For wonderful Daughter #2 - who is special and wonderful and totally has my heart.Since Daughter #2 is the middle child, she often feels the crunch of being squeezed in between adorable baby brother and bossy older sister. As her mother, I feel her drive to be noticed and accepted for who she is as the middle child. She wavers between trying to catch up to older sister or trying to be baby like her brother. My heart goes out to her often, and so for her birthdays I try to take extra care and help her get the birthday that she wants.
Which means we have a lot of conversations. Daughter #2 is well aware that mommy does birthdays at home and she loves that. I let her choose her theme as well - last year, her theme was quite an interesting one that she came up with all on her own - Yellow. Her Yellow Birthday Party was really fun for me to plan in terms of food, games and decoration and we had a fun time doing it. This year she decided on a Max and Ruby theme, and gave me some specific demands - like cupcakes and lemonade (since Max and Ruby like lemonade).
I ended up with the following menu - which I REALLY liked, because everything was prepared the night before, and the only thing I had to do the day of was chop fruit for the fruit salad and make the vegetable mosaic. I tried to make things kid friendly and also tried to make sure that there were lots of vegetables (since it is a Max and Ruby bunny party) and also enough delicious food for adults to enjoy
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Max and Ruby Birthday Party Menu
Spinach Dip and vegetable mosaic (dip prepared the night before, veggie mosaic done the day of)
Curried Chicken Salad (prepared the night before)
Asparagus, Ham, Havarti, Egg Bake (prepared the night before)
Mac and Cheese (prepared the night before - if you do this be prepared to add an additional 20 minutes of baking time as it will be cold)
Carrot Cupcakes - done mini size, as kids can't eat a whole cupcake anyways
Crispy Chewy Oatmeal Toffee Cookies
Fruit Salad - mangoes, pineapple, blueberries, strawberries
Bagels, crackers, bread
Lemonade
Vegetable Mosaic with Spinach Dip - put this together in less than 20 minutes
Mini Carrot Cupcakes with toppers
The full spread...dig in
Mini Carrot Cupcakes with toppers
The full spread...dig in
Many people have asked me how to make the pink pompom - link to Martha Stewart
And I also found a great resource for beautiful colors of tissue paper at Nashville Wraps
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9 comments:
LOVE! can you tell us how you made the big pink flower..?? adorable!
Hi Jan -
thanks for visiting. The pink pom poms are an idea I got from Martha Stewart. Her site says to do it with 8 sheets - I did 10. I also used the tissue paper they had available at Target in our area...slightly different size but still a very pretty effect. I made 16 pom poms and hung them all around and everyone really loved them. Beautiful effect. (I had blue, green, yellow and pink.)
http://www.marthastewartweddings.com/article/pom-poms-and-luminarias
My daughter loves, loves, loves Max and Ruby. Here birthday is in December, but this has given me a fabulous idea I never would have thought of!
Ginny - if you like - you can email me and I can tell you a few more things I did in the max and ruby theme...including a few games and craft ideas.
I will do that, thanks! And sorry for the typos in my previous comment - that'll teach me to cook and read at the same time :)
Oh, cool! I can see the big carrot made out of little carrots and celery! Too cute!!
Happy birthday to your daughter!
Hi Joanne - I recently found your FB page and am now a big fan of your blog. I too have an allergy child (she's almost 3 years old) and am also planning a Max and Ruby theme for her upcoming birthday. Can you tell me how you made the cupcake toppers? Also, I saw that you had some games and crafts based on the theme that you could share. I would love to hear them!
Thanks!
Tina
Tina -
As it has been so long, some tings are hard to remember. We had non competitive games, like practicing hopping like a bunny using pillow cases. Sort of like a relay but without any clear winner or anything like that.
We did a spoon race with tennis balls. Sort of like your bunny tail and balancing the tennis ball on a wooden spoon and getting it into the basket.
We did a non competitive treasure hunt with bunny themed snacks (Auntie aNne's bunny grahams, gummy bunnies and such) where I had them individually wrapped and I had all the kids run and look and throw them all in a basket. Then I divided them up later to be put in goody bags.
I also read them a Max and Ruby story, as well as gave them all a set of bunny ears. We decorated goody bags with bunny stickers.
The cupcake toppers were simply finding a graphic of max and ruby and then getting a layout program (Microsoft publisher) and just making a bunch of circles. I taped toothpicks to the back and voila! Cupcake toppers!
Thank you! I will try some of those things.
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