Luau Fruit Display

One of my very good friends is getting married this fall and we celebrated her wedding shower today with a Luau!  One of my bridesmaid duties was to create a fruit display for her and I was so excited that she asked me to do it!

She sent me two photos (a palm tree platter and a pineapple tree with monkeys) that she really liked to give me some inspiration and set me loose to create something.  This was by far my favorite fruit adventure yet.  I loved this display more than anything I have done in the past, even more than the Sesame Street fruit and veggie trays that I made in February for our son's birthday party.

This is the entire display which included a pineapple tree with a bride and groom monkey and "coconuts" (kiwi), fruit bowls made from the rinds of a watermelon, two pineapples (one cut vertically, one cut horizontally), and two honeydew melons.  I added whole bunches of bananas, green and purple grapes and strawberries to decorate around the fruit bowls, a palm tree platter, banana dolphins eating grapes and a bowl of fruit salad.

Pineapple tree and monkeys.  The fruit needed to make this exact display is 4 pineapples, 2 mangoes, 2 oranges, 1 lemon, 1 tangerine, 2 grapes, 1 bunch of miniature bananas, and kiwis.  I used wooden bamboo skewers and toothpicks to assemble.  The most important part of this display is your base/dowel rods.  This is a VERY heavy tree and the monkeys add weight as well.  You need a sturdy and heavy base and a sturdy rod (or two).

The pineapple parrots were my favorite part of the display and they couldn't have been easier to make.  The watermelon bowl is filled with chunks of fresh pineapple and some bing cherries.

I also loved how this little bowl looked.  Once I started cutting up fruit for my fruit salad I couldn't stand to just compost all of the "skins" of the fruit.  This gave me inspiration to use them as bowls to hold my fruit.  This pineapple was cut vertically (you need a very sharp knife) and I added a orange peel flower.

Honeydew melon was filled with cherries and you get a glimpse of the banana dolphins in the background.

Close-up of the banana dolphins.

Using fruit is a wonderful way to bring life to your food table, add to your theme decorations and make eating healthy foods even more fun for your guests.

Enjoy!!

John Deere Birthday Party

I opted for e-invitations this year in an effort to save resources and move toward better stewardship of our environment and money.  I printed off a couple for people I knew didn't e-mail as well as one for his baby book. 

Baby Boy #2 celebrated his big first birthday party in John Deere tractor style.  We planned for Memorial Day Weekend and who would have ever thought it would be freezing cold!  Most of my activities planned were water/mud activities so they were a no-go for the day :(  However everyone was a good sport and had a nice time.  I decorated with simplicity in mind, made some handmade favors for our little guests, and served a yummy plant-based spread for our guests.  Here are some photos from our day.

Decorated the tables with green and yellow and used some John Deere Tractors and fresh corn on the  for decorations.

This was the kid's picnic table so I filled the truck with green and yellow sidewalk chalk for their centerpiece. 

Drink Station.  Mason Jars with green biodegradable straws, homemade John Deere "sippy" cups for the kiddos and some lemon lime water.

I glued John Deere fabric to the tops of the jelly jar lids, punched a hole and added a straw for a sippy cup favor for our little guests.

Put the favor bags on the food table.  We had mostly green and yellow foods:  Bananas, apples, pears, grapes, pea soup, and roasted veggie platter with squash, mushrooms, peppers, onions,  kidney beans, blacked eye peas and quinoa.

Favor bags for the boys included a handmade elastic bow tie made from flannel John Deere fabric and a handmade bottle cap.  These were so fun to make and probably my favorite item of the day.  You can purchase these from me here.

Girls favor bags had a John Deere head band made from green and yellow ribbon, and a handmade John Deere bottle cap.  You can purchase these from me here.

Even Bella got a John Deere makeover for the big day!  The Birthday Boy almost never lets her leave his side so she needed a little decor too :)

Never thought he would need his winter hat on Memorial Day!  

Pretty intrigued by his sippy cup and straw.

Big Brother had a good time as well!

I made mud playdough for the favor bags and found some colorful plastic baggies from Target, used the yellow and green for the playdough.  Each child got two cars or trucks or tractors in the favor bag along with his/her bow tie or headband.  The play dough smelled so good you almost wanted to eat it!

Despite the cold, as well as having quite the cranky birthday boy (who went down for a super early nap 1/2 hour into his party) we had a nice time visiting with family and friends.  Always love watching the little cousins and friends play together.  We have had a busy month (and we do NOT do "busy" very often!) between getting our house ready for sale, my husband completing his Masters degree, celebrating his degree with a bon fire last week and all the wonderful unpacking and sorting of our stuff into our apartment.  I decided I didn't have the time or energy to have an over-the-top birthday party (although that's usually what I do!) but in the end I actually enjoy the simple look to the tables and food.  I was able to get everything done, both food and decorations/favors in one day and night.  I stayed up all night before the party as is my typical procrastinating tradition for these parties :)

Happy Birthday my sweet baby boy!!

