On Saturday, we celebrated Christopher’s second birthday. I had such a fun time planning his party this year. Last year, we did a family-only celebration at our house. I wanted his first birthday party to be on his actual birthday and we sang Happy Birthday at the birth minute – 4:59. It was a sweet, simple party. :) I knew then that I would want to do a big fun bash for his second birthday, though! I started planning it a few months ago, but of course I didn’t really get down to the details until after Summer II classes were over.
These were the invitations for his party. I was originally going to use a service like Shutterfly or Mixbook for his invitations, but I put it off too long and it was going to cost an arm and a leg to get them printed and shipped in time for me to mail them out. I searched Etsy for boys sports invites and came across this one, from The Trendy Butterfly. This invite was perfect and it was SO much cheaper for me to do it this way. I was super happy with the invitation.
The two weeks prior to the party, I made goodies. I had been wanting to try my hand at decorating sugar cookies. I experimented with them a few weeks ago. I tried royal icing to begin with, but I didn’t like the taste of it, so I made a last-minute decision to try glaze, which is a bit harder to work with, but tastes much better.
This was the final product – I wasn’t super happy with the way everything looked (I got in a hurry and did the white on the footballs too soon) but I though they were pretty good for my first experience with sugar cookies. I bagged these up and gave them away as favors.
My sister-in-law Britney and her sister, Manda, helped me with the party. This is the two of them putting up a “streamer wall.” Britney found the idea online and we all thought it was a really neat idea.
It’s hard to tell (and I didn’t think to get a picture close up) but the bowls on the table are a football and a basketball. We had pizza, green salad and fruit salad. The red bucket was filled with ice and Capri Sun for the kids. (We expected six kids other than Christopher, and only had one show up.)
I made chocolate cupcakes and homemade chocolate buttercream frosting. I then turned those into a Cupcake Cake shaped like a football and piped white icing on it for the threads. I think it was cuter in person than in the picture.
The pretzel rods and petit fours were on a cute baseball plate – but again, I forgot to take a close-up of it. :(
We also had yummy pizza and breadsticks!
My mom made Christopher a super-cute Birthday Crown. It had a baseball on one side of the C and a bat and a glove on the other.
He wasn’t really sure what to think about everybody singing Happy Birthday to him…
Blowing out the candles!
I’m pretty sure he only ate the icing. Ha!
I won’t bore you with pictures of all the toys – we’ll just say that there were lots of them and that Christopher is a blessed, loved little boy! I will show these because I thought they were so sweet – my brother and Britney’s gift to Christopher was a blanket that Britney made then they had Christopher’s monogram embroidered on it. He immediately laid down on it and had a HUGE grin on his face. (Although I will also say that he loved ALL of his gifts and wanted to open them all immediately and could have cared less about opening them all. Once he opened the first gift, he was good!)
We had several good friends and family members at the party!
Christopher’s Uncle Jim and Aunt Cristin drove in all the way from Joshua, Texas to be there. 
Sweet Raidyn – the only other kiddo at the party! This is my cousin’s daughter, and my aunt was nice enough to make the 2-hour drive from Texarkana with Raidyn so that they could attend. :) She also had a basketball on her cheek – I told my aunt that my cousin was probably going to kill me when Raidyn came home with a tattoo. I offered to also pierce something. Ha!
Our good friends Richie and Gina Lawry and their son Gavin and daughter-in-law Rachel were there.
Aunt B
Nana and PopPop (with a football tattoo smack-dab in the middle of his forehead!)
My parents – my mom was so nice and let us have the party at their house. I also did all of the treats at her house, because my A/C was out and I’m not familiar/comfortable with my MIL’s kitchen. 
Also – funny story about this picture: Stephen was trying to get Christopher to smile for the camera and he told him, “I’m going to get your ears!” and so Christopher was covering his ears and WOULD NOT uncover them (or smile) for the picture. He is looking out of the corner of his eyes to see if Stephen was going to get him. All of the pictures of him with my parents look like this!
People not pictured that attended were my aunt Carla, Britney’s sister - Manda, and our sweet friend Melarry.
We had a wonderful party and I am thankful for everybody who came out and celebrated Christopher’s birthday with us!
Just for the record...Uncle Bubba couldn't attend due to work. :'( However, he was sent numerous pictures and was updated regularly. He was extremely upset he couldn't be there.
ReplyDeleteLoved all the pictures. O I don't know if I told you or not but you did an excellent job planning and executing the party.