Dr Seuss Birthday Party

All this talk of birthday parties lately has got me thinking about my kiddos'. We have another first birthday and a third birthday coming up. I really love the Dr Seuss theme and I'm thinking I may do a repeat of it with a pink twist for Avalon's this year. I did Dr Seuss for my little man's first and went a little crazy with it. I actually had way more planned but it I didn't get to all of it. Boo. I saved all my decor and re-usable serve-ware etc because I knew there would be future Seuss related parties at some point. I had so much freakin' fun with this theme so I'm just doing a run through of what I did that year. I get most of my ideas from other blogs I've seen so hopefully mine will be of some inspiration to someone else as well. 

Just starting things off with a little humor. Love this ;p

So here's the theme, "Oh The Places He'll Go". I kind of saw his first birthday as a beginning of sorts. We made it to the first year and are so excited to see what the many years to come bring us. What my little man will become and how his little personality will develop. I have a deep desire to raise my children in a way that they have as many experiences as they can. Play every sport there is, take every dance class available, go to every country and then some. Hopefully I'll be able to make those things happen for my sweeties :)

First off, here's the invitation. Yes, I am completely ridiculous ;p  I thought it would be cool if the invites were a mini Dr Seuss book. I got some inspiration from some of my books on hand and wrote out a little poem. drew some Seuss characters, copied it onto cardstock and ran them through the sewing machine. 

I tried to make it look like the theme book and my sad attempt at a caricature of Zander lol. 

The Seussy Poem:

"One year ago we were blessed with a gift,

A new baby boy!!! What a gift! What a gift!

He's a cute little toot and he's sweeter than honey;

Wouldn't trade him for a thing, not even for money!"

"Some days he's good, some days he's bad,

Some days he only wants his dad.

And when he's quiet as a mouse, 

I like to keep him in my house"

Oh me, oh my! Oh me, oh my!

How very fast the days go by!

We love each day, we love them all.

What happened?! Once he was so small!

Bump, bump, bump, We've seen him fall,

And stomp, stomp, stomp he's learned to crawl.

Now just this once he's turning one,

What fun!! The fun has just begun!"

"Now tell me, tell me, will you come?

Come join in all this fun that's fun?

For dear, oh dear, if you're not here,

You will miss out this year I fear.

NO! You could not would not want to miss

A celebration such as this!"

And my favorite scrap booking stamp of all time haha.

The first guest to arrive won a door prize. Bet you can't guess what that was lol.... a Dr Seuss book. It's been a while, but I think I put a note in the cover commemorating the event. 

When the guests entered, I had a table set up with the cake, gifts, a piggy bank that said "college fund", and a  big fish bowl and note cards for them to write a little keepsake note "my special wish for you is..." to put in his keepsake box for him to open when he gets older. I just love cheesy things like that. And I promise I haven't read any of them. That would spoil the surprise. 

"One Fish

Two Fish

Leave a Wish

For Zander-Fish"

I used my wedding guest book pen, covered it in green floral tape and added some Suess style fluff...

The party hats nobody wore lol. I couldn't find any Seuss party stuff locally so I had to order online. 

I found these on clearance and they match pretty well so I managed to save a bit on the paperware.

On to the food, I found this amazing Dr Seuss cookbook online here. Loved the ideas and presentation!

I tried making some of the items from the book. These were for "cheese trees". I painted little clay pots, stuffed them with foam and moss and floral stems and we put cheese balls on top sorta like topiaries I guess. 

I bought dog food bowls and painted them to be "Ritzy Fritz Food" and "Ritzy Fred Food".

And my absolute favorite part the glass pitchers I painted "Moose Juice" and "Goose Juice" on. I saved these but they broke when we were moving. So sad :(   

painted some dishes black and white...

This was for the green ham. It's actually cake boards.

I found these little photo holders on clearance post holiday. They were candy corns.

Here's the table spread...

Menu included:

Cheese Trees

Green Eggs and Ham (of course)

Gold Fish Crackers (in a fish bowl with a fish scoop)

Brown Barbaloot's Truffala Fruits (grapes)

Ritzy Fritz Food (mini pickles)

Ritzy Fred Food (mini wieners)

Shlott's Knotts (pretzels)

Daisy Head Maisy Burgers (mini burgers with daisy cheese cutouts on top)

and 

Moose Juice and Goose Juice (hawaiian punch)

I actually had a child who kept asking their mom to get the recipe for the Moose Juice. Isn't that darling lol! That was a big hit with the kiddies.

Here's the cake and the smash cake

The fish and the tea pot spout and handle are rice krispie treats. Everything is homemade MM fondant.

The books on bottom are meant to be these two books. The birthday one of course 

says "Zander" instead of "You". 

 

I experimented with some flavors and this was my fave. It's called Spumoni. 

Pistachio, cherry, and chocolate.

The smash cake was a green egg. He didn't eat it though, go figure. He must not like green eggs and ham, Sam I am... laugh.. ok...

But he did manage to get green icing on everything else...

Special ordered onesie to match the theme and one of his gifts was a copy of the book with a little message inside from Mommy and Daddy.

