A Sweet Celebration!

We celebrated Elliott's birthday last week and threw a birthday party for him this weekend and invited some of his school friends.  Since Elliott's two favourite things in the whole wide world are candy and video games, we decided to do a CANDY themed birthday party (I think the computer game party can wait a few years...plus, I like candy a LOT more than video games)!  :)

The invite - and on the back of the invites were one of the follow five pics:

I LOVE kids parties.  I especially love THROWING kids parties.  I think I went a little overboard, but that's what moms are supposed to do, right?  Right?!  Okay, maybe not, but I don't care! 

The kids arrived at two o'clock and were greeted by some pinwheels and a single balloon lollipop at the front entrance.  I found the idea for these here - they were easy to make and added a lot of candy 'flare' to the party!


Entrance to the party!

We played in the backyard until all of the kids arrived and started our party games.  Below you can see the 'Pin the Lolli on the Stick" game, and we also played Gumball race (balancing gumballs on spoons), and when the boys started suggesting playing 'beat down' (okay, I can't recall the name but it seemed a little scary!) we pulled out our limbo stick!  :)


Pin the Lolli on the Stick



Backyard decor

This is me catching Arlyn with a chocolate bar that she had opened by herself...and took a bite out of!

After the games and presents we got ready for cake and ice cream!  I've gone all-out on Elliott's birthday cake the past few bithdays, but the last one turned out so horribly (marshmallow fondant is NOT Karina-friendly!) I decided to choose my battles...and the cake was NOT one of them. I think the minute Elliott was born I envisioned having a picture of every birthday cake I made pasted inside of some sort of scrap book that he could look back on and 'ooh' and 'ahh' about (yes, I know I was dreaming), but I think the candy table was a big enough hit that it won't bug me that I had a 'flop' of a cake one year and a simple cupcakes the next! 



Cupcakes!

The candy table was one of the biggest stresses for me about this party before setting it up on Friday afternoon.  I have a hard time knowing what something will look like before I actually see it, so I was worried about the jars and the levels and if everything would work together.  But once I set it up, I was happy!  I made the risers out of heavier weight boxes that Elliott actually got one of his birthday presents in earlier that week.  I simply cut off what I needed and wrapped it in wrapping paper.  The suckers are displayed in a similar fashion and all the rest is pretty self-explanatory.

I made the flag bunting last week out of scrap fabric in my bins - what I love about this bunting is that I can hang it up in the play room once I take it down (and yes, it is still hanging in my living room at the moment)!

Yummy!

At the end of the party I had the kids come up one by one to fill up their bags with candy of their choice.  The kids, all 14 of them, were all so sweet and grateful for their candy (even though I made them all solemnly swear that they would only eat two things before they went home). 

Ahhh.  We had a lot of fun this weekend and made so many great memories!  Now...time to relax with my Honey! 

~Karina