Batman Birthday Party

Parties are my love language. Well how I speak in love language I guess. I love to throw parties for my boys. The older two are past the age our family does big old birthdays every year. However, the younger two still get parties. In fact, this year was Bean's very first friend party. He has had a First Birthday Fiesta, a BYU Football second birthday party, and a Dinosaur party last year. This year he requested to have a Batman Birthday Party.

Which was a little funny considering I am not sure really how in to Batman he is. No other party theme I threw at him would do though. So Batman it was.

One of my party decorating tricks is to pick a color theme that coordinates with the party theme and then to go crazy with it. I incorporate the colors in just about everything from patterns, food, and decorations. This year the colors were the traditional Batman colors black, gray, and yellow.

I even found this perfectly coordinating Batman doll.

PS Who really has thighs like that???

Anyway, I digress. I like feeding a simple lunch and easy snacks at a toddler party. Using food is not only an easy way to decorate, but serving lunch (or dinner) is a great activity for a party.

Another easy way to decorate a party is to add posters and tags. I made all of my posters and tags using  PicMonkey. I made the simple and modern Batman head graphic using only geometric overlays. Once I had the head the way I wanted it, I saved it and then could simply insert it within other tags and posters.

Lunch was simple. However, I served it in and on these cute lunch boxes and plates.

Wrapping the stem of a banana with washi tape may have been a little unnecessary, but I couldn't help myself.

After lunch, we had a few more activities. Like coloring.

Cape and mask wearing.

We had a bat-shaped pinata of course.

We also blew some bubbles.

Before we sent off our friends with a thank you bag, we ended our party with a simple, but delicious Batman cake.

This party was SO fun to pull together, but it was slightly exhausting. Which honestly is why I have yet to throw my other March birthday boy a party. I still owe him one. Oops.

Here are the things I made--

Posters and Tags

Pinata

Cityscape Background

Chocolate-covered Oreos

Batman Capes

Tutus

Cake

What I purchased--

Batman- Walmart

Batman Masks- Walmart

Bubble Wands- Walmart

Balloons, Paper Fans, Tissue Balls, Honeycombs- Zurchers

Paper Plates, Napkins, Straws- Zurchers

Treat Cups- Zurchers

Plastic Cake Stands (spray-painted black)- Zurchers

Letters- Michaels

Fabric Banners- Michaels

Lunch Boxes- Hobby Lobby

Wrapping Paper (used as table runner)-Hobby Lobby

Milk Jar Glasses- Hobby Lobby

Batman Birthday Invite

Before I go into the details of this rather adorable Batman Birthday Party Invite, I would like to say something.

When you are out of the habit of blogging, almost two months goes by with no post, and you don't even realize it. I am not sure anyone else realized it either. Probably because of my "radio" silence increasing more and more over the last year, I am sure the few people I had reading this blog have given up on me. So let me say thanks for sticking with me that long.

I have come to the realization, that I am okay with my blogging life (or lack there of). Of course part of me wants to be read by thousands and thousands. I would be lying if I said I didn't want to be known in the blogosphere for my mad skills. I want validation from friends, strangers, and mega bloggers. 

BUT...

I am not good at the life. I am not great at self promoting. I don't have the funds for a blog face lift (hence that I am in the dark ages and still have a blogspot) or to go to all the amazing and fabulous conferences out there. I am not a great entrepreneur (heck I couldn't even spell it...spell check had to help). I admire those woman who do and can. They are so very awesome at what they do.

For years I felt that because they are awesome at what they do and I don't do that well, it must mean that I am about as far from awesome as you can get. 

So I backed off of blogging. I backed off because, someone could do it better. No one out there would miss me or what I do. I was getting an ulcer watching my blog views go down. My comments become nonexistent. Basically I backed off in a pity party kind of way. 

So, why even blog a tiny bit now? 

This is why. I still love creating things. I can say in some confidence that there are things I am good at. Even if only my mom reads this blog anymore (thanks MOM I love you), I still want to share. Who cares if I am not a dot com. Who cares if no one sponsors me. Who cares. Who cares.

So I "blog" for me right now. I create for me because I like to. I decorate when I can. I make stuff when I have time. I share because it is fun. If someone gets an idea from me. Great. If people occasionally stop by from Pinterest. AWESOME and welcome. However, even if just my mom reads, that is good too. 

I had a good run for awhile. Who knows maybe when my kids are all in school if this blogging thing is still around I will jump back in with a little more professionalism. 

For right now, I am good with just sharing what I do when I do it. 

LONGEST intro to a blog post ever. Sorry about that.

So on to this Batman Birthday Party Invite.  I wish I could say I came up with the concept of this modern simple batman invite all on my own. However, thanks to Pinterest I came across my inspiration on The Hostess with the Mostess Blog via a party done by Posh Paperie. I really liked her design style and the concept of the party so I copy-catted her a bit.

For the invite I turned to my handy dandy PicMonkey.

I used geometric overlays for the flood lights. I used the bat overlays found in the Halloween section. The rest was just a mixture of some of my favorite fonts.

One of the things I liked the most was the idea of a geometric Batman. So I made one. This Batman was completely made from mixing and manipulating geometric overlays. He turned out pretty amazing if I do say so myself.

For the back of this card, I just copied and positioned image after image of the original Batman head.

I also used the Batman head for some birthday posters (which I will share soon) and these name tags that I taped to the outside of the envelopes.

The whole invite ensemble looked like this.

I was able to save this all to my computer and just print from my printer on to cardstock. Setting aside making the little Batman head image, it really was very simple and the perfect way to invite some fellow superheroes over.

