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Today was the day! The day my weeks and weeks of research (Ok...hours of research on Pinterest...I confess!), supplies collecting, baking, and crafting finally paid off. Today was my son's 3rd birthday party! We decided to go with a Curious George theme for several reasons. One, my son acts more like a monkey than a toddler. Two, he watches the Curious George shows ALL the time. I have seen every one. MANY times. And there are probably 100 episodes. At least.
Thanks to the help of my sisters, my mom and dad, my husband, and my mother-in-law, plus several borrowed items from other family members, we were able to pull off a reasonably successful birthday party I believe.
Here are goody bags we did for the kids. They had Curious George gummy snacks, glow stick bracelets, crayons, and a Go-Go applesauce squeezer. Kind of random, but they were affordable, useable, and not completely comprised of junk food (though that is never a bad kind of gift bag). We wrote the names of the kids on them before they left.
Here is our "picture wall." My dad is a professional photographer, so I tried to give him a decorated spot in which to take pictures of the guest with the birthday boy. I love pictures (can you tell? There are one or two here).
My incredibly talented sister painted Curious George. He was life size, and a dead ringer for the cartoon George. My son was just enamored and amused and thrilled to have George at his party, and he made for cute pictures!!
Got to have a close up. My son has always kind of lived a monkey themed life. We will never theme our kids room etc. after monkeys again though. We had his nursery done in monkey theme, and all the stuff we got him before he was born was monkey themed, and we ended up getting a baby/infant/toddler that sometimes acts more monkey than kid. The next baby we had, his theme: Winnie the Pooh. A nice, relaxed, laid back character :)
Cupcake toppers! All the printed designed items were from
Photo designz on Etsy. Great great value, and the printables were fantastic!
His favorite candy...these and Starbursts.
This banner was a pain. It went so much better in my head than it did in real life. That said and done, after many re-doings of tape and string, we got it up, and I absolutely loved it. The whole thing said "Happy 3rd Birthday"
Happy!
This is a family staple at parties. It is our version of 7-layer dip, affectionately dubbed "Dave's dip" for the uncle that brought the recipe home from home economics class one day. Today, it was Jungle dip! (Those are olives on top...just sayin'. I thought I bought sliced...oh well.) We did these individual servings and had individual brown paper bags of chips to go with them. Portable, individual, and tasty! Bring on the double dipping to your hearts content!
We served burgers for lunch. This is a shot of the menu that I made for people to order their burgers. They got to choose from a single or double patty (or veggie), their choice of hot toppings (bacon, green chilies, caramelized onions), and cheese (homemade mozzarella, cheddar cheese). We also made up two "Curious Liam Specials." The guests marked down the toppings they wanted, and we cooked to order. Then they got to help themselves to the cold toppings bar we had out also. Homemade hamburger buns, homemade BBQ sauce, homemade mozzarella cheese (yes, homemade. There is a previous blog post on it if you don't believe me), caramelized grilled onions, roasted diced green chilies, maple bacon, cheddar cheese, and all the regular burger fixin's as well. These made for some tasty burgers if I do say so myself. Sorry there isn't a picture...no waited long enough to eat their burger for a picture. My husband the grill master slaved away (and I mean SLAVED away) at the BBQ for a long time in 95+ degree heat (not including the 450 degree heat of the BBQ) cooking all the onions, peppers, burgers, and bacon. He was such a trooper and it wouldn't have been the awesomeness without his grilling expertise.
Homemade dill pickles.
This was fruit salad in little waffle cone bowls. So good, so easy, and so fun!
On to the desserts...I love desserts by the way. This is the cupcake spread. We had vanilla with meringue frosting, and devils food cupcakes with meringue frosting. The cupcake toppers were part of the printables package from Print Designz, as well as the buffet labels.
Close up!
I made caramel apples with chocolate and white chocolate drizzle for party favors for the adults. Homemade caramel for them of course. This was one of my favorite parts of the whole party spread, I was so happy with them.
I was lucky enough to find monkey cupcake liners. Who knew, right?
For a monkey party, you must have banana something. My banana something--frozen chocolate dipped bananas. Some were plain, some were rolled in peanuts, and some were rolled in Reese's peanut butter cup morsels.
The whole dessert spread table.
The last dessert we had was vanilla milkshakes. I made homemade chocolate sauce, and homemade caramel sauce (Oh my gosh...I wish I could have an I.V. of that caramel sauce...) for people to drizzle in if they wanted to flavor it. These were a big hit and were gone as soon as I turned my back. It was funny.
I tried to get the best deal on everything, and spend the least amount I had to while getting what I really wanted. This involved many trips to Walmart (the shake cups, trays, candy jars, ribbon, and colored table cloths all Walmart, and under a dollar each), Target (napkins, dessert and appetizer plates), Sam's (squeeze bottles, cups for the dip, red dinner plates), and more stores too. It was so nice to have a themed party, but not have it looked like Party City threw up in my house. My goal was to not have it look like that happened, and I am happy with the outcome.
We also had a Curious George bounce house from
www.jumpforfun.com out in our backyard. This was the best money spent on the whole day! Our son was over the moon! He bounced and bounced and just had a blast. I highly recommend splurging on one if you have an energetic child like we do. It just made him so happy.
A gigantic thank you to
Larry Berger Photography, who took all these dazzling and drool worthy pictures. A picture is worth a thousand words, and these all say "Yummy yummy yummy!!"
Overall, it was a lot of work, a lot of research, a lot of driving to a million different stores to get the best deal (I bargain searched, I really tried to do this as inexpensive as possible), and a lot of man hours. In the end, it was SOOO worth it. I think our son had a great time, he enjoyed the bouncer, the presents, the blowing out of birthday candles, and probably all the attention in general. Heck, for a 3 year old, I guess you can't expect much more :)
Happy Birthday Curious Liam!
