After Evan’s big fancy over-done 1st birthday last year I swore I wouldn’t be doing a major party again until he was well into elementary school. But as this year’s birthday approached it occurred to me that throwing the party had very little to do with him and everything to do with ME. I wanted to celebrate the day I gave birth to my baby, I wanted to hang out with all my friends, I wanted to make my house pretty, I wanted to eat a disgusting amount of cake.

So I threw another party.

(Edited to remove my address & phone number so you can’t crazy stalk me. I know you were planning on it.)

I made the invitations on my computer with an old graphics program I stole borrowed from my office job. Then I ordered them as matte photo prints from Snapfish using a coupon code. Total cost: $4.05

The biggest difference between throwing a first birthday party and throwing a second birthday party is that 2 year olds need to be entertained a lot more than 1 year olds. So I went with a play time theme featuring the three things Little Evan loves most in the world: bubbles, balls and balloons. Then I categorized all those things as “round” and ran with it. I ran like I was in the Boston Marathon being chased by rabid badgers on roller skates carrying flame throwers.

Dining Room

As usual, all the “tablecloths” are just yards of fabric from Joann’s. The ones on the main table are really 3 piece of fabric just laying there. I am too lazy to sew.

Entryway - please ignore one wonky circle in the banner. It's glitter paper and my sticker didn't stick

Living Room - I made the banners with scrapbook paper, my printer and salad bowls for circle tracing

Living Room

The ball pit is actually Little Evan’s birthday present from LAST year. We left it up in the living room for a few months but I eventually wanted my house back and put it away. He was REALLY excited to see it again and I’m sort of amazed it didn’t get popped considering how much fun was had in it.

I love this picture the most because you can see decorations in both rooms, the gorgeous colors, and the children having a great time

Blurry photos of other people's kids to protect privacy

A few decorating details:

I bought the bottles of bubbles at Michael’s ($3 for 6), cut scrapbook paper into strips and then printed the circle stickers I designed on sheets of label paper. I used a big hole puncher to cut them, stuck them on the paper and hot glued the paper around the bottles. Boom, party favors!

I bought a 50 balloon helium tank at BJ’s for $21 and my dad blew them all up for us. Some of the strings were long enough for the taller kids to grab, but Little Evan kept losing his so we made sure he always had them with him:

That's the shirt I made! The same fabric is on my headband and on the entry table.

My mom had the brilliant idea to anchor some of the balloons with the adorable polka dot chalk we found at Michael’s ($1 for 5 pieces) and send them home with the kids.

Adorable, right?

There are also lots of round candies, so I filled a bunch of glass containers with them at stuck them on the mantel – jelly beans, peanut M & M’s, gum balls and DumDums. I ordered the giant rainbow lollipops from Oriental Trading Company and used more of my label paper, graphics program, and giant hole punch to make the stickers. Then I raided my milk glass collection for vases.

Other stuff I got from Oriental Trading:

Party Lanterns (And they fold up, so they're reusable!)

Beach balls and mini beach balls - perfect sized for small hands and helped fill up the pit nicely. I *think* some of the kids took them home (which was the plan) but we still have tons. They were cheap.

And to round it all out (BA DUM CHING) I picked up flowers in the colors that matched my theme: yellow, orange, blue and green. I was very excited to find blue flowers – and NATURAL blue flowers at that!

You know what DIDN’T work out great? The bubble machine. It got sort of sticky during our pre-party trial run and didn’t make the huge number of bubbles it used to. I put it on the porch to avoid slippery floors but it made the floor out there slippery so I turned it off until the kids found it. I had imagined gorgeous photos of children and bubbles but didn’t get any at all. But when it WAS working (for about 10 minutes) the kids really liked it!

Actually, the kids liked all of it. Especially the birthday boy.

How can I help but give this kid the best parties I can?

I had intended to just do one post for the whole party but this is getting ridiculously long, so I’ll save food for tomorrow. Or maybe later today. It really is the best part – I went a little crazy on the theme. I also ended up making the cake, frosting and filling from scratch (recipes and links coming soon!) so I need to give it the attention it deserves. And if you come to my house I have some left over for you to try. Please, please come eat this cake.

I linked up at Tip Junkie – she’s got some amazing parties on her site!

