Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Birthday Party!

My baby girl is 4 years old!!!

I've been planning Taylor's birthday party for several weeks. All the crafting that's been going on around here has been birthday related so I haven't posted in awhile. Taylor is totally into Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, right now, so we decided that would be the perfect theme for her party! At the time I started planning, I didn't realize what a popular theme it is right now. The abundance of Mickey stuff in the stores sure helped in the planning.

I made everything from the decorations to the food and loved every minute of it! I used the Mickey & Friends Cricut Cartridge for all the Mickey cut outs. Most of the supplies and goody bag favors are from Target or the Dollar Tree.

So, let's start off with the best part...the cupcakes!

I baked chocolate cupcakes, frosted them with red buttercream frosting and topped them with a Mickey Mouse paper cut-out that I added Mickey stickers to. I decorated the Wilton cupcake tower with jumbo star sprinkles.

I love how they look but to be totally honest, the frosting tasted terrible! I had to use sooo much red concentrated paste to get the right color and I didn't realize the "Christmas Red" has such a better taste. I used both the red "no-taste" and the Christmas Red, but in the future if I ever make red frosting again, I'll only use the no taste coloring.

I am SO happy with how this banner turned out!!! I used my friend's 24" Cricut (Thanks, Nina!) and her Lyrical Letters cartridge. The Mickey heads are 9". I then cut short strips of ribbon (actually I think I delegated that task to my mom - Thanks, Mom!) and strung it from ear-to-ear.

The Mickey napkins and plates are from Target (Wal Mart has them, too) and the solid paper goods are from the dollar store.

I filled a big yellow tub with bottled water with handmade labels. I simply cut patterned paper into strips, backed it with a strip of cardstock and covered it with packing tape and adhered it to the bottles. Again, I love it! Such a simple way to stretch the theme!

Food Glorius Food!!! I served hot-dog-hot-dog-hot-diggity-DOGS! along with pasta salad and assorted fruits and veggies. As for the fruit...I had this fabulous idea to make a fruit bouquet. Well...yeah...those things a lot harder to make than they look. Even for a crafty girl like me. The bouquet was not well balanced (I think part of the problem was my container was too small) and the weight of the pineapple Mickey head caused it to topple. So, we just had fruit skewers instead. :>

Goody bags with handmade tags made from the Mickey & Friends cartridge. The girls got Minnie Mouse and the boys got Mickey!

A handmade pinata that I made from this tutorial. She says it only takes an hour to make, but it took me about 3 so I must be a little slow! ;)

After everyone had a turn, the pinata fell to the ground and I helped Taylor give it a few good whacks to bust it open.

These pictures of my girl, with the handmade Mickey ears and the great big smile, make all my efforts worth every minute of my time. And I truly loved planning and creating this party!

I think the Birthday Girl loved it, too, and that's the most important part!

I want to thank my mom and stepdad for helping with all the final details of the party.

I also want to say a HUGE thank you to the fabulous people at Kids With Food Allergies who helped me brainstorm ideas and the logistics of pulling this party together. I've raved before about how much I love KFA and that I don't know how any parent of a child with food allergies manages without KFA. The daily support and hand-holding that I get from this incredibly knowledgeable group of parents is invaluable. Today marks the beginning of Food Allergy Awareness Week and I will be doing a special post about food allergies this week. I'll tell you more about our story and how Kids With Food Allergies has been such an essential resource and source of support in managing my daughter's food allergies. Until then, I'll just say an enormous THANK YOU! to the members and volunteers at KFA!

Tea For Two

I wanted to have a tea party with Taylor on Mother's Day. But she was hit with an awful stomach flu and that put an end to that plan. So, Sunday morning I decided it was the perfect time for the 2 of us to have a tea party. We had baked a batch of cookies on Saturday, so we paired the cookies with some sliced ham, watermelon and crackers for the perfect mid-morning snacks for our tea party.

We both dressed up for the occasion.

I love having a daughter to do girly things with! Taylor enjoyed our time together, too!

Birthday Party Fun!

The big day finally arrived!!!

