Here are the details from Jayce and Hannah's combined birthday party. I shared this post last week over at KoJo Designs, but wanted to share it here as well. The rest of the party details are here because I thought it would be good to break it up a bit. :)
Since Jayce turned 4 about three weeks before Hannah turned 1, I decided to throw a combined birthday party for the two of them. I planned for it to take place at my mom's house, which is about 8 hours away, so that she and my extended family would be able to celebrate with us. But I was a bit worried about how to plan for such a bash. What would be a good theme that wasn't too babyish for Jayce or too old for Hannah? What would be appeal to both genders? I decided to use a rainbow of color as my inspiration, patterns of red, blue, yellow and occasionally some pink sprinkled in, and went with a Hot Air Balloon and Bunting Birthday!!
To kick off the fun, I made the invitations and "thank you" stickers from free printables on this site. I loved them and just couldn't believe how lucky I was to find something so cute for free!
The "thank you" party favors were little pre-packaged smores. Large marshmallows, dunked in chocolate, dipped in graham cracker crumbs, and then in multi-colored sprinkles. Easy, inexpensive and yummy!!
For the sake of space, we decided to have the party outdoors. I'm obsessed with my mom's backyard, and let me show you why.
Well, it's because of this incredible tree, smack dab in the middle of the yard. I wanted her beautiful yard to be the backdrop of the party and this tree to be the "centerpiece" of all of the party events. So I focused on decor that would enhance it: some sweet hot air balloons and tissue paper clouds!
I roughly followed this tutorial and Mod Podged fabric to various sized chinese lanterns. I sewed up a few little muslin "baskets," and used hot glued and white cotton twine to attach the baskets to the balloons.
I strung these hot air balloons along with white tissue paper poufs around this and another tree in the yard. It was so whimsical and sweet, I just loved it!!
I love photography and have enjoyed spending the last 4 years documenting my childrens' (nearly) every move, so a photo display of the kids was high on my priority list.
I have been taking monthly photos of Hannah, each month on the corresponding month's calendar page, so I chose those photos to display. Since Jayce would be turning 4, I used a picture from every sixth month of his life. I wanted to display the photos on this white divider, but since it's plastic I couldn't use nails to hang anything from it. So I got two large empty frames, strung them with a heavy twine (doubled up) and hung them from the posts. I hot glued two rows of cotton twine in the frames and hung the photos on them with mini clothespins. I strung a colorful Happy Birthday banner above the photos as well.
As to the food, since we were grilling meat, chopping vegetables and fruit, and mom was cooking her famous macaroni salad on the morning before the party, I opted to remove baking from the to-do list. We had the Giant Eagle bakery supply the cake and cupcakes. It worked perfectly because you get a free "smash cake" if you buy a sheet cake, so each child had their own cake, and we got two cakes for the price of one!
The large cake was for Jayce and the smash cake was for Hannah, obviously.
I asked for the cakes to be left plain, other than the decadent buttercream frosting, just frosted and piped around the edges. I made bunting out of little stiffened scraps of fabric from my stash. I loved how bright and fun they were, and it warmed my heart knowing that most of these fabrics had been used to decorate my kids' rooms or clothing. A few of the flags even matched the hot air balloon stripes. (Actually, I made many more flags than I used, so I put a similar bunting cake topper and cupcake flags in my Etsy shop, if you're interested.)
Other flags were glued to toothpicks and adorned the cupcakes.
I used the same cardstock that I had used on the Happy Birthday banner to make these fun 3 dimensional hot air balloons.
I simply stacked three piece of paper together, cut out the balloon shape and sewed a straight stitch down the middle. Then I opened them up so that they were 3 dimensional and strung them around the drinks and desserts to spin in the breeze.
I was too nervous to attempt a party dress for Hannah, so instead I opted for a special birthday bib for the main event, the 1 year old cake destruction! I had made her this fun Nursery Subway Art based on the line "I've got sunshine on a cloudy day" from My Girl, and wanted her bib to have a similar theme. I found shapes online to use as templates for the appliques, used fabric scraps from her quilt, and finished it off with a big button from my mom's old sewing drawer.
I spread several colorful quilts underneath the tree and this is where we sat to open gifts,
and where little Hannah sat to dive into that smash cake!! And smash she did.
It was a wonderful day! Sunny, colorful, and happy, just celebrating the lives of my two little loves with my family. Perfect. :)
All of the decor was colorful and fun, just perfect for two summer birthdays.
