Second Birthday Party

Last weekend we celebrated Avery’s second birthday with some of her little friends and their families.  While it wasn’t nearly as big as her first birthday party, it still turned out great and we all had so much fun!  In planning her party, I wanted to do as much as we could without buying anything.  Partly out of necessity (Honduras doesn’t exactly have a Target nearby) and partly trying to be eco-friendly and creative.  I think we did pretty good, and just about everything we used for the invitations, decorations, and even the favors, was stuff that we already had here.  Sure, there were plenty of things that I would have wanted if I could have made a Target run, but we got by and everything looked perfect.

The invitations were made with some left overs from Paper Source, vintage fabric scraps, and a little design help from my sister in law.  Thanks Robin!

We are right in the middle of rainy season in Honduras, and it rains pretty consistently every afternoon.   Mornings are usually ok, so a morning party it was!  Here is the birthday girl, waiting for her friends to arrive.

Since it was a morning party, we served brunch, and tried to keep all the food toddler friendly.  For brunch we had mini frittatas, fresh bread, fruit kabobs, and orange juice (mimosas for the parents).  It was an early morning prepping everything, but thankfully I had a lot of help.

Instead of birthday cake, we had cinnamon roll cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.  Heaven in a striped cupcake liner.

These little cinnamon rolls were seriously amazing.  And I am not just saying that because I am weird and don’t like birthday cake.

It was really hot during the party.  Like the sun beating down, no breeze, no shade, I need water, kind of hot.  All the kids had red little cheeks and sweaty little heads.  At least it wasn’t raining.

Definitely not as timid as last year…

I asked Avery if she was two, and she said, “nooooooo, Avery is dos!”  We’re still working on the whole English thing.

The goodie bags were also made out of vintage fabric, and tied with a little hemp twine.  These were the easiest things I made, since it was basically folding a strip of fabric in half and sewing the two sides.  I had them all done in about 20 minutes.  My kind of project.

In the goodie bags were a few #2 cookies that the birthday girl made herself, and a mini coloring book and crayons that I put together with a little elastic.  I got the idea for the coloring books from one of favorite blogs, Under The Sycamore, and I knew that I wanted part of the gift to be something that Avery took part in.  She loves helping us in the kitchen and is actually quite a good little baker.  This is not to say that we didn’t lose a considerable amount of 2’s to her “creative” use of the cookie cutter.  But she was very proud of them.  She was sitting on my lap when I was editing the next picture, and she said, “Avery makes the cookies”.  I love that she remembers that.

And what 2 year old’s birthday party would be complete without a little pouting?

Happy Birthday little bear.