Mickey Mouse 1st Birthday Party!

The last year went by insanely fast.  Gavin has turned ONE already people!  I have no idea how that happened.  We decided to celebrate with a party because that's what we do around here when the kids have a birthday.  We have a party, the kids give mommy a theme and mommy runs with said theme.
Gavin is a HUGE fan of Mickey Mouse. He doesn't watch a lot of TV, just snippets of what Zach watches here and there, but apparently Mickey has a lot of charisma because he was saying "ICK-EEE!!" when he saw the mouse on TV at like 9 months old (he's an early talker, errr, chatterbox). So naturally, we went with a Mickey theme for his birthday party.  
As with Zach, I tried to do some stuff DIY so it wasn't *all* matchy matchy party store deluxe.  The only difference is, babies don't play a lot of party games, so it was pretty much just decorations and cake.

Use the googles people!  I found some super cute Mickey/Disney themed fonts that I used the heck out of for party decorations.  The banner was just super-sized "Mickey Ears" font and then I cut out circles and glued to some construction paper.  I used one of the magazines that Gavin had "overly-loved" (aka torn most of the pages out of) and cut out some pictures of Mickey from that and glued them on.  

I made some signs and decorations for around the house with the fonts I downloaded and some Mickey pictures I found on the interwebs.  Thoroughly using my recently discovered poster-printing abilities.  

This was on our front door welcoming the guests to the party

   

Really proud of my cornball humor here, put this sign by the hot dogs we served :)

Everybody always asks where the bathroom is so I labeled it :)

And what's a party without some goodie bags? I had the epiphany (because I forgot to order the bags for the goodie bags) that I could just print on some paper lunch sacks and get some customized goodie bags for super cheap!

Lastly the cake and cupcakes.  We all know I am NOT a baker by any stretch of the imagination. So, I got myself some boxed cake mix from Trader Joe's and used that to make cupcakes.  Then I made a sheet-type cake and enlisted the help of my very talented friend/neighbor Rena to make the smash cake.  She did a FANTASTIC job, and as she knows, she's now hired to decorate our birthday cakes ;).

The kids and babies had a blast, Gavin is still pointing at the decorations and saying "ICK-EEE!!!". So Imma call it a win :).

Superheroes like to save money too!

Last weekend we hosted Zach's 4th birthday party at our house.  He has been requesting a superhero party for about 6 months, and as per usual, mommy took the theme and ran with it :).  I did a lot of stuff DIY, both to save money, and because that's my "thing".  I prefer to do their bday parties as DIY as possible so it's unique and not like the party store exploded in our house with all the matching decorations and plates and what not.  I'm not knocking that if that's what you want to do for kiddo, it's cute, easy, and straightforward.  Not everyone has a sickness like I do :p.

The decorations were a mixture of store-bought, crafted-up, and printed-up. I used the Marvel Kids website to make some signs to welcome guests and for the games.  Their comic builder tool lets you download the pdf after you create it, so I added some heroes and some text and printed those up poster-style.  Did you know that you can change some settings in your printer setup to print out a poster of any doc?  I learned that last year before Z's party, and I swear it changed my life lol.  

Last minute (the night before) we were working on the nightscape buildings to "set the mood" in the entryway.  This is just black construction paper cut out like building silhouettes with yellow rectangles glued on them to make like lighted windows.

Right off the bat I knew I wanted to make superhero capes for the kids, sooo easy, unique, and what kid doesn't want a cape?  This was a lot cheaper and easier than it sounds.  I went to Jo-Ann's and got 6 yards of red broadcloth.  I used my handy-dandy Jo-Ann app and saved 50% on this, so that cost all of $12 for 8 kids.  There are patterns you can buy for the capes, but I am way too stubborn and cheap to BUY something I can do myself.  So I took a big piece of Zach's easel paper and sketched out a pattern for the cape that I used to trace out on the fabric.  I toyed with finishing the edges of the capes but decided it was too much work for too little gain, so I just cut them out, slapped on some sticky velcro dots for fasteners and called them done.  Then of course I couldn't just leave them at that, I like to make something personal for the kids to take home, so I decided to add their initials, superhero style, to the capes.  I was very picky as to how I wanted them to look, so I decided to just draw out the letters, thankfully there were FOUR kids with "C" as their initial so it was relatively easy :).  I picked up some yellow sticky-back felt and used my created stencil to trace and cut out the initial, and stuck them to the back of the capes

Everybody knows superheroes need masks to hide their identities!  I had some leftover blue felt from my car organizer project, so I decided to use that, and pick up some black elastic, with another coupon, for $2. And make some masks for them.  I used pinterest again, shocking, to find a template for the masks, traced them on the felt, top-stitched only to give them weight, and attach the elastic, and those were done.  

For months beforehand I knew I wanted to do superhero cuffs too, so we'd been saving toilet paper rolls for that.  I like to have something crafty the kids can do as they arrive so they warm up.  I mod-podged some yellow construction paper to those, cut them in half and then got some stickers for the kids to use to decorate them.  SUPER easy, FREE, and the kids loved them.

I decided to keep the games and activities relatively simple.  At 4 years old, they want to play games for sure, but they also want to run around the house screaming as much as possible too.  There were pretty much only 2 games, and they only really did one of them.  I used Zach's sandbox and the villain Sandman.  I found these tiny superhero toys called "squinkies", they came 12 to a pack for $10.  I hid the superheroes in the sand and told the kids that Sandman had captured all of their favorite superheroes and they had to rescue them!  They were allowed to rescue one each and take it home.  The kids were pretty into it, although they did barter for their favorite superhero after they found them.  I admire their trading skills :).  

The other game was admittedly kind of lame, I took some peanut m&m's and put them in a jar.  I counted out 12 orange ones only (because Z's bday is the 12th) and put them in the jar.  They were the Green Goblin's pumpkin bombs, and the kids had to guess how many orange ones were in the jar.  The idea was the closest to the right number (I gave them a range 1-20) would win a small prize.  Only a couple kids were interested, probably too soon for this kind of game.

This year I decided to do cupcakes for the kids.  In previous years we have ordered a cake from a local bakery, and it has been delicious, but truth-be-told, I don't think Z likes cake, he never eats much of it, and that local bakery is expensive.  I just picked up some vanilla cake mix from Trader Joe's (YUM) and baked up some cupcakes, I used betty crocker chocolate frosting and called those bad boys done.  I wanted to decorate them somehow but I am no baker/cake decorator.  So, I went the paper/crafty route.  I found some cupcake topper patterns online with superman, batman, and spiderman.  I used a 1.5 inch circle punch to punch them out and then glued them to some cardstock I used a 2 inch circle punch on, then glued that combo to some lollipop sticks and voila! superhero cupcakes!  I was surprised how much the kids liked the toppers, one of them wanted to make sure he could take his home.

We went the easy/lazy route for lunch and ordered pizzas.  The party was a lot of fun, cheap, and easy.  I'm already trying to think of what the theme will be for G's 1st bday party in 4 months :).

If you want a tutorial for any of the DIY projects let me know!