UNO Birthday Party

I have had so much fun sharing our Sesame Street Party on the blog and facebook!  It has finally given me the push into the world of Pinterest and I am excited to discover a new way to challenge my creativity and party planning.  We have another first birthday coming up in May for Baby #2 and I thought I wanted to share Baby #1's first birthday party from last year which was UNO themed!  We had so much fun planning and throwing this party!!  I love the many hats I get to wear as a mom and all the different opportunities I am presented with to get creative and do something I love!

Our kitchen set the stage for our main party area and I decorated using a combination of decks UNO cards (both retro styles and modern), handmade UNO card banners and signs and color coordinated foods and balloons.  I tried to make sure everything was either White, Black, Red, Blue, Green or Yellow to stay true to our colorful theme!

This was my favorite decoration, our faux UNO birthday cake!  I wanted the birthday boy to have a candle to blow out and a nice decoration for his photos but without the sugary overload.  So his "cake" was made using scraps of cardboard and taped into circle tiers.  I hot glued retro UNO cards on to each tier in color sets with some WILD card mixed in and a candle on top.  It doubled as our table centerpiece.

Here is me admiring our UNO card veggie platter and trying to get the popcorn popped !

I cut out letters and used bright colored paper to make a homemade birthday banner of UNO cards as well as made some large cards out of poster paper.  These aren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination but I really enjoy our party decorations being a mix of store bought/hand made.  I love the idea of using a cricut for this which would be less time consuming and more "professional" looking than mine.  So if you have a cricut I would say go for it!  If not, I think the old pencil and scissors works just fine too :)

We served almost all plant based foods and I made up several "trays" with our colorful snacks.  I made my goal to be to use as little disposable products as possible.  I did buy the blue takeout containers from Dollar Tree (3 for $1.00) to make my UNO popcorn caddies.

I really wanted to highlight his first year in photos so that our guests could look at how much he has grown in this first year!  I edited his monthly photos to Black and White and taped them onto bright colored papers, using the UNO cards to label how old he was in each photo and this decorated our drink buffet.  We served water with lemon and lime slices.  Very refreshing and super simple.  Nothing beats ice cold water!

Our family each had a UNO shirt that I made using the freezer paper method and some paints.  I wanted a number 2 card on mine since I was preggo with baby #2 and my husband had a 3 card.  The birthday boy's was the back of the card design.

Decorated the high chair with some balloons, cards and I sewed him a matching bib with a painted  messy/splash design and a number 1 in the middle.

Probably my favorite photo of him of the day.

The popcorn was a big hit.  I made it on the stove top using butter flavored grapeseed oil and just a dash of sea salt.

Blowing out the candle.  Happy UNO Birthday!!

Sesame Street Birthday Party

Last year for our son's birthday, we celebrated with an UNO party since he was turning one.  This year, we got into the Sesame street mood as he is now very much in love with all things Sesame street.  He loves the characters, the books, the songs, he got to see Sesame Street Live for his birthday present from my parents and although he has never seen the actual show on television, he doesn't seem to miss out on any of the Sesame Street fun!   Here is a glimpse into our party day decorations and festivities.

Front of his invitation was a photo from our day seeing Sesame Street Live

Back of the invitation was from a shot of him meeting Cookie and Elmo backstage.

Everyone in the family ordered some Big Face Sesame Street Shirts to wear at the party, we had Oscar, Elmo, Cookie Monster, Ernie, a shirt for our younger son with several characters, and then I fashioned together a Big Bird Suit for the birthday boy!

I decided early on what I DID NOT want for the party was to buy pre-made sesame street decorations like napkins, plates, balloons and so forth.  One of my favorite elements to our UNO party last year was using the bright colors from the UNO cards and creating our decorations and serving foods that were red, yellow, green or blue.  So for this party I wanted to bring the characters to life and focus on using the bright colors of Sesame Street.

Each of the six guests tables had a centerpiece and themed snacks.  This was probably one of my favorite two tables (Oscar the Grouch was another favorite and he is pictured below).  I made a Big Bird head using yellow balloons, I cut out his facial features from construction paper and made a nest for him out of a basket that I hot glued some twigs on and then filled with pretzel twists, and whole sunflower seeds.  He sat on top of a bright orange table cloth.  

Here is Oscar the Grouch, who by the time the party planning was over had become my favorite character. I didn't watch Sesame Street as a kid so I am just now discovering how lovely it is!  Oscar was so easy to make, maybe about 30 minutes in all and that included time of thinking what I wanted to use, how I wanted to make him and searching around for supplies!  He cost me under $4 to make and that include the Veggie chips (Green, Brown, Tan) that flowed out from his trash can.  I had a package of gummy worms to include in his trash can but I forgot to pack up them up!

Of course Cookie Monster seemed to be a favorite centerpiece with the kiddos and I'm sure it had nothing to do with the mini cookies spilled out on his table!  

If you haven't been around Sesame Street in recent years you may not recognize this little gal, Abby Cadabby.  She is one of our son's favorites characters and I love her bright colors so I just had to include her as a centerpiece.  She cost about $3 to make not including the Plush Doll.