I've found a new love. Baking and crafting go very well together! I had so much fun decorating the cookies and frosting the cupcakes! This was only my third time using a piping bag (ever!) and I've never decorated cookies before. I love how they turned out!

The cookies are chocolate sugar cookies (recipe is here) and I dipped them in red royal icing. I used a mock royal icing recipe from Kids With Food Allergies which is free of Taylor's allergens.

Hubby did the grilled chicken with barbeque sauce and I made the amazing I Love Tomatoes Pasta Salad (this recipe is also from Kids With Food Allergies)

Taylor got some fabulous gifts, and we gave her friends plastic flower pots filled with handmade goodies! In an upcoming post I'll offer the details of how I made all the party favors.

I even painted Taylor's toenails for her special day. She's never had her nails painted before and she thought it was pretty fun!

She had soooo much fun and as you can see, she was beaming when everyone sang "Happy Birthday!" to her.

Thank you to everyone who celebrated Taylor's special day with us. And, I have to give a HUGE shout out to the fab folks at Kids With Food Allergies (KFA). When we first discovered Taylor's food allergies about 2 years ago, I didn't bake at. all. I was a decent cook, but baking? No. Definitely not. The baking support I've received from the people at KFA in the Food & Cooking Forums and the Celebrations Forum, is what gave me the confidence to pull this party together. Thank you SO much! I love you guys!!!

Birthday Party Planning - Step 4 & 5 The Food and cake

Yum! We're doing a simple menu with all food that is safe for Taylor. I do not want to tell her she can't have what other people are eating at her own birthday party! We will be doing a simple menu that will all be made in advance so we can socialize with our friends at the party rather than being stuck doing food prep. Here's the menu:

Grilled Chicken breasts with BBQ sauce
Pasta Salad
Watermelon
Potato Chips

Drinks:
Iced Tea
Lemonade
Capri Sun Juices for the kids.

Chocolate cupcakes (dairy, soy (protein)*, egg free) decorated to match the ladybug theme. I will be baking these and decorating them and I still haven't completely decided on exactly how I'm decorating them. I'm thinking of topping them with a chocolate sugar cookie decorated to look like a ladybug, resting in green frosting.

Once the menu is decided, do an inventory of what you have and what you need. Determine your shopping list and include any serving dishes, plate settings and napkins you need to purchase. Planning far in advance has allowed me to determine which stores offer the best prices on things I need. I'll be getting our utensils and paper goods from the dollar store.

Also, planning in advance allowed me to use a coupon to purchase a tiered dessert stand from JoAnn's for the cupcakes. I'm really happy with this! I didn't really want a traditional cupcake stand that holds individual cupcakes, so this was a great alternative. It's so versatile, it matches my white serving dishes (a very good thing to invest in is a collection of white serving dishes) all the pieces nest together so it's compact, and with my coupon, it only cost $10!

OK...so, I've decided not to post the rest of the details on the party planning until after the party. I have everything planned out and I'm working on making the decorations, and goody bags. I can't wait to show them to you, but I don't want to spoil it for our guests who read this blog. So, if I don't post much this week it's because I'm busy working on the final details. Um, and baking a gazillion batches of cupcakes and a few dozen cookies. But stayed tuned because I'll be sharing all the pics early next week!!! Oh, and by the way, I'm not sure who's more excited for the party, me or Taylor!

Birthday Party Planning Step 1 - The Guest List

For some hosts, the guest list may be the easiest part of the party planning. For others, this may be a very painstaking process. See, often, it's hard to know where to draw the line. Due to our limited budget, I'm not inviting any of her classmates from preschool. I'll make a batch of cupcakes and take them to school for her. So, our list will include a few close friends who also have children who are friends with My Little Monkey. Our only family that lives near by is my father-in-law so of course, he'll join the fun. The guest list is finished off with a close friend or ours and his girlfriend, who Taylor has quickly adopted as her "Aunt & Uncle". So, the grand total for our guest list is 13 adults and 9 children (the kids range in age from 1yr to 3yrs).

So, that's our guest list. I'm still finishing making the invitations. Stayed tuned for those...they're sooooo cute!