Evan’s 2nd birthday party is 12 days from today and I am at least three weeks away from being ready. It is unfortunate that 12 days is not actually 21 days. Maybe I can move the party to an alternate universe where numbers are read backwards. Or maybe I need to stop saying stupid shit like that and spend my time doing something productive towards this party instead. My problem is I did a bunch of super-early planning and got ahead of myself and felt really confident in my ability to finish up last-minute details at the last minute…except I forgot stuff like “plan a menu” and “hand out invitations” weren’t really last minute details as much as 90% of the actual party. Whoops.

For some reason, I seem to have a lot less free time this year than I did for his 1st birthday. I am totally baffled as to why that might be.

But the invitations I didn’t put in the mail are in my diaper bag to hand out tomorrow and I spent Sunday finishing up the banner I’d been planning to make for the last two months. I also realized I need to put away about four boxes of junk from my front two rooms, since anything glass or breakable or heavy enough to hurt a 2-year-old if it falls on them needs to be out of reach when I invite two dozen 2-year-olds to come run around. I am also considering two semi-sewing projects but I hate threading my sewing machine SO MUCH I might scrap those. I’ll make up for it with some extra balloons or something. Balloons make everything more festive.

Speaking of balloons, the theme of the party is “round things”. I’m a genius, I know. It will make a lot more sense – and be a LOT more fun – when it’s executed rather than just explained. This year is much more about the actual party/activities part than last year, but I can’t resist doing a little decorating too. Here’s some of the stuff I’m working on:

I scheduled the party for mid-afternoon so I don’t have to provide an actual meal, (although if some of our friends are still here for dinner I will order a pizza or two)(pizzas are round so I can pretend it was on purpose) but it wouldn’t be a party without food. And it’s always fun to plan food around a theme. So far, the menu consists of:

– Fruit salad made with round fruit/melon balls
– Caprese salad sticks
– mini meatballs
– pepperoni, round cheese & Ritz crackers
– roll up mini sandwiches
– truffles (made by my friend Erin who made the cake for my baby shower)
– round candy of various types
– cake (that I am going to attempt to make and decorate on my own)

Anything really obvious and/or delicious that I’m missing?

I have zero ideas for beverages, since most soda and/or alcohol doesn’t come in a round form. So I might just get regular soda and water and make cute labels. Or maybe round ice cubes. Or if I get REALLY ambitious, maybe I’ll try to make some bubble tea. Too bad they don’t sell that Orbit soda anymore. (Remember that stuff? I was OBSESSED with the orange kind.)

Clearly I still have a lot of work to do. But no worries. It’s not like I have anything else taking up my time.

I was daydreaming through the Pottery Barn catalog a few weeks ago and I noticed a solid black globe with chalk writing on it (of course, now that I want to show you I can’t find it online). What is it with PB and their obsession with chalkboard paint? Don’t they realize any idiot can just buy a can of that stuff and paint things with it instead of spending hundreds of dollars on the ones from the catalog? Although I guess the kinds of people who order entire rooms straight from Pottery Barn are too busy playing tennis and vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard and rolling in hundred dollar bills to bother buying paint. So it’s left to people like me to write chalkboard tray and chalkboard globe tutorials. I even fancied the globe up a bit to make it more fun.

I am the wordiest, most rambling blogger ever, so to make this easier on people just looking for a tutorial all the REALLY important parts are in bold.

Materials:
Globe
Chalkboard paint
Contact paper
Scissors
Paintbrush
Printer and paper (optional)

I actually own 6 (SIX!) old, inaccurate globes in various stages of deterioration. I used the worst of them for this project, since the other ones are kind of cool. But as my mother pointed out, globes are some of the most useless dust catchers ever so don’t feel too bad about painting over one. Especially one that still says “U.S.S.R.”

Also on this globe: East/West Germany and Burma

Although you can tell it’s not THAT old because Burkina Faso is called Burkina Faso and not Upper Volta (it was changed in 1984).

She's in the Peace Corps

Instead of covering the whole globe with black paint and then drawing my own world on it (which would also be super cute) I decided to try leaving some of the map showing through. For my first globe I used my son’s name:

I tried printing it directly onto make-your-own sticker paper (also known as 8 1/2 x 11 shipping label paper from Staples). This didn’t work out so well, as you’ll see that in a minute. Then I cut out the letters and stuck them on the globe.

Unfortunately, when I painted over the letters, the sticker paper absorbed the paint…

…So when I tried to peel the stickers off the top layer came up but the adhesive stuck to the globe.

