My son turned 3! Right in the middle of our move, while we were still unpacking. As such we didn't have much of a party the day of, just a supper and some cupcakes with his grandparents. Unfortunately, his last birthday fell in the middle of the pandemic, during a week where we had an emergency water shut off. Needless to say that one was a little quiet and small as well. We decided to throw him a bit of a belated birthday party after we were all unpacked this year, and I am so glad we did.
I know he won't remember it much, but he does have a great time which makes it worth it for me. There are only so many years I get to throw super fun themed parties for my littles before it stops "being cool" and I enjoy doing it so much! His first birthday was a "my little monster" theme, and the first time I had ever made a multi layered cake, as well as the first time I ever put together a themed party. I absolutely loved doing it and I was so looking forward to doing another. Then the pandemic hit. Even though it was a little late this year, I am so glad we decided to have it anyway!
Right now my son is a big fan of Spiderman, though he calls him "pew pew" so that was the theme we went with this year.
The first thing I tackled was the cake. I chose a fairly simple spiderman design, as I am still pretty new at the cake decorating thing. You can see a few of the lines I drew to line everything up with. I forgot to smooth them back out again. I also used store bought icing, as I didn't have any food colouring gel on hand and the regular food colouring drops are just not strong enough for such deep colours. He had a two layer vanilla cake with chocolate icing between the layers this year.
I also made chocolate cupcakes in various colours which were super tasty. We did end up with some leftovers that didn't get eaten in a timely fashion, but on the upside, they worked perfectly for bread pudding a week or so later. I love bread pudding so leftover cake is never really a bad thing for me!
After this I took care of the rest of the food and decorations. I have to say, once you've done a few spiderwebs, they get much easier to do, and I was able to get through most of this fairly quickly!
I did some buns and meat and cheese and veggies platters up for everyone to snack on. Nothing too fancy there, except I made a point to buy some baby bel cheese. I used a sharpie to draw some webs on them as well. My son thought those were great! It was a struggle to get him to eat anything else though! I also cut some spider man eyes out of plain paper and used a black sharpie to line them in black. I glued them to some red solo cups and then drew on the webbing to make cutlery holders. I thought they turned out super cute. If you look, you can see my son's spiderman figure acting as a napkin holder as well!
Then I turned my attention away from food and more towards fun and games. We don't have many friends with kids, so right now my son's parties are mostly grown ups, all of whom don't mind my enthusiasm and usually wear whatever get ups and play whatever games my brain comes up with for the day. It helps that they all love my son, and want to see him having a great time!
I picked up some silly string and just used a glue stick to wrap them in construction paper. Then I drew on the web shooter designs by hand. They aren't the greatest, but they were a lot of fun! I also picked up some blue and red eye masks for pretty cheap at the dollar store. I used a sharpie to draw the webs on these as well. They went over very well, and are now in my son's toy box. He wears them all the time!
I finished everything off with some little dollar store Spiderman bracelets and yoyos that I thought my son would like. It wasn't the most elaborate party, but it was pretty good for a homemade affair and I thought it came together really well.
It was also really nice to have a chance to celebrate in our new home and to start making some new memories together here. Hopefully we will get to have many more parties for our littles!
Until next time, be safe and be kind!