Do you guys remember back in August when I was talking about my daughter's 2nd birthday party that was coming up?
Yeah, me either.
(I can barely remember yesterday!)
But I did talk about it, and at the time it seemed like her birthday was still soooo far away. But now it is over and done with, and I have some really cute stuff to show you guys!
So anyone who knows me well knows that I turn to Pinterest for everything. If I need a new recipe, if I'm planning a party, if I don't know what to get someone for their birthday, etc. My daughter's birthday was no exception. Here's the board I used for all the cute ideas:
Follow Eva's 2nd Birthday by Gela Smith on Pinterest
So let's start the pin comparisons! Here's the first one:
And here's mine:
The idea is relatively simple - you wrap up your various plastic utensils in a cute folded napkin and secure it on there with candy bracelets. I had a couple initial problems with this one. The first one was that I could not find regular candy bracelets anywhere at first! I tried my regular local party store and all they had were candy watched and candy necklaces. But I FINALLY found what I was looking for at Oriental Trading - here is the link if you're interested. Now this listing is actually for candy bracelets with little "pool party" charms on them, and I just broke them off before I used them. I wanted those ones in particular because they were a more pastel color which is what I was going for, but if you don't mind the more vibrant colors than Oriental Trading also has regular candy bracelets without the charms here. Although I can't vouch for how the more vibrant colored bracelets taste, I can tell you that the "pool party" ones I got were really delicious - best tasting candy jewelry I've ever tried.
The second problem I had was folding the napkins all cute like that. I managed to do it ok, but once I put on the candy bracelets it didn't look so cute anymore. I had to wrap my bracelets around twice in order to secure them, otherwise they would just fall right off. That being said, when I wrapped them a second time it just scrunched up the cute folded design. So I decided to fold the napkins in half diagonally and roll them around the spoon instead and they still turned out really cute - I got lots of compliments on them, and even the adults had a fun time sporting their candy bracelets and munching on them throughout the party.
So it worked really well! I definitely recommend trying this.
Here's the next one:
And here was my version:
So I did a couple of things differently here. First of all, getting one specific color of candy is hard. You usually have to special order it from a place like the Candy Warehouse which I really didn't want to have to do. So I went to my local party store and bought a package of two colors of sixlets. I would have gotten more colors if they weren't soooo expensive! But I think they were worth it in the end. I also used much smaller vases that I just picked up from the dollar store. Then instead of leaving them as is, I added a little butterfly fan decoration in the top of each one (which I also got from Oriental Trading). They turned out adorable! At least, I think so - and apparently so did everyone else at the party because I got lots of compliments on this too. But the problem was that the fans didn't go in very deep and the candies didn't weigh enough to really keep them in place very well, so every little bump on the table made them fall over - not that my guests minded, though. They took them out and got into the candies inside before too long anyway. ;) Overall, a cute idea! It worked out well.
Ok, moving on:
And here's mine:
I absolutely love the way these turned out! I made much more than this of course, but I forgot to take a picture until a lot of them had already been scarfed down! Dang. But you get the idea. I used a star tip to ice the cupcakes in a spiral pattern to make it look like the butterflies were sitting on a flower, then I used my leftover sixlets to make their bodies and some yogurt covered pretzels for the wings! (I got my pretzels at Lin's near the bakery goods, but you could use Flipz or something similar as well, or even regular pretzels if you'd prefer!) These were pretty easy and self-explanatory, the only tip I really have about them is to make sure you put them in the fridge after you decorate them - the pretzels don't like to stay up at that angle when the frosting has warmed up some. I got plenty of compliments on this one as well - definitely worth doing!
And one more about the cupcakes...
I made them rainbow on the inside. Here's a pic:
So cute, right? I can't say I got a lot of compliments on it because no one really said anything! I was surprised! (Maybe they were sick of handing out compliments by now, hehe!) But I thought they were absolutely adorable and the rainbow inside made them even more fun to eat! The only thing I really did differently was that instead of using all 6 colors in it, I only used orange through purple and iced the top with pink for the last of it. And let me tell you, I'm glad I did it that way. I don't know if you noticed in the original pin, but the tops of those cupcakes are kind of flat and protrude out a bit past the cupcake liner - that's from over-filling. By cutting out the top color it made them look so much better in my opinion. Just remember to only use a tablespoon or so if each color of batter if you want them to fit in the pan right! Then you can spread it around to the edges with a spoon - don't fill until it spreads to the sides on its own!
I think that's pretty much wraps it up, other than to show you a picture of the cute little star of the party!
Happy birthday my sweet 2 year old girl!!
