theweeklydiner

We have gone to the jungle, ridden a pirate ship, seen how to make a volcano, gone down the bayou and been to Disneyland.  Birthday #5 takes us to the Carnival!!!  I honestly can’t remember how we came to this idea at all.  I know I came up with it,  I created a binder to house all my ideas, and I got Thomas to agree.  The binder thing….it started with this party.  Basically my head gets so full of ideas that I can’t sleep.  Once I get these ideas down on paper, my brain can settle.  However, part way through planning this party is when someone introduced me to Pinterest.  What a revelation!!  I was now able to keep track of all my ideas in one place for this party, rather than a list of bookmarks.  Sometimes all you need is a visual reminder rather than the actual steps it takes to produce that idea.

Once again I went with my two favorite online party supply stores, Oriental Trading and Shindigz.  Sometimes they have the same stuff, sometimes they have different stuff, but both together can help take your party to new heights at a great price.

I had all my signs designed by an etsy store, Frosting & Ink.  She did an amazing job and worked well with me for customized signs.

The weather all week before the party was AMAZING!  And then the night before the party, scattered showers appeared.  So we had to move the games into the garage.

The games of course were free and no matter how well they were played, the kids received tickets.  When the kids arrived at the party, I passed out their boxes to hold all the tickets. At the end of the party they got to claim their prizes!! (Basically a build your own goodie bag.)

There were other activities as well.  We had face painting, a magic show, balloon animals, a piñata, and they could hold a snake if they wanted to or take a turn on the pachinko machine.

And of course we had the hottest party accessory….a photo booth!!!  I called Lowe’s and asked for an old refrigerator box early in the morning.  The best they had that day was a stove box so I took it, kids can fit in a stove box.  I painted the outside a light cream color and the inside red.  I bought some photo booth props on etsy and we were ready to go!

trying out the box before the party

One unique idea I got a decoration for his birthday came from Pinterest.  We made a number 5 out of wallet sized pictures of my son.  It hung on the coat closet door in the main entry way.

The food!  What better food is there than carnival food??  I had the fryer out for this party!!  We made corn dogs, french fries, mozzarella sticks–nearly anything I could fry–I did.  I had the crockpots out with chili, nacho cheese and hot dogs.   The next day I has a food hangover but oh man did the chili cheese fries and hot dogs taste amazing!!!  And then there was the candy table.  We had licorice, cotton candy, animal (circus) cookies, and five flavors of popcorn!!!  I ordered them online at Popcornopolis which has amazing popcorn.  We made original buttered popcorn and then I purchased, Zebra (my favorite), cupcake, cinnamon toast and kettle corn.  I was just happy to get to use my Disney popcorn containers!!!

Next up is the cake!  I found the idea for the cake on Pinterest.  It was basically modeled after a circus/carnival tent pattern.  I made the banners myself out of scrapbook paper and some string.  It is that easy.

This was the first time I threw a kids party for my son’s friends from school.  Rather than make two cakes, I make a bunch of cupcakes for the kid party and saved the cake for the family party.  I had the cupcakes boxed up and ready to give out as the kids were leaving the party.

The cake table was decorated with carnival toys, some vintage inspired and some new.  These toys are still played with by my son even today.

You can see the boxes for the background that the cupcakes were housed in.

These bumper cars won’t fall off the edge of the table.

Here is a shot of the cake table in its entirety:

Happy 5th Birthday Thomas!!!!

His actual birthday fell on the day after the party.  And since I am a believer that birthdays should be celebrated at least all week long, I made him special birthday pancakes for breakfast.

He got a new bike for this birthday, and he wore his helmet all through breakfast.  It was his birthday so who am I to argue?

So we have visited Thomas’s first birthday and his latest party for his sixth birthday.  We are currently on a journey through the rest of the parties to see how party #6 got to be so big.  There aren’t many pictures from parties two and three.  Who knew I would start a blog?  However we do have cake pictures, and let’s face it….everyone loves cake.  Even if they don’t like cake, they like to look at cake.  And now with pinterest, the fun and easy cake ideas are endless!

Birthday #2!

So for my son’s second birthday I went with a pirate theme.  I found a cake on the family fun website and it seemed easy enough.  I was also celebrating my 30th birthday so we had a joint party.  This year was all about the cake.

I didn’t theme the food.  It is the only birthday party that I didn’t theme the food.  However, to be fair, I don’t think pirates ate very well.  We had pulled pork, rotisserie chicken, pesto pasta and some bread.  That’s what I remember these many years later. For decorations we just hung some red and black streamers and I kept some Halloween decorations out if they had skeletons.

Birthday #3!

So for birthday number three I felt I needed to top the cake from birthday number 2.  How do you top a pirate ship with candles as cannons???  Why with an erupting volcano of course!!!  Again there aren’t any pictures of food or decorations, nor are there any still pictures of my volcano while erupting.  I guess that means I will have to make it again!!

While I don’t have many pictures the fun stuff, I do have a few stills of the cake itself.  With an erupting volcano, I planned a Hawaiian themed birthday over a dinosaur party.  It would be easier to theme the food with a Hawaiian party.  You can’t have a Hawaiian themed party without spam!  I also served white rice, chicken teriyaki, a hawaiian fruit salad (recipe lost), hawaiian dip, and my favorite hawaiian luau bbq chips.

And now for the cake.  I honestly don’t know how I came up with the idea to make an erupting volcano cake.  These were the days before pinterest which is now my go to place to search for recipes.  All I know is that I must have googled fun cakes or something and searched through recipes.  The recipe I found and went with has multiple steps.  There were six different recipes involved to make this cake.  I left out the Kahlua recipe since this would be going to the kids.

In making this cake, I found a wonderful website for baking goods.  Shop Baker’s Nook is a great resource.  I found all the little sea creatures, sea shells and palm trees on that site.  This website also carries basic baking supplies, sometimes much cheaper than the local craft store and even cheaper than Amazon on occasion.  This was also the first time I ever boiled sugar to make candy.  A little bit scary but overall pretty easy.

So the above picture is an above shot of the cake.  You put a glass down the middle to house the goods needed for the lava.  This cake may seem a little bit daunting with its six recipes to build it but it really was rather easy.  If you need a cake to wow a crowd, then this is the cake!

Join me next Monday as we take a trip down the bayou for Thomas’s 4th birthday party!

Ok, so I know my son is now six.  If you haven’t seen it yet, you can check out my post about his 6th birthday which was pretty over the top.  So I figured we should go back to the beginning.  See where all the craziness started.  There will be a series of posts on the birthday parties I have thrown for my son.

The party for his first birthday was based around both the cake and our son’s interests.  I was gifted a train cake pan and wanted to use it for his first birthday.  Little man also loves animals.  We decided to go with a safari theme!!   Once we picked out the decorations, I googled Safari Party food ideas.  This was the fun part.

We had raisins as dried ants and sour worms as creepy crawly bugs.

We made sliders for those who wanted burgers.

For the live worms, you slice hotdogs in half and then boil them.

Deviled eggs for spiders.

Chicken skewers with peanut sauce as tiger tails.

Grapes as snake eggs and smokies in BBQ sauce as monkey poop.

Chips and dip for beetle wings and bat guano.

And we called fresh veggies as desert plants.  The green rose shaped sign holder is just the base of celery.

Sprite with green food coloring as river water.

The train birthday cake.

The birthday boy!!!

First birthday party was a success and it was so much fun playing with the food.