloring book (depending on the child's age), some Lorax stickers, and some Dr. Seuss pencils and bookmarks in with all of that.

I ordered Zoey's birthday cake from a local home baker. I sent her a picture of a cake I saw online and she did an excellent job recreating it. I thought it would be a lot smaller than it was, so I made some cupcakes to go along with it. These came from my MDBD cupcake experiments from a few months back. I went with Dreamy Orange Cupcakes and Peanut Butter Banana Brownie Cupcakes. Needless to say, we had a lot of leftover cake and cupcakes.

Zoey had a great time at her party with her friends and family. She was spoiled like crazy and received lots of fun things to play with.

Once the majority of the party guests went home, Zoey and her cousins, Neko and Robbie, settled down for some popcorn and a movie. I think it was Monsters University. Zoey doesn't get to see her young cousins very often, so I love it when they get to spend some quality time together.