Happy Bird-day!

Yesterday, we celebrated B's fifth birthday with a Angry Birds fete complete with all of his favorite birds!  I found the adorable invitations, as well as the bunting, on etsy.  The seller was really easy to work with and even sent me water bottle labels for free when she accidentally e-mailed me the invitations again instead of the bunting.  So sweet of her--and she was very reasonably priced!

This party required a good amount of 'crafting' on my part, but it was well worth it.  I made red bird, yellow bird, and green pig party hats for the kids, and they were a big hit.  I followed the directions and used the free printable image at this link for the yellow hats.  I could not find any packages of all yellow hats at any of my local stores, so I bought 3 packages of mixed color hats and made red and green hats as well.  I used this link from the Party Animal blog for the printables for the red and green hats as well as many of the other images at the party.  More on that in a minute.

I found the pig table cloths, Angry Bird napkins, and red plates at the brand spanking new Party City that was built in a neighboring town that I am CRAZY excited about!  That place has EVERYTHING!  But I digress . . .  I used the printable template from the Party Animal blog again to put the faces on the balloons (which I didn't get a great picture of) and the face on the bowl of blue candies (also from Party City).  I reused the blue and white striped cloth from B's pirate party last year for the food table. 

Now, I have never professed to be an expert with party games--they are not really my forte.  But this year the game was a HUGE hit with the party goers which ranged in age from 2 to 10!  I used a set of 3 lime green paper lanterns that got at Hobby Lobby (with a 40% off coupon, no less) to make the pigs--once again using the printable from the Party Animal blog.  I then went to our local liquor store and grabbed several empty boxes, Hubs spray painted them brown (cause nothing says 'kid's party' like Budweiser and Jim Beam logos, right??) and stacked them up to make a real life Angry Birds game.  The kids took turns throwing a ball at the set up to knock down the pigs.  It was a blast, and I could hardly get them to stop playing when the pizza showed up.  This was a PERFECT game because the kids could play on their own.  Once all the boxes and pigs were knocked down, they could set it back up by themselves and keep playing.

We ordered pizza from Domino's (which showed up much later than I expected) and served strawberries, grapes, and baby carrots to make it a little bit healthier.  I put fruit punch and apple juice boxes in the white tub to the right of the food table as well as cans of Coke, Diet Dr. Pepper, and bottled water on ice.  I made cupcakes the night before (don't get excited--Betty Crocker box mix to the rescue) and piped on some canned frosting.  B helped me make the cupcake picks from another free printable.  They were easy and got the job done.  I served individual cups of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream.  B blew out his five candles with some help from a friend and everyone enjoyed the dessert.

After cake and ice cream, B was itching to open his presents.  Which means queue the hoard of kids hovering around trying to catch the first glimpse of each new item being opened.

I managed to get a really great picture of most of the kids before the end of the party.

I think that this party was my favorite one yet.  The kids loved it, and I really had a blast putting it together.  Happy Bird-day, B!