The favor bags. I used clear bags with white stars. Found these awesome mini Seuss books. Love!

And since this was a first birthday I didn't feel like we needed organized games so we did ball pits. He seriously played in that thing until he was so tired he could barely stand up. Although everything didn't' go as planned and there was so much more (yes more) I wanted to do lol, it was a great day. Very memorable. My biggest regret is that I didn't think to have a specific person designated to do photos so I really don't have hardly any :(  

Not making that mistake again!

Babyleg Arm Warmers

Somebody please tell me why I haven't thought of this before?! What a brilliant idea! I can get more use out of Z's old babylegs now :)

Train Table

This table still isn't 100% finished but I'm tired of waiting on last minute details so I'm just going to go ahead and post it. I've seen quite a few plans on how to build one and they all look pretty simple. The basic idea is plywood top, 1x4 trim and 1x3's and 1x4's for the legs. DH built the structure and kind of played it by ear while he was doing it lol. We wanted it to be super sturdy so it will last a long time and assuming it's going to be climbed on at some point in it's life.

We were going to put a hole in the middle and go all out, but we decided that would end up being too big of a table so scratch that idea. I have since seen some with holes in the middle that look pretty awesome though. I drew inspiration from these. I really like the way this one looks so I pretty much copied her top. I did use the outdoor carpet for grass which was taller so the resin didn't completely cover it. I still need to ad more in the future, but for now, it works good as is. And this one was pretty freakin' awesome! I absolutely love the personalization of the hand prints so I stole that idea as well. Like I've said before, I'm a sentimental fool lol.

So here's a few shots in the making...

I also had big plans to make the sides solid and paint them to look like a tunnel with bricks etc etc etc.... but i stuck with solid white... meh... I never have time to do things the way I REALLY want to do them. I'm waiting for the day when the kids are old enough to fend for themselves so I can lock myself in my craft room and never come out hahaha.

The leftover table scraps became the thread rack for DH's mom. Thrifty eh? ;p

Here it is before the resin. For the road, I used the black decor sand, poured Elmer's glue and sprinkled it over so it looks like gravel. The water and beach I am not particularly happy with. I should have put more sand cuz you can see the blue paint under it in some spots. I used regular sand for that part with the glue. Same idea. A ship from the scrap-booking department. The dirt road was actually a "patch job". I couldn't get a piece of the grass carpet to fit the whole area so I tried to patch it together with a "seem" but it looked tacky so insert a dirt road. It was all I could think of last minute. I was running behind, working on it when Z was napping. I wanted it to be a surprise on Christmas morning, but he managed to sneak in there a few times and saw it lol. 

And my FAVORITE part!!  

... ps: getting a 2yr old and a 5mo old's handprints is not as easy as it looks lol. I had to do quite a few times of trying and wiping it off before I got a solid print. Thank God for Mod Podge! And in case you havn't figure out yet, the Z&A Railroad stands for Zander and Avalon. Duh. I loves it ;p

Lastly, I bought some of these wooden crates from Joann's for $5 each with coupons, painted them white, and decorated some letters for the front. His and hers toy storage. I still intend to get 2 more. I can fit 4 under there perfectly. New rule: if it doesn't fit under the train table, it goes in storage. I also have little wheels to attatch on the bottom so they roll easy but don't have the right size screws so that part is on hold too. 

More Mod Podging. I seriously love this stuff.

The reveal...

He literally did not walk away from this table for two days straight. He wakes up in his sleep saying "choo choo train" and goes back to sleep lol. I am so not even kidding. He's the darn cutest kid in the planet! I love making him smile :)

Car Cozy

Now that Christmas is over, the train table finished, thread holder done, baby legs made, I was done with everything I had been working on. I can NOT wait to get started on the quiet book but don't have the supplies yet. I'm not brave enough to go shopping right after the holidays. I have no desire to be standing in line for hours to buy 3 yards of muslin with a screaming baby. So I decided to scrap together something with what I had on hand last night. (I'm in the crafting groove lol) I actually started out to make a crayon holder similiar, but changed my mind.

I was soooo ready to murder my sewing machine! A simple project took way longer than it should have. My thread kept wadding up on me and then my needle broke. I went through 3 needles. Apparently, the iron on bond stuff that I use when doing fabric appliqués gets the needle sticky and causes a lot of problems. Now I have to figure out another way of doing things because this is the third time I've had issues with it.

..So on to the car cozy. These are so cool! Zander agrees. He's been playing with it all night and all morning. And he now knows which one is the number "4". He's so shmart ;p

 

I used an old pair of jeans, some scrap fabric, and a magnetic snap from an old bag. The numbers are wax paper stenciled. I've done stenciling with printing on cardstock but I just learned it can be done with wax paper. The wax paper temporarily adheres to the fabric when you run the iron over it. Nifty. 

My sewing is not perfect. Like I said, I went through 3 needles lol. By this point, I was really just wanting to get it over with.

I did a variation of these: Jill's was my fave. I used her number template as well. Here's a car and crayon caddy that I found very creative. And My Little Gems has a great tutorial.