All in Parties
For my cousin’s bridal shower, she wanted the food to be a “chip” and dip style charcuterie set up. She gave us a list of her favorites dips and dippers to go along with it. So most of this was not an original idea by myself. Her and her maid of honor did a good job coming up with different food.
For Brad’s birthday, Melody wanted to do a GI Joe themed birthday. I was torn on how to handle his cake since you cannot really find old school GI Joe cakes at Publix. I honestly am not even sure if the newer GI Joe movies are even represented at Publix. But we wanted old school 100%. So after some research, I noticed they had a camo cake. It was not exactly how I wanted, but after some talking with the bakery, they were able to do exactly what I wanted. A round camouflaged cake with nothing extra about it. Then I made a topper using cardstock. The topper was three levels. Each level looked like the GI Joe logo and read Happy, Birthday, Daddy. I used toothpicks and wooden skewers taped to the back to keep it in place. It was perfect!
For my cousin’s bridal shower, the theme itself was miss to mrs. In addition we were doing a chip and did charcuterie style food setup. With that, they wanted the food to all be labeled. And I was in charge of making said labels. I wanted to do something using chalkboards because I thought that would be nice. I did some searching at Hobby Lobby and Michael’s as well as online with Amazon.
The decorations for Melody’s 6th birthday party were fairly easy to do. The theme Melody picked was Doc McStuffins. I mostly used toys and books Melody already had, so I only had to really buy tablecloths and cardstock!
Melody picked out a G.I.JOE themed birthday party for Brad. It is fairly hard to find old school GI Joe birthday party decorations. So I had to make it all. Today I want to share the birthday banner I made.
We had Melody’s 6th birthday party at a local gymnastics/cheer gym. I wasn’t entirely sure how I could really decorate the walls or how much time I would have to decorate them and also look pretty. I had seen a fellow local mom who made a backdrop to help with her decor at the same location. So I decided to make my own myself. I don’t love it, but it works for now. I plan to make it out of thicker PVC pipe in the future. It is just a little bit too floppy for me.
Last weekend, I helped host a bridal shower for my cousin, Ashley. She is getting married in November, and I love hosting a good event! Her maid of honor and mom help with all the ideas, but I wanted to share how adorable everything turned out. I plan to post more details later about different parts of the shower! But the general theme was “miss to mrs”.
For Melody’s 6th birthday party, I originally bought her an adorable Doc McStuffins dress to wear. However, they only had it in a size 7, and I was really hoping it would work. But it did not. It was just way too big. Especially since we were having her party at a very active place. So last minute, I opted to make her a shirt. I happened to have a blank purple shirt of hers along with some pink vinyl. I think used the tracing tool in Silhouette to trace the characters from Doc McStuffins. Then I added her name to it. I decided to keep her age off of it so that she could wear it anytime!
Instead of doing a cake for Melody’s birthday party, I did cupcakes. I did this for a few reasons. One, I do not have to cut a cake this way. It is one less thing I have to plan for. Two, even before COVID, it made me feel better to have her blow out a candle on a single cupcake vs an entire cake that people will be eating. Three, it is generally cheaper. And four, it makes it easier to give out cupcakes (or this time around we already had plates made), rather than cut pieces of cake to hand out. I always pick colors that match the theme of the party, but I also add some form of cupcake toppers. I decided to make easy ones this time around.
Back in June, we visited the American Girl store in Franklin, TN to celebrate both Melody and my niece’s birthdays. Their birthdays are one year apart but two dates apart (May 25 vs May 27). So this was their birthday present from my mother in law. I recently wrote a post all about our hotel experience of this trip. Now I want to share the party part.
We kept the food simple for Melody’s Doc McStuffins birthday party. I didn’t want to overwhelm the kids with too much food and distract from the fun of the play area. And at the time of planning, I was unsure how much time the kids would have in the party room to eat.
When deciding food for Melody’s Doc McStuffins themed birthday party, I tried to keep it foods I knew she would eat as well as keep it simple. Very last minute, I decided to make some iced cookies. I had Brad use his 3D printer to make me two cookies cutters. One was the number 6, and another was a bandaid from the TV Show.
I went back and forth on what favors I was going to do for Melody’s 6th birthday party which was Doc McStuffins themed. I wanted to do Hershey kisses since they are Melody’s favorites. The thought was “Kisses for your Boo Boos”. But I found some Doc McStuffin stickers, and I decided to expand the idea.
Melody’s 6th birthday was a Doc McStuffins themed party. Banners are always a focal point. I could not find any that were either reasonable priced or I loved. So I ended up making my own.
Not long after Melody’s Rainbow Ranger birthday party last year, she already knew she wanted a Doc McStuffins birthday party when she turned 6. I waited until earlier this year before really planning though. We all know kids can change their minds so easily. But she was still wanting that Doc McStuffins party, so that is what she got.
Decorating for parties is probably one of my favorite things when planning. For Melody’s Rainbow Ranger birthday party, finding all things rainbow was a lot of fun.
I want to say the Rainbow Rangers Birthday Invitation was probably made up of the most parts of any I have done so far. I keep saying I am done making them myself, but it will never happen, ha. The rainbow was probably one of my favorite things so far though!
Another favor that we had at Melody’s Rainbow Ranger birthday party was a communicator. Now if you are not familiar, it is a bracelet the Rangers wear that they can use to communicate with their leader and with each other. Melody really wanted this at her party, so Brad was on a mission to deliver!
So Brad made one favor for Melody’s Rainbow Ranger themed birthday party [more on that to come later], but I wanted to do something else too. Mainly because back during February, Melody found some erasers and bubbles she wanted to use as favors. This was before really knowing how we were going to do Brad’s favors. I hated for those to go to waste, so we did some favor bags too!
While I wanted to be sure and have food that Melody liked at her birthday party, I also wanted food to fit the theme. I tried to incorporate as much "rainbow” as I could and also appeasing Melody!
