Birthday Bash

My daughter turned 2 about a month ago and I was so excited that I went into party planning mode months in advance. I really wanted to create a fun and relaxed atmosphere for my daughter and about 9 of her friends (plus their mommies). I also wanted the day to reflect her personality and the things that she loves.
My little girl is really into butterflies and her favorite colors are pink and yellow, so that made coming up with a theme pretty easy: pink and yellow butterflies!
I kept the decor simple. I made two butterfly garlands out of pink, yellow and white vellum paper. I got the idea here.


The one change I made was to hand sew, rather than use a sewing machine. This was primarily because I wanted to have a lot of control over the spacing between the butterflies.


The rest of the decor consisted of pink, yellow and white balloons, and some butterfly shaped confetti that I purchased from Paperika and sprinkled on the dining room table.


Every child received their own party cup to use (and take home with them). I designed some simple labels and stuck them on some straw cups that I found at Target.


Then I made some custom paper party hats (I used an old hat that we had as a template), and a special "2" crown for my daughter.
The menu consisted of my daughter's favorite foods: hot dogs, fruit, pretzels, veggies, guacamole and chips. It was the dessert that was probably the most labor-intensive part of the whole process. I made chocolate cupcakes with buttercream icing, and decorated them with pink and yellow fondant butterflies.


Then I made sugar cookies and decorated them with pink and yellow royal icing.


I got all of my recipes from the wilton website and read some excellent cookie decorating tutorials at prudent baby.
The treat boxes were small brown paper boxes that I sealed with round labels (bought at Michael's in the wedding section).


I stuffed them with teddy grahams and some fabulous recycled butterfly crayons that I bought at Gaddy Nipper Crayons.
It turned out to be a beautiful day, and my daughter had a blast, which made the late nights decorating cookies and sewing butterflies totally worth it!
Here's my little girl enjoying her cupcake:


Oh, and this was the invitation that I designed: