We celebrated Lincoln turning three and Finnegan turning one with a children’s book themed birthday party last weekend. I feel slightly guilty that I made them share a party when the big kids got their own celebrations for each of their first five years. But between the bathroom disaster (ongoing) and E’s work schedule, this was really our only free weekend for a party. I don’t think either of them minded. Honestly, the guest list would be exactly the same for both parties anyway. When you’re the 3rd and 4th kids your friends are the younger siblings of the big kids’ friends.

I didn’t start planning this party until late June, so when I was looking for a theme I needed something that wouldn’t need too many custom-made or hard to find items. I had done a Nursery Rhyme Baby Shower for Caroline and it was pretty easy and totally adorable, so I expanded upon that to include all children’s books. It turns out most children’s books are already about food, so the menu was the easiest part:

Book worms – gummy worms

Green Eggs and Ham – green deviled eggs

Very Hungry Caterpillar – cheese & sausage plate, fruit

The Runaway Bunny – veggies

Dragons Love Tacos – taco bar

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie – chocolate chip cookies

The Giving Tree – apple slices

Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs – meatballs

Uni the Unicorn – unicorn pops

The Big Hungry Bear – strawberries/berries

Paddington Bear – marmalade sandwiches

Don’t Forget the Bacon – BLT sandwiches

Eloise at the Plaza – tea sandwiches

Where The Wild Things Are – wild thing claws (Bugles)

Unicorn Thinks He’s Pretty Great – sparkle cupcakes

Captain Flynn and the Pirate Dinosaurs – pink pirate dinosaur punch

I keep all of our dust covers in a box because the kids just ruin them. They came in hand as decor!

Taco bar serving trays were super cheap and from Amazon.

Wild things claws = Bugles

When it came to decor, I already had almost everything I needed. A few banners from Oriental Trading Company and a whole lot of photos added to the many, many books. Many of the books I used both as the theme and as actual decor are my books, from my own childhood. Some of the others are favorites from bedtime for Evan and Caroline. We were lucky enough to meet Mo Willems a few years ago (one of my favorite posts of all time!) so most of his books are signed. The whole thing just felt so special and personal, even if it isn’t the most dramatic theme I’ve ever done it was perfect!

Ladybug balls from Amazon.

All our Mo animals – Elphant and Piggie, Pigeon and four Knuffle Bunnies – came from a recent promotion at Kohl’s. I went to two different stores to find them all.

Bookmarks, bubbles and temporary tattoos for party favors.

Please excuse the unpainted spot on the wall, we didn’t quite get our construction finished before the party. At least we had a ceiling!

I made the photo display for Finnegan with a hula hoop, spray paint, ribbon, fake flowers and hot glue. The outside pictures are his monthday photos for the past 11 months and the center photos are from his cake smash session.

We are very lucky to have so many friends who have so many kids, because the kids are really what makes the parties fun. I also love that some of them have been coming for so long now that they get excited ahead of time thinking about cucumber sandwiches!

The cheeseburger pinata was from the party aisle at Target (and the theme is from Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, where cheeseburgers fall from the sky). I’ve had it in my dining room for months now and it always made me smile.

I also bought some of those magic quick-fill water balloons at Target when they went on clearance. They didn’t exactly go with the theme but Lincoln LOVES water balloons. And it was super hot, so the kids enjoyed getting wet and dried off quickly.

All four of my kids had book shirts from Out Of Print Clothing. I bought Evan shirts from their site when he was a toddler, which Lincoln still wears and Finn will wear. Evan wore Caps for Sale, Caroline wore Harold and the Purple Crayon, Lincoln got Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus and Finnegan wore Where The Wild Things Are. To be honest, Finnegan already owns like 5 other Wild Things shirts that were hand-me-downs but they’re all long sleeved and it was too hot so I bought him another. You cannot have to many Wild Things themed articles of clothing.

This bounce house I bought Lincoln for his first birthday remains one of my best decisions to date.

My kids are currently obsessed with painting rocks, so I put out supplies and lots of the big kids did rock painting. I sealed them all this week and we hid them at Mystic Seaport for others to find.

After water balloons and bounce house and painting and pinata and lots of eating and running around, we wrangled everyone inside to sing Happy Birthday to Lincoln, because he thinks people singing Happy Birthday is the BEST THING. We sang for Finnegan too, but he just wanted to eat the candle.

The one thing I never saw coming was that surprise bounce house from Minneola Bounce House Rentals. I was speechless of how awesome and fun it was.

Thank you as always to my parents, who were pretty much the only reason this party happened. Their help with cleaning and prep is invaluable. And thank you to everyone who came, it’s so wonderful to know that my kids have a village of both actual relatives and by-choice relatives to love them. Lincoln and Finnegan are both sufficiently celebrated!

We celebrated Lincoln’s 1st birthday party on Saturday with a Twinkle Twinkle Little Star themed party. I fell in love with the star idea while rocking Linc to sleep in his room – there have been glow in the dark stars on his ceiling since we bought the house. Plus I don’t think it’s a stretch to say he is a sparkly, twinkly baby personality-wise. He’s my little star.

You can check out my Lincoln’s First Birthday Pinterest board for a lot of the recipes and inspiration for all my ideas. I’m putting the post after a jump so all 2 bazillion photos aren’t on the front page for the next month…

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Wheeeeeee! It turn out inviting every single person I saw for three weeks didn’t mean any of them wanted to drive out in a snowstorm to attend my Halloween party, so I didn’t end up with the huge crowd I was worried about anticipating. It also turns out all it takes to wear out my kids is running in circles for three hours (at least an hour of which was LITERAL running in circles – our first floor makes loop). Good to know, hard to replicate on a daily basis.

Most of the food was inspired by Pinterest, so check out my Halloween board here for details. I also used the free printables found here for some of the decoration and labels. I also FINALLY used the cookbook I got at The Creative Connection that had all the cute “gross” food in it. The rest of the stuff is a mish-mash of craft store decor and Target purchases that are probably not really worth listing. I’m going to force myself to limit the photos on this post to a reasonable semi-reasonable almost reasonable number, but check out the blog Facebook album for ALL the rest (probably only something you want to do if you were actually here and want pics of your kid.) They’re all kind of terrible, because the light in my house is terrible without sunshine – and we don’t get much sunshine during freak snow storms – but I can’t stop myself from putting them up anyways. It’s a sickness, really.

Pumpkin decorating station

The kids loved it, but next time maybe I won't set out so much glitter.

Spooky mantle decor

Little Evan's best friends are adorable

Hot dog mummies, dead fingers, ghost lollipops, zombie pizza (which was way cuter before it was cooked)

Clementine "pumpkin" pyramid

Sparkling cider & V-8 Fruit Fusion as spooky drinks, chocolate coverd rice crispie treats, mini donut eyeballs, ghost pretzel sticks

Sea monster veggie dip

Trifle with Death trifle

Penant banner & pumpkin lights

I don't think E was very happy I made him wear a costume

Too-dark photobooth was still a hit

Thanks for coming! Have a great night! Dinosaur rawr!!!

Thanks so much to everyone who came, and also HUGE apologies to anyone local who I didn’t invite in time. I passed them out at Stroller Strides a few different days but kept forgetting who had gotten them, so I promise you were SUPPOSED to be invited and I just suck. Next time I’ll just put a general party announcement on my Facebook and hope no creepy strangers show up. But YOU’RE not a creepy stranger, you’re a blog friend, so next time you’re invited too.

Whew. Now I’m going to spend a week cleaning my house and hiding from the thought that Caroline’s 1st birthday is in less than 7 weeks. Poor second child’s probably getting a store bought cake and a balloon.