Texas Monkey

I'm still going through all of the pictures from the Ladybug Themed Birthday party we had for Monkey. I thought I'd do one post that had a full recap to reference to. Be warned it's pic heavy! You can click on the link above for more details of each section but this post will show everything in one.

For the Birthday girl's outfit I made Ladybug Wings, blinged out a shirt and adorned it with bows, made her antennas, Ladybug Bow, and painted her shoes and put it all with a red and black Petti skirt.

Momma and Poppa dressed in red and black to match the Ladybug theme as well

Instead of party hats I opted for Ladybug Balloon animal bracelets. The birthday girl had a special one just for her.

If you aren't a clown (by profession that is) balloon animal videos are all over the web to show you how to make them.

For the decorations we used red and black with touches of grass green and white. I handmade everything I could and bought on clearance what I couldn't make. I love throwing parties and usually plan for at least 6 months so that I'm not buying all at once and I can get good deals.

I designed and printed out signs to hang everywhere, I did 3 different sayings.

I just took little glass vases and filled with tissue paper and hot glued red carnations to the top for floral arrangement centerpieces on a few tables. I used marabou to add little pops of color and texture.

I made the tutu puff for my niece that my wonderful sister in law let us borrow so I didn't have to make another one and Monkey carried this around like her wand!

We used lots and lots of balloons, tissue paper pom poms, wooden ladybugs, and other random decorations to hang around the very large room.

I also made 3 banners to hang, and I ordered one from Vista Print.

For the Food Table Centerpiece I took sticks and hot glued small tissue paper pom poms and stuck a tutu I had made around it. It got more compliments and oohs and ahhs than I think anything at the party, well almost anything, nothing got more attention than the Sweets Table.

For the food I think of picnics when I think of Ladybugs so we had picnic friendly food with hot dogs with all the toppings, baked beans, chips and dips, and of course Ladybug crackers.

I decorated the cups with black polka dots to carry through the theme. We added water bottle labels and served Bug Juice!

Here's a close up of the Ladybug Crackers. I think these just added the perfect touch!

I adore this picture of Monkey stealing olives off of the crackers.

I kept it simple for the games. We played pin the spot on the ladybug and Ladybug Spot Toss. I painted each ladybug and cut out circles to pin on for the Pin the Spot game. For the Ladybug Toss I cut out felt circles and glued on then added Velcro strips to make them even more sticky. I then wrapped ping pong balls with the opposite strips of Velcro and the kids tossed the balls and tried to get them to stick to the spots. For prizes I decorated a bucket and filled with loot for them to pick from.

For the cake I made cupcakes and a ladybug cake and presented it on a cupcake tower that Poppa and I made. This was the centerpiece for the Sweets Table.

For The Favor Bags the kids got sent home with a Ladybug Shaped sugar Cookie, a Ladybug shaped crayon that I made and put in decorated match boxes, Ladybug Bubbles, and a bouncy ball for boys, and lip gloss for girls. I filled bags with shredded paper for the grass look and added baggie tags made by Mel's Little Zoo one of my awesome Blogmania sponsors. She also made the cupcake toppers, water bottle labels, and Thank you tags.

And I saved the best for last, the Sweets & Treats Table. This was everyone's favorite and I was nearly cleared out! Which is probably a good thing but I sure would have loved to take some cake balls home with me. I made cake balls, rice krispy treats, pretzel rods, and marshmallow pops which were all dipped in red or chocolate candy melts and sprinkled with decorations. We had lots of red and black candy and cookies that were served in glass containers with cute little scoops. Paper fans were made and hung behind the table for some extra pops of color.

I had bags with thank you tags that they could fill up and take home and fill up they did!

I made these little garden fence props that were perfect for holding the cake pops and marshmallow pops.

Well if you're still ready this then Bless Your Heart and thanks for sticking it out with me. I had a blast putting this together and hope you enjoyed the pictures. I have to say thank you to my awesome mom who helped me do so much of the party, she sat up late many nights folding paper, wrapping bottles, and listening to me pitch ideas and just nodded along! She's the greatest. Thank you Poppa for putting up with my crazy party self. Thanks for hanging the tall decorations and for being such the perfect Poppa for our Monkey. Thanks to my family who helped set up and clean up, ya'll rock! Thanks to Mel's Little Zoo for the printables and thanks to all Monkey's friends and family that came and helped celebrate her turning 2.

I've got a few parties in the work for this month so stay tuned for what I come up with!

Happy Friday Ya'll

I'm linking up and partying here:

Are you getting sick and tired of seeing red and black in my posts yet? :) Thanks for humoring me, I promise just a few more and I'll be done and then we'll get back to normal blog posts next week. Like Dear So and So, Talkin Tuesdays, Yay You Did It, Dream Book, Tutorials, For You Friday, and More.

Today I want to show you more in detail the decorations, the banners, signs, and the printables we used.
First decorations:

I didn't have a very big budget for this party but I did have a very big room to decorate. I knew that the Sweets & Treats Table would add lots of color and decor to the room but I'd still have lots of filler left. My go to decoration for most parties is the tissue paper flower pom poms. I think we had about 15 or 20 big ones hanging from the ceiling this year. I did them in red, black, white, and green.

We mainly just hung them over the tables.

We also had about 50 balloons blown up with helium and tied a few to buckets in corners and let the rest just float the the ceiling. However the a/c was blowing and blew them all to one corner. :)

Remember when I asked for your opinions on centerpieces? I got some great ideas so thank you. For the food table I just opted for glass vases filled with green tissue paper and some red flowers.

The cupcake stand that I made was the centerpiece for the Sweets & Treats table.

The food table centerpiece was inspired from Amy Atlas and one of her pieces.

We stopped on the side of the road by the rodeo grounds and found some big twigs, I took a ladybug tutu that I'd made my niece that my Sister In Law sent back to me to use, and made smaller versions of the flower pom poms and hot glued them to the twigs. I really love how it came out.

I made 3 banners which were all done using my cricut. The vinyl sign I designed and had printed and shipped via vistaprint.

I also designed circle cut outs and ladybugs with my computer and cricut and hung everywhere.

The Favor bag tags, thank you tags, waterbottle tags, and cupcake toppers all came from one of my sponsor's Little Mel's Zoo. The matched perfectly and I printed and cut them out to use everywhere.