Collins' carousel party

We celebrated our sweet girl’s birthday on Sunday feb 16 at our house and it was perfect.  It may have taken the birthday girl a good hour to warm up, but once she did she had a ball!  And I do think all of the other little kiddies had a blast, which is what matters most….fun times for all.  I have struggled the past two years on what to do for her birthday because of the weather.  It’s not practical to have an all indoor party because our house just wouldn’t accommodate that many people comfortably.  Last year, we chanced it and set up the bounce house and toys in the back yard, it was a bit cool but ended up being a beautiful day…all the kids were fine in a light jacket.  I struggled again this year and ultimately decided to set up “shop” in our garage.  I decided this because of our mini garage renovation that had taken place.  Since we lost part of our ceiling when a pipe busted, we took that opportunity to completely clean OUT the garage, epoxy/paint the floors and paint the walls.  It feels brand new and I love it.  All of the garage junk got moved to the screened porch, but I just shut the blinds and no one had a clue.  The garage ended up being a perfect set up….if it was cold, I could have just shut the doors and everything would have been FINE!  However, it ended up being a GORGEOUS day…so we left the doors open and it allowed TONS of sunshine in and gave the kids the opportunity to run around in the front yard too (that still had snow in parts….crazy weather.)  We set up the bounce house, two tables for arts and crafts and cake eating, and brought out the kitchen, slide and easel….the kids had PLENTY to do.  I even had a “pin the horse on the carousel” station set up (carousels was the theme) but never even got around to playing it since the kids were having so much fun, oh well!  We’ve now done two pretty big birthday parties at home….I think next year C bug may get a party somewhere else!!  As much as I love party planning, I am one of these people that starts off FULL STEAM and then I kind of get “over it” and lose  interest towards the end, it’s hard work planning a party for that many people! 

Anyways, enough rambling about all of that…on to the details.    Once again, I stalked Pinterest and pretty much copied THIS absolutely BEAUTIFUL pastel carousel theme birthday party.  This lady spent a LOT more money than I did (and it shows) but I’d say my mostly DIY/budget conscious effort was pretty darn close! 

There were certain things I wasn’t going to pay for.  For example, the etsy owner who created the original party’s chalkboard wanted like $60 bucks for that thing!! Ha!!  Fortunately for me, I have a CRAZY talented sister in law who hand drew ours herself.  SCORE.  I just LOVE the way it turned out.  How darn cute, right!?! 

I half-assed the beautiful carousel background as well….the file for the carousel was cheap, I spent a little more than I would have preferred printing them but I did say NO to the horses.  The original party had CUSTOM silhouettes of the birthday girl on the horses….when I contacted the guy who did the horses, WITHOUT THE SILHOUETTES, he wanted $50/horse.  Hahahahaha!!!!!!!!  Not from this girl!  So I just went with the carousel and spray painted some letters for one of them and then left the other one blank (as the second one was where the “pin the horse on the carousel game” was to be held.  They both ended up looking super cute, so I was pretty pleased with the final outcome.

The cake, cookies and cupcakes were made by my sister in law, and she could NOT have done a better job!  They looked exactly like the originals and were gorgeous!  Best part about it?? They are just as YUMMY as they are pretty. 

For favors…I struggled.  What to do?!  I originally ordered some carousel horse stickers from amazon and was going to do a little coloring book with them, but they weren’t set to arrive in time, so on to plan b.  My second mom to the rescue!  She came up with the CUTEST idea….why can’t I be creative?!  I bought each child a token to ride the CAROUSEL at the local mall….duh!!  So perfect!!  Just wrapped them up with some pretty tissue in treat bags and called it a day.

I just used some tulle and burlap to decorate the rest of the inside.  I really think it all turned out so pretty.  Collins would walk around pointing at the tulle ribbon handing down and say “oohhhh!”  I think she liked it:-)

For the garage, we just hung a bunch of streamers and some balloons and called it a day.  I wanted it festive, but didn’t want to spend much money on it.  I thought it looked cute!

Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, the “gender reveal” was a fun addition to the party as well and Collins had a blast (the second part of the party) and for the next three hours after the party as she ran WILD with her cousin Belle;-)