Michael’s DUMP EVERYTHING 2nd Birthday Party
I was originally going to go with a train theme for
Michael’s 2nd birthday party.
I had the invites and a bunch of other stuff already picked out, but as
it got closer Michael seemed less interested in trains and more into
diggers. So I left it up to him,
“Michael, would you like a train birthday party or a digger birthday
party?” His response, “dig-dig birtay
pary.” Michael’s language skills have
come a long way in the past few months.
He went from saying only single words to talking in sentences in a
matter of a week at about 21 months old.
A month later, his actual speech became a lot clearer. This language explosion has really had a
significant impact on our family life.
Michael is able to be part of our conversations now and eaves dropping
on Michael and Anthony’s chats completely melts my heart. Michael is happier because he’s less
frustrated in getting his point across.
Some of the things he says now assures me that he has been listening for
a long, long time before he could let us know himself. But back to the party…
Pinterest and Etsy were my main resources for ideas and I
searched “construction party” on Oriental Trading, Shindigz, Birthday Express
and Amazon to find some products that would go with the theme.
I purchased a digital file invitation on Etsy from Mason’sMommy Designs. If you’ve never done
invitations this way before, I really recommend looking into it. Rather than searching countless invitation
websites for the perfect invite, just do a search on Etsy – I searched
“construction party invitation.” Mostly
digital file invites will come up but there are also printed invitations for
sale, but those tend to be costly.
Complete your purchase and send the seller your party information and a
picture file (if your invitation needs a photo). The turn around time is usually fairly
quick. This seller got me back my
invitation file in less than 24 hours.
Once the seller emails you the invitation, you can upload it to a site
that can print it. I used Mpix. The cost was about $1/invitation and I
received them in a few days.
Invitations… done!
Next, I started thinking about the favors. I’ve mentioned before that I am a big fan of
the Dollar Tree and that was where I started my shopping. Luckily, they carry a variety of individual
CAT diggers. My boys have these and they
LOVE playing with them too. I was able
to find the amount that I needed at a local Dollar tree, but you can also make
a bulk purchase from them online. They
will even ship it to a store near you for free.
I envisioned the truck sitting in a bucket on top of a pile
of dirt. I ordered black tin pails from
Oriental Trading and filled the bucket with candy instead of dirt. It didn’t seem complete without some sort of
label, so I searched on Etsy once again.
I came across a listing from Popcorn and Pixels that included food tent
labels, cupcake toppers, and thank you
tags. I knew I could find a way to
incorporate all of that so I made a purchase.
It was also a digital file, so I received the file from the seller and
printed them myself. I used the cupcake
toppers as my favor labels. I printed
them out on full sheet label paper and then used a very large hole puncher to
cut them out. I placed them on the front
of the pail, bagged the whole thing in a baggie and tied it up with orange and
yellow bows. I was very pleased with the
end result!
I printed the food tent labels and used them to label the
food I had set out for guests. It was a
morning party so we kept it simple with bagles, muffins, croissants, and
yogurts.
The cupcake topper labels also served another purpose –
another little something for our little guests.
Construction hats of course! I
wrote each child’s name on one of the labels and stuck them on construction
hats that I purchased on Amazon.
The construction theme made décor fairly simple… black,
yellow, and orange tablecloths, paper goods, and balloons. I purchased CAUTION tape from Amazon and hung
it in various places in the yard and used the boys’ diggers as weights for the
balloons. I used my Silhouette Cameo to
design and cut a Happy Birthday banner.
Decorations… done!
The guest list totaled about 23 children so I planned a few
activities to make sure everyone was entertained. Children do tend to keep themselves busy but
I always worry that they’ll get bored. I
purchased a bulldozer piñata through Amazon and a tool picture frame craft from
Oriental trading, which both seemed to please the kids!
I purchased cones and rings to set up for a ring toss
game. I found a Pinterest the idea of a
wrecking ball game – wrap large boxes (diaper boxes worked perfectly and I
always have plenty of them), have the kids stack them up and then have a big
ball for them to throw and knock them over.
The kids enjoyed setting up the blocks just as much as they enjoyed
knocking them down.
Most people have a sandbox in their yard, but my boys love
dirt. My husband built them a dirt box
and it is filled with their shovels, pails and of course, diggers. We had the dirt box ready to go and I think
most of the children played in it for a little while.
Desserts… my personal favorite part of any party. We had “paint brushes,” which were rectangle
rice krispy treats put on a stick and dipped in chocolate and “logs,” which
were chocolate dipped pretzels. I also
made chocolate cupcakes, which were coated with chocolate frosting, sprinkled
with cookie crumbs and completed with a digger cupcake topper purchased from
Amazon.
I saw several versions of the cake I wanted to
make on Pinterest, but I feared that although it looked super easy to do that
it would be a major Pinterest FAIL.
Luckily, I was totally wrong! I
baked two chocolate round cakes – one 10 inches in diameter and the other 8
inches. Once they cooled, I sliced off
the top of each cake to make a flat surface. I frosted the larger cake completely and then
laid the smaller cake on top pushed to one side. I frosted the top layer. I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out a
number2 and placed it on the top layer.
I sprinkled cookie crumbs (I used Oreos) over the entire cake and made
sure to get around the outline of the number two. I removed the paper and it worked perfectly
to leave a smooth 2 on the cake. I added
some CAT diggers that I used for the favors and spelled out MICHAEL in shapes I
cut out on the Silhouette. I have to
admit that I was very proud of how the cake turned out!
I bought the birthday boy a dump truck t-shirt from FreshFrog Tees on Etsy and I think he looked super cute in it! Michael seemed to really enjoy his “dig dig
birtay pary” and I had lots of fun planning it as well! Starting to think about Matthew’s 1st
birthday now…
Love, Language & Diggers,
Marisa
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