Audrey's Birthday Party

My niece Audrey has lived on the other side of the country for both of her first two birthdays. So, I was so excited when her parents agreed to let me help them throw her birthday party this year (they just live near Vegas now). Once we pinned down a theme (Minnie from Mickey's Clubhouse) I started hoarding all things pink polka dot, and began stewing over party ideas. How fun to do stuff with pink, pink, PINK!

These are the invitations that I made and mailed out to the guests. This isn't the best picture, but the mouse ear silhouette is black glitter paper...then there's pink paper with silvery polka dots, topped by vellum and a polka dot bow. I was pleased with how they turned out.

Next was making party favor suckers. I had quite a hard time finding a sucker mold that was just the silhouette (I was trying to steer away from the party looking to generic and character-y). Finally I found this cookie/sucker pan (that they don't make anymore) on e-bay and was so excited when my bid won! Lastly, a shout out to a great online business that I've frequented...I got the sucker sticks, candy flavoring, cello bags, and chocolate transfer sheets (to make the polka dots) from Country Kitchen SweetArt. They've got lots of great stuff for reasonable prices & I've had really positive experiences with their customer service too.

Here's what the finished product looked like. I tied hot pink polka dot ribbon to the watermelon flavored lollipops, and light pink polka dot ribbon to the strawberry flavored ones. Now...don't get me wrong - I love being a mom to boys, but it was such a treat to do a party with pink and polka dots! So fun!

There ended up being just the 3 kiddos (my boys and the birthday girl), but here are their little favor bags - with headbands and gloves. Noah chastised me for the gloves not having the 3 black lines on them like Mickey & Minnie do (he's very detail oriented when it comes to costumes), but he was reassured when I told him we could put some on after the party.

And here are a couple of pictures of the glorious cake.


I bought this banner off Etsy from a lady named Devin (check out her shop here). She was super helpful with the personalization, it looked great (loved the hand painted polka dots), and the turnaround time was fast. I totally recommend her.

I looked everywhere for pink polka dot balloons (I could only find them sold in a package of multi-colors)...it ended up that Zurchers sold those multi-packs loose in a bin. So, I just went through the bin and picked out every pink one that they had :) Also, I ordered the pink gossamer for bows from Shindigz (I bought animal print gossamer from there for Noah's first b-day, as well as star gossamer for his last b-day...I love the stuff)! Also, I did have Chris haul some photos of Audrey up with them when they came to Utah - I think it's fun to have pictures of the birthday boy/girl around at the party, and people seem to enjoy it. So, for those of you that don't keep tabs on us too often...the picture in the frame is not another child we've added to our family - it's my niece, the birthday girl!

I made Noah wait until right before the party to put on his mouse ears, so once he did he was ready to ham things up for the camera!


The party was held the third weekend in November. Here is the birthday girl arriving at her party! Aren't they such cute cousins?

Audrey ran up and gave me the cutest hug ever when I went out to greet her. That made doing the party worth it right there, and the celebration hadn't even started yet!

I also got to meet my nephew Ezra for the first time (Audrey's brother)! How cute is he?!

Now on to the party! Mark manned the kitchen cookin' up pancakes...

Chris put together a video of pictures of Audrey put to music...

Here's a little tid-bit about the die cuts you can see dangling from the balloons. I love this local scrapbooking store called Paper Creations. They are always super helpful and friendly. I bought the paper there and used their die cuts (but they didn't have the mickey head...just a mickey balloon. So I just had to trim the bottom off of each oval balloon to make it a circle - not a big deal). I glued the die cut bow to the mickey head, attached fishing line, and then replicated it on the other side so it was cute on both sides when it spun (I figured the white gloves were ok as is). It was a bit of a project, but I thought it was a nice touch.

And Audrey tried out her guest-of-honor chair (Lincoln wasn't so sure what he thought about that at first)...

Time to eat! (This photo was kind of a quick after thought, but you get the idea)

There was even whipped cream and sprinkles for the kids to decorate their pancakes.

Of course the whipped cream and sprinkles became the only thing this kid became interested in eating.

These two ate pretty well though!

Next it was time for the pinata! Oh was that an interesting endeavor. There really are no cute Minnie pinatas to be found (try a search - if you find one it's a cheesy character one). So, finally I decided to just buy this Mickey one since it was the shape of the silhouette. I figured that we could pull off the Mickey face and either paint or recover the red with pink. Eventually I turned the project over to Mark who did a beautiful job of spray painting the red crepe paper pink, tracing the shape of the face onto black poster board & adhering it, and then attaching fabric I had leftover from the table runners to make the bow. Voilà! Here's how it turned out! I think it looked perfect!

And then it was time to put the thing to use. It was a pull string pinata, and Lincoln struggled with the concept of pulling just one string at a time. I don't think Audrey had ever done a pinata before and she seemed a little confused about the whole thing at first, but caught right on.

After each kid had several turns Audrey ended up pulling on the string that pulled open the trap door. Her first quick expression was of concern when it pulled open and things began falling out...she looked from person to person & then it quickly sunk in that we were all cheering and she joined right in! She was so cute, jumping up and down and smiling ear to ear.

We hired a woman named Jen Vesper from Layers of Love to do the cake. She donated a beautiful pillow cake to the princess party that I put together, and I knew she'd do a beautiful job with this one too - she sure did! It was almost a shame to have to cut into it, but since that's kind of the point...



Audrey wasn't thrilled about wearing her hat anymore. Here she is as we're all trying to coax her into a couple more pictures with her hat on by the cake...isn't she pretty?

Look at that adorable, wistful expression on her face while we all sang "Happy Birthday" to her!

After blowing out her candles we all cheered, and she had the cutest "ahw, shucks" look on her face.

Chris, Chels, Audrey & Ez.

Me with the birthday girl!

Noah showing me his ears and gloves.

Present opening time!



Huggin' on the Minnie Mouse doll we gave her...

Chelsey and wide awake (and not crying) Ezra.

My parents with Ezra.

And cake is served! (Jen did a chocolate tier, and a tier with girlie colored swirls) Moist & yummy!

That's how Linc felt about the prospect of cake:

And this is how he looked after consuming it:

Audrey with Uncle Matt.

The first picture of all four of the cousins (Ezra, Noah, Audrey & Lincoln)!
C&C - thanks so much for letting me put this party together. It was lots of fun & it was so great to get to celebrate with all of you in person this time!