A Really Long Birthday Post With Lots of Pictures

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this before but I love planning parties. Well, on a relatively small scale, anyway. I’m not so sure I could ever do the whole wedding planner thing – too much pressure.

But a birthday party for an adorable little two year old? Sign.me.up!

I really had very little idea what I was going to do for Lily’s second birthday – we’d done the princess thing already – so I just started looking around on the Internet to try and get inspiration. And can I just say? There is no shortage of inspiration for party ideas on the Internet.

Somewhere along the way, someone {I can’t remember who} told me about this website called Kara’s Party Ideas and oh my word, if you want to see some elaborate parties, go check this out. Like, wow. That’s all I have to say.

As much as I would have loved to have a ginormous, elaborate party for Lily, I knew I needed to be a little more practical due to the fact that, you know, we have a budget. And I really didn’t want to have to start working a second job just to pay for a party!

But I was able to get some really fabulous ideas from Kara’s website, and from those ideas, a party was born.

Would you like to take a peek? Welcome to…

Lily’s Sweet Shoppe

I made the invitations using cardstock, wrapping paper and ribbon – super simple. Although I must say, I was glad I only had to make 10 of them – those of you that make your own wedding invitations? You’re amazing. I couldn’t dream of having to do that 300 times over!

For decoration, I used glass jars and vases that I already had and filled them with candy. And by the way, the candy was by far the biggest splurge out of all the things I decorated with. I think I bought six bags at $4 a piece – so that’s something like $24 for gumballs and sixlets? Ridiculous. But the great thing was, it doubled as both decorations and party favors.

I used a white tablecloth that we already had and rolled out a section of the same wrapping paper that that I had used on the invitations down the middle. The wrapping paper cost me $3.00 and was something else that served double duty– I used it for the invitations, the decorations, and the presents. And I’ve got some leftover to use for wrapping future presents!

I decided to make cupcakes instead of a big cake this year {due to all my cake decorating related issues :) } I just decorated them with chocolate frosting and candy – so much less stressful (for me) than trying to make a big cake!

The jumbo cupcake in the middle was Lily’s and it actually came from Target bakery {thanks to my friend Katie for that tip!} It only cost me $1.99 and I couldn’t believe how great they matched their cake to my decorations!

For “party favors” each of the kids got to fill a bag of candy to take home – with a toothbrush attached of course :)

The bags were $.25 each and the toothbrushes cost $.75 each – and I’m really not sure why I keep telling you how much everything cost except maybe to prove that you really can throw a party on a budget!

And of course, we can’t leave out pictures of the little girl who gave us a reason to celebrate!

She is in this goofy stage of really hamming it up for the camera so most of our pictures of her look like this:

I love her :)     

Last year I think she was a little bewildered by all the attention and spent most of her time looking like this:

But this year she was loving every second of it:

It was such a fun party to plan and such a fun celebration…but can I just let out a big sigh of relief because PHEW!

I think we’re officially partied out. This weeks plans consist of eating leftover cupcakes and playing with all our fun new toys.  I don’t think Lily will have any objections to that :)