Using several different kinds of knives (a regular old table knife ended up working best) I managed to scrape MOST of it off and only damaged the map underneath in a couple of places. I figured this was my trial run – and the globe I’m going to let my toddler play with – so it’s not the end of the world. Ahahaha! Globe joke!!

Luckily I was able to try again.

This one was in even worse shape - the equator is held together with scotch tape

Globe #2 is missing it’s little time zone circle disk, which meant I didn’t have to take it off the stand to paint all the way to the top. (Globe #1 popped right off the stand but I discovered it’s way easier to paint most of it while it’s still on it. Less rolling!)

Here’s the way this project actually works best: I used contact paper I found at Target to make stickers. It was with the shelf paper that comes in cute patterns (on the aisle with the mops) but I picked the most basic clear kind to ensure it was just one layer and wouldn’t come apart like the label paper. I printed out the word “LOVE” with a heart for the “O” on regular paper, then traced it backwards onto the paper side of the contact paper. That way when you peel the paper off and stick it on the globe the letters face the right way.

Then I painted it with two coats of the chalkboard paint…

…and peeled off the contact paper to see the map underneath!

Now my useless dust collectors are cuter, chalkboard dust collectors.

Here are the tips I have to make this as easy as possible:
1. Choose a font or shape that doesn’t require a ton of detailed cutting. I couldn’t even get the center part of the “A” in Evan to come out right, which is why it’s not there. Besides, you want big sections of the map to show through.
2. Don’t make your shapes/letters too large or the contact paper won’t lie flat when you stick it to the globe. It’s important to get the edges stuck down really well to prevent the paint from seeping underneath.
3. When the paint DOES get under the contact paper, you can veeeeery gently scrape it off with a blade or craft knife. It’s easiest if you do it as soon as possible, so peel the stickers off as soon as the paint is dry(ish).
4. Be sure to follow the instructions for dry-time on the chalkboard paint before you try using chalk on it, or you’ll end up with permanent marks. They’re not joking about that.
5. I bought all my globes for mere dollars at our local flea market, which is kind of a lousy flea market but apparently a gold mine for old globes. I’ve also seen them at antique stores but those tend to be a little pricier because they’re in better condition or actual antiques instead of junk. Shipping a globe is cost prohibitive, so your best bet is garage or yard sales or a trashy flea market in your area. Just keep your eyes open!

Other cool ideas – just paint the ocean or the continents with chalkboard paint so you can color in the rest however you want. Get really ambitious and outline the continents in another color. Use painter’s tape to make stripes and then write cute, clever things all around the world. Your creativity is only limited by your access to cheap globes!

But hey, even if you end up paying $30 for one at an antique store that’s still a LOT cheaper than $297.50. Yikes.

I have a problem.

I think I need to admit it and consider getting help.

Although I’m not sure anyone makes a 12 step program for headband addicts.

Step 1: Accept that your hair has gotten out of control and you NEED those headbands to survive.

Wait, that’s not right.

I blame Gossip Girl. And Etsy. Although I think it really started almost exactly a year ago, right before Little Evan’s first birthday party. I went on a hunt for a jaunty (did I really just say jaunty?) red headband to complete my slightly-ringmaster-esque-without-being-costumey outfit. And you know what I found? TONS OF HEADBANDS. HEADBANDS EVERYWHERE. A PLETHORA OF HEADBANDS. At some point between when I was 8 and now they came back into style. Who knew? So I fought my way through cheap plastic earrings and fingerless lace gloves (which should NOT have come back) to the back of a Claire’s bought one. People told me it was cute. It made my boring just-hangs-there-hair look more fun. So a few months later I bought another one, black and white flowers, at Target.

AND THEN MY OBSESSION TOOK OVER.

Gold & Red headbands – Much Love Illy

Felt flower and purple feather headbands – My beloved Uff Da

Black & White Rosettes and Red & Yellow Rosettes – Twenty Five Design

Purple Ruffle and Red Polka Dot Ruffle – Gussy

Red Rosette headband – Allora Handmade

And my newest addition…

Blue Print headband – Rayna Jaye

You can see how this is getting a little out of hand. But the truth is, they make me SO HAPPY. Headbands are a new mom’s best friend. Greasy hair? Cute headband and no one notices! Boring outfit? Cute headband and no one notices! Bitchy receptionist at my OB’s office who “forgot” to put my appointment in the computer and tries to tell me they’re all booked so I’ll just have to get someone to watch the kids some other day and come back? Notices my cute headband and then finds a doctor who can see me! (True story.)