End of School Pizza Party

“This post is part of a social shopper marketing insight campaign with Pollinate Media Group® and TONY’S® Pizza, but all my opinions are my own. #pmedia #BigPizzeriaTaste http://my-disclosur.es/OBsstV”

School's out for the Summer, well for us it is almost out. We have 8 days left, but then who is counting. The end of the school year calls for a celebration.

This year we decided to throw ourselves a little pizza party.

An Hasta La Pizza School party. Oh gosh. I kill myself. After I laughed at how clever I was, I went to work making posters and decorations for our end of school pizza party.

Download HERE

If one is having a pizza party, one must have pizza.

When you have four boys with bottomless pits for stomachs, you have to have good pizza that is affordable. Good news for me is that TONY's®  Pizza is now 30% larger, comes in a variety of yummy crowd pleasing flavors, and they are super affordable.

I ran over to Walmart and I picked up a few of our favorite flavors of Tony's Pizza. We cooked them up and set them out to start our pizza party.

To make our party all fun with very little clean up necessary, I laid out butcher paper and served the pizza right on top of it. I labeled the butcher paper with which kind of pizza was on the menu.
  

 

Even the drinks were served up easy in paper cups with paper straws.

We can't forget the decorations. You all know how I like a good coordinated party. So to go with our pizza I made up pizza decorations.

A simple pizza banner.

I whipped up these banners using PicMonkey.

If you are feeling the urge to throw your kiddos an Hasta La Pizza School party, I have made this little pizza banner print out for you to use.

Download HERE

I also made up some invitations just in case you want to invite the whole neighborhood.

Download HERE

Time to load up the plates with all the yummy pizza. All that authentic pizzeria taste, made with real cheese, and lovely herby tomato sauce piled on a plate. My boys love pizza.

I completely lost track of how many pieces they each ate.

 

Pizza is always a good idea. Especially for a celebration. You can use these printables to throw your own Hasta La Pizza School pizza party. You can also load up with a COUPON for Tony's Pizzas: SAVE $.75 off of any TWO (2) Tony's Pizza (14.14 oz. or larger). The Walmart digital coupon is available until 6/30/15. (While supplies last)

Spider-Man Spider Web Spray Cover (Printable)

Last week I shared all about our recent Spider-Man Birthday Party we had over here.

One of the activities was a little spider web spray off. We sent all of the kids out back and had them attack each other with Spidey Web (aka silly string).

I wanted to hide the generic silly string label with a coordinating party themed one. So as I normally do, I went over to PicMonkey and whipped up a label. Can I just say how amazing all of the superhero overlays are?

They are amazing.

There I said it.

It can be a bit tricky to make sure that you get the label to fit the silly string can, so I am providing two different printing options.

Above is the original JPEG that I made. You can right click and save that to your computer, open it in a Word document and adjust the size accordingly. Then print it off on card stock.

The other option is to download the pdf document below and to print if off on card stock. This image cannot be adjusted so depending on the size of your can it may be too small or too big.

 Download Spidey Web label HERE

Cut out the labels and hot glued them in place.

Now we are ready for a pretty epic Spidey Web battle.

Not only was it epic, but it was the favorite activity of the party.

I hope you aren't bored of all this Spider-Man partying. I might have a few more things to share. Oh the excitement!

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Simple Dinosaur Birthday Party

Roar.

Roar.

You know what that means?

Well, Roar is dinosaur for Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday in particular to this cutie pants.

In case you didn't know, an almost three year old can be very specific in his birthday party desires. He was very adamant that he wanted a dinosaur party, a blue Tyrannosaurus Rex to be specific. Fortunately he was completely satisfied with this Simple Dinosaur Birthday Party instead.

Now, before anybody says anything about the "simpleness" of this Dinosaur Birthday Party, let me just defend that whole simple title.

This party was thrown together in very little time with very little preparation. The most time consuming part of this party are these little dino-topped cupcakes and they weren't even that hard. These cupcakes were made from a cake mix. I used my favorite buttercream recipe. I probably should share that sometime, huh?

I topped them with coordinating chocolates. Then I made cupcake toppers from paper straws, painted mini dinosaurs, and washi tape.

Speaking of paper straws, I also used them for the drinks. The drinks you ask...well my friends I simply opened up a couple of bottles of Gatorade (of course they color coordinated) and poured them into mason jars.

The color coordinating just kept on going.

With this little close up of the fabric, I should probably give a little shout out to the star of the show and the basis for the rest of the party decoration. I found this dinosaur fabric at JoAnn Fabric, and what you can't see is that it has blue T-rexes all over it. I refer you back to the birthday boy's previous request.

So the fabric was a must, and everything coordinated with it.

Besides color coordination, another simple part of this party was my simple focal wall decorations. Balloons are the cheapest and easiest way to decorate. Even if you don't inflate them with helium. I use balloons all the time.

All. The. Time.

This time I simply blew them up, tied yarn to them, bunched them up with some tissue pom poms (another favorite of mine) and hung them from the ceiling. I also added a paint chip banner and a banner I made by sewing napkins together. Yeah, I am pretty resourceful like that.

So for this Simple Dinosaur Birthday Party I literally threw some fabric on the table, blew up some balloons, made a few banners, and put out some food.

Like I said, simple.

Again, these babies were the hardest part. They may be my favorite too.

So,  see simple.

Simple, but the birthday boy loved it and that is all that matters.

Number three birthday, dinosaurs. Number two birthday, football. Number one, fiesta. That is a whole lot of party in three years. I guess he is worth it.

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