Birthday Parties!

On each Friday. Kelly over at http://www.kellyskornerblog.com/ hosts a blog carnival where other bloggers can share things like what different rooms of their house look like, and this week the theme was children's birthday parties! Forgive me for not providing explanation for these photos sooner, but we've been SOOOO busy and I don't have much time for blogging on these wonderful summer days! I'm hoping that this week I can jump back in full-force and do "7 things", "Fantastic Food Friday" and so forth. I also am going to show / discuss all those things that I've mentioned on the blog in recent days and have said "more about that later." So stay tuned!

For now though, enjoy these photos and ideas from my childrens' birthday parties. I love to throw a good party and birthdays are a great time to put my party planning ideas to work!

This first set of photos was from Jaden's first birthday. We had a "Teddy Bear Tea Party" for her first party and had bears EVERYWHERE with little tea sets around them. I don't have a picture of the main table, but its centerpiece was a long line of bears drinking their "tea" and I wove tulle around the bears so it was super cute and elegant! I also can't show here all of the crepe paper and balloons that were hanging from the ceiling. It was so festive!

The dessert spread...cake, mini smash cake for Jaden, cookies, brownies, macrobiotic mini-carrot cakes (for my mother-in-law!) and fruit kabobs!

My mom & Jaden in her beautiful pink birthday dress

Digging into that smash cake!

Some of the bears and tea sets on display. I had them everywhere!

For Jaden's 3rd birthday party, the theme was pirates, and I hired a professional storyteller to come dressed as a pirate and tell takes of pirate adventures. The children LOVED every minute of it! Jaden even dressed as a little pirate maiden and looked so cute as you'll see!

Jaden and my mom with the puppet from "Pirate Petunia" (the storyteller)

Pirate Petunia leading a story!

Part of the brunch spread (we had her party on a Friday morning to avoid giving friends a weekend committment...it was perfect!). The food included canon balls (donut holes), fish (both fish-shaped fish sticks and colored goldfish, sunken treasure (blue jello with diced pineapple in it), biscuits, cured meat (bacon), and more. My hubby helped to come up with the menu and I loved how it all went with our theme!

My hubby Scott used our home's blueprint (he's got access to these things since he designed our beautiful home!) and made a treasure map out of it! He even colored the paper with coffee and burned the edges for a more realistic effect. It was so cute! The kids went on a treasure hunt through the house complete with rhyming clues and...

TREASURE! The treasure included gold coins, gluten-free cookies and gold-covered cupcakes!!

Jaden ready to blow out her candle. She loved her pirate party!

For Sienna's first birthday party we held a circus, Jojo's circus in fact! We turned out living room into a circus tent and had games, circus-themed food and even some clowns walking around giving temporary tattoos and bending balloons into shapes for the kids. It was jam-PACKED in here and we all had fun celebrating!

The Jojo's circus mural painted by my incredibly talented and extremely generous friend Sheila!

Showing off a balloon animal!

Playing the ring toss game, one of four games with fun prizes!

Playing "pick the tooth brush" game--inspired by the Jojo's circus song that goes, "brush your teeth, little lions brush your teeth!"

The beautiful birthday girl and big sis dressed in their birthday party dresses!

Diggin' into the cake!

A better picture of the living room transformed into a circus tent

...And of course no party of mine would be complete without crepe paper and balloons!

Head on over to http://www.kellyskornerblog.com/ to get more childrens birthday party ideas!