Also, headbands always fit, even when my pants do not.

But because spending our entire tax return on headbands would be an irresponsible choice, I decided to go about trying to make my own. Behold! The easiest, cheapest headband ever!

Glue gun, stretchy headband from Target (on clearance, 5 for $4), sparkly iron on applique from craft store (on clearance for $1.50), tiny piece of felt left over from my felt flowers.

FACT: I took this picture yesterday morning. I haven’t washed my hair in two days and I’ve been fluctuating between burning with fever and sweating like a pig as it breaks. Isn’t that a lovely mental picture? And yet, I am still willing to put this picture on the internet! Because my hair still looks cute! HEADBANDS ARE MAGIC!

Of course, the camera in from of my face is hiding the real tragedy. How many headbands does it take to hide the giant bags under my eyes and the zits on my chin?

What’s that you say? It’s January and so no one CARES about Christmas anymore? Blah blah blah I CAN’T HEAR YOU.

I realized after I had wrapped and mailed all my gifts this year that I really went overboard with the knitting. I mean, sure scarves are awesome, but maybe someone would like a gift that isn’t quite so…heartfelt. Stuff from the store is nice too. Like a Starbucks gift card. Or a bottle of wine. Or a Starbucks gift card AND a bottle of wine. But hey, it’s been really cold this winter so hopefully everyone’s using their fair trade Latin American artisan gifts and thinking nice warm thoughts about me.

If it helps, next year I promise not to be so crafty.

For my dad

Gray cabled scarf made with undyed eco-wool – which means this color came straight off a sheep. I think that’s REALLY COOL and kept telling random people about because LOOK, it’s SHEEP COLORED WOOL I am impressed and amazed at something that is neither impressive or amazing! It’s also about 6 inches shorter than it should be but the cable pattern was driving me BONKERS so…I quit. Sorry Dad.

For my friend Erin

This is my favorite scarf pattern to knit. It works with lots of different yarn, it’s fast, and it’s really useful – you can wrap it several different ways and use any of the holes as button holes…

For my sisters-in-law

…Which explains why both of my husband’s sisters got the same scarf knit with sparkly yarn. I should really make one of these for myself so I’m not tempted to keep other people’s presents.

For my mother

Ok, so the mittens were a total failure – my mom is a small person so I made them a little smaller than the pattern called for…and ended up making teeny tiny thumbs even my toddler can’t wear. Because when I tried for “a little bit smaller” I basically made them for a double thumb amputee. Since Mom did not tragically lose any fingers to frostbite (Yet! Without mittens she might! And then these will be SO USEFUL! See, I’m just PLANNING AHEAD) I made Mom the cowl to make up for the defective mittens. It’s just a big tube knit with super soft sock yarn and again I was VERY tempted to keep it. I need to go buy another skein and start on one for myself. Right after I finish the TWELVE project I’m currently working on/already bought the yarn for/promised to make for people.

For my friend Sara

This right here may be the MOST AWESOME thing I have ever knit. It is an exact replica of the Ravenclaw House scarf from the Harry Potter movies (also the books, but in the books Ravenclaw colors are blue and gold)(there’s some useless knowledge you’ll never get out of your head). If you watch the movies though, Hogwarts upperclassmen wear a different scarf and for a while I considered ripping this one out and making the other version – because my friend Sara is obviously not 11 and would certainly be an upperclassman at Hogwarts – until I remembered IT’S A BOOK YOU IDIOT. THERE IS NO ACTUAL MAGIC SCHOOL. But despite its lack of wizard powers, it’s still super warm and long and I hope it’s keeping Sara’s face from freezing off as she walks around NYC.

For my nephews and niece

And this one wins for most creative gift I gave this year. It’s a pair of mittens for each of my sister-in-law’s kids – kid, toddler and baby sized – and a copy of The Mitten by Jan Brett. I WIN AT CLEVERNESS. I even made the mittens red (unlike the white one in the book) so they would be easy to see and find in the snow.

Things I didn’t take pictures of: fingerless gloves for my BFF, a nice warm hat for her husband, and approximately 20 coffee coozies. I still need to make 4 or 5 more as “Sorry I didn’t get this to you in time for Christmas but I was busy giving birth” presents, but now I’m busy with keeping that thing I gave birth to alive. It’s really cutting into my knitting time.