 Of course, I couldn't forget Elmo!  He ended up looking a tad bit silly but Elmo is a tad bit silly himself ;)  He is made out of shades of red ballons, and sits on top of a homemade "crayon" box filled with goldfish crackers.  His box read "Elmo loves his golsfish" and "his crayons too!"

Ernie is enjoying his bubble bath with his rubber duckies.  How simple is this?  I had planned on making a head centerpiece for Ernie but last minute decided on this instead.  I really love how it turned out!  The organic seas salt popcorn was all gone by the end and I pretty sure all of the peeps were munched up!

I made about a dozen party hats for our little guests.  I had never made party hats before so it took a little while for my brain to figure out how to shape and staple and cut the paper but after I figured it out, it was a cinch.  I will definitely be making hats for future parties, so much cuter than buying them and the ribbon is so much nice on little faces than those elastic pieces!

Here is the Birthday Boy sporting his Big Bird outfit that I fashioned together for him this week.  I also made him an embellished Big Bird Party hat which he barely kept on long enough for the picture ;) 

Hooper's Store was a last minute addition that I made the night before the party to put on the table with the favor bag items.  I LOVED the way it turned out and gave a more authentic feel to our theme.  It had all kinds of goodies for each child to shop for.  Sesame street coloring books, crayons, stickers, granola bars, fresh fruit, and bubbles!

This is a favorite photo of Anakin sitting on his toddler couch with my laptop and phone pretending to be hard at work.  I wanted to include it in the party decorations so I placed it inside Hooper's store with a sign that read:

Every little one had his or her own personalized cloth shopping bag for gathering up their favors in either an Oscar, Zoe, or Abby themed bag.

My favorite favor was y homemade Sesame Street character crayons!  A friend of mine made homemade heart shaped crayons last year for Valentine's Day.  Her's were swirled in color and oh so cute!  I thought about trying that same concept with S.S. lollipop molds and it turned out perfectly!  I found these "Thank You" templates online and used that as a tag for my crayon bag.  We had Elmo, Grover, Oscar, Ernie, Bert and Cookie Monster crayons.  I recycled old crayons and crayon pieces from a big box at my mom and dad's house.  They still had it from back when I was little.  So my total cost was under $8 for both my molds plus the favor bags and I will probably resell the molds at a discounted cost.  These would be awesome favors just by themselves.  Can't top that!

 Some shoppers :)

Other activities included a "Library" of all of Anakin's Sesame Street books.  I loved the way this decorated the room and used items we already had on hand!

We also had a costume/dress up area. with tutus, hats, a homemade Count Von Count cape, a homemade Oscar the Grouch garbage lid hat and "Go Away!" sign, a few Sesame Street clothes from Anakin's closet and two Elmo/Cookie Monsters costumes that my mom had bought for the boys a few months ago.  We also had a bin of musical instrument toys for play.

Elmo (along with four live "Dorothy's") directed the guests to the restroom area.

Food time!  We are always determined to serve our party guests with nutrient rich and healthy fresh foods.  I saw a picture online where someone did a Cookie Monster and Elmo fruit tray which inspired me.  I made something similar and then included a Pineapple Big Bird, a Carrot and Pepper Ernie, a Cucumber/Broccoli/Celery/Mushroom Oscar, and a Black Olive and Purple Cauliflower Count Von Count.

This is a better angle of them that I took at home before I packaged them up to transport.  It is so much fun to use the party food as decorations and a much better idea than serving a sugary and fatty dessert cake.  What a fun Sesame Street Birthday Party Idea to encourage your guests to enjoy their fruits and veggies!!

In the middle of the food table, I framed a black and white photo of the Birthday Boy that I had taken earlier that week while we were outside playing ball.  I put words and phrases on the photo describing all of his favorites: foods, activities, people, book characters and more.  Then I scattered about 20 4x6 prints of the photo around so that guests could take one home with them.  Again, it seems the last minute details tend to be the biggest hits, I got a lot of comments about this and folks liked having a photo to take with them.

The end of the table included some Plant-Based Chili, three dips ("Oscar's Guac....Yuck!" that was served in a large washed out can that I used for tomatoes to make the chili, Homemade Hummus by Snuffleupagus and some sweet salsa) and some blue corn tortilla chips. 

I made a little sign as a play on Bert's famous paper clip collection to display in front of the chip bowl.

I think this was the only Sesame Street item I bought for the party, a GIANT 5 or 6 foot tall banner with the characters standing in front of the famous green doors of Sesame Street.  It also has a Happy Birthday Banner on top.  For about $6 it was worth every last penny.  It was a great back drop for photos and would like really neat on Anakin's wall at home.  You can see him here pointing out and naming the characters for Momma!

Photo time!  Bert and Ernie showed up at our party compliments of Gammy and a surprise to everyone else.  So we got a nice photo of everyone sporting their character shirts.

Another shot of the hubs with his family who all made a special trip in.

By the end of afternoon we had two little boys who partied til they dropped!

 Happy Birthday, my little one!