2nd Birthday: Sean and Olivia

I know I have mentioned it before, but I love kids birthday parties. I love throwing them, I love going to them, I just love them!! I think it is because I don't have a whole lot of memories of them as kids. Not saying I didn't go to any or didn't have any, I just don't have the memories. And that is because there are no pictures. If I don't have a picture of it, then in my mind it didn't happen (that theory has gotten me out of trouble, hehe).
I love to watch the kids have fun, I love to hang out and talk with the parents. Most of all, I love planning parties for my kids. Especially for Lyla since she plays a part in the planning now.  I am in the middle of planning her 5th birthday. It's going to be a cowgirl theme, and is shaping up to be adorable! Last night as I was ordering stuff for the goody bag, I realized I never blogged about the twins 1st or 2nd birthday parties. I was quite proud of both of them. Especially their 1st birthday. I put sooo much time into each. Their 1st birthday was a Raggedy Ann and Andy theme. I am going to blog about that next. When I do, you can read about it here (link coming soon).
But for now, I am going to share the details and fun memories of their 2nd birthday. Dora and Diego day at the Zoo!

First thing of course, was their invite. This is one of my favorite invites. I am so blessed to have a good friend and co-worker that is a designer that does most of my stuff. However, since this was a character birthday, I purchased a design from this Etsy shop, and had it personalized.

I thought the zoo was a perfect place for a Diego and Dora themed party. The only down side is you are limited in how many guests you can invite. So we decided to stick with only kids that were the twins age. What fun, a room full of two year olds running around!

Next was their birthday pictures. I wasn't sure how I was going to use them, but I love the idea of having a back yard birthday photo shoot. I ended up making a banner out of the photos to hang at the party room.

Their outfits are by far my favorite birthday outfits yet. These came from Rock N Baby boutique.  I willl definitely order from them again. They were easy to communicate with, timely turn around, great quality, and the cutest things ever!!! And of course the bow was made by Yarn Therapy with a handmade Dora center by Rachel's Ranch Studio.

The Menu was created from the twins very favorite foods:
PB&J sandwiches cut into shapes of stars
Cucumber cheese sandwiches
Pretzel buttons
grapes and strawberries pre portioned
chips
animal crackers
bananas
gummie snacks
personalized bottles of water
cupcake cake

I made signs for each item. I think it adds a nice decorative touch. It was fun "naming" everything. I created the signs in Picasa and then glued them to scrap book paper and glued a Popsicle stick on the back.

star sandwhiches

"jaguar food" Pretzel Buttons
ingredients: snyders pretzel snaps, 1 bag of peanut butter meltable discs from craft store, plain m&m's
place peanut butter disc on top of pretzel, heat on 200 degrees for 2 minutes
press m&m in the center and let cool

"boots bananas" and "diegos animal cracker rescue"

purchased printable file from Etsy and printed on crack and peel paper and applied to water bottles

delicious pull a part cup cake cake from Publix

Other decorations included animal print balloons and Dora and Diego party ware from Party City. For the kids goodies, I printed on card stock, jaguar masks and attached a popsicle stick to the back. I also printed coloring packs for both Dora and Diego for all the kids to take home. The masks were a huge hit! I printed them from the Nick Jr. website

my best friend Libby and I!

Happy Birthday time!!

After we got done eating and visiting with everyone, we headed out for a tour of the zoo!

The zoo provide a treasure hunt in the chimpanzee area. Once the kids find their treasure, they pass out their goodies. An animal cup filled with candy, pencils, stickers, etc.  My favorite thing about the Zoo? They provide goody bags!

Once we got back in to the party room, we had some close encounters with snakes and reptiles.  The kids loved it. The parents, not so much.

snakes did't even phase the kids, they loved it!

Then it was present time!!! The twins weren't so much into opening the gifts, they of course wanted to play with everything as they opened it.

Livvi holding her handmade ballerina doll from mommy's nana

I tried something different with this party. After every other party I have thrown, I am beyond exhausted, stressed, and don't get to enjoy my kids and their special day. After alot of thinking about it, I realized it is because I am playing hostess, mom, and photographer.  I stress out so much over photos to make sure I get a picture of everything and everyone. I will be having a conversation with someone, and see something I just can't pass up and will run and go take a picture. I didn't want to do that this time. I wanted to enjoy.  As much as I hate to admit it, I am getting old and can't keep up! So, I hired a very inexpensive photographer to follow us around and take snap shots. I would do it again, over and over. This was the least stressful party, and I got to enjoy it. It was wonderful! The pictures weren't professional looking as I had hoped, they were snapshots like I would've taken. But it was still worth it.

A few more pictures from Sean and Olivia's special day!

More birthday blogs coming soon:

Lyla's 1st birthday - cupcake (no link yet)
Lyla's 2nd birthday - barnyard animals (no link yet)
Lyla's 3rd birthday - Dora (no link yet)
Lyla's 4th birthday - Little Mermaid 

Sean and Olivia's 1st birthday - Raggedy Ann and Andy (no link yet)