Little Miss A and Mr. K: Birthday Party Recap

Well, it's now Tuesday after Aria's 2nd birthday party, which was Saturday, but I'm just not getting around to blogging about it. This is mostly because I couldn't stand my house being such a mess any longer, and I spent most of yesterday pulling everything back together.

The party was a success, for which I was glad. It's really the first party I've pulled off by myself, although I did get a LOT of help from my mom. She's definitely the party-thrower/entertainer of the family. I just wanted to give Aria a nice party, and had NO idea how much work it would be. But it was fun, and now I'm glad it's over :)

I loved the way the burlap and mason jars came out. We used a simple light aqua plastic table cloth and made burlap runner to go down the middle. We wrapped pieces of burlap around mason jars and tied them up with a pink gingham ribbon, then filled them with hot pink daisies.

IBC Root Beer and candy sticks

I really loved the way those turned out. I had my husband tie the pink and blue candy sticks in groups of 3, and we put those all along the burlap runner at everyone's spot for their party favors. I also hung pastel pink, green and teal paper lanterns from the pavilion ceiling for some dimension, and liked how that looked.cf

The Pinterest idea I use to make
Aria's special vase. It looks great
but was WAY harder to do than I thought.

For food, there were a few changes to the menu I had posted about earlier and wanted to do. We decided to nix the homemade cheese sticks, mostly because of time constraints, and put a veggie plate in it's place (although the day of, we actually forgot the veggies in the refrigerator, so I've been eating a lot of broccoli lol.) We still went with the homemade chicken nuggets, and I was glad we did. They ended up being pretty easy and tasty! I ended up going with a different recipe than I had posted before, because after experimenting, my mom found out those others didn't have quite enough flavor. The cinnamon sugar tortilla chips and fruit salsa were a big hit, and I will most definitely be making those again for parties and family gatherings. And then there were the sweet potato fries. *sigh* They were tasty, although I could not for the life of me get them crispy. So they looked like limp little orange worms in the bowl. But again, they really were tasty.

Stewart's Orange soda, Cream soda and
IBC Root Beer in a big tin tub was a hit,
and I loved the way it looked.

Having the party at the park really was a great idea. The kids all had plenty of room to play and you really need that with a group of toddlers/early elementary-aged kids. And we had the perfect weather. It was sunny and warm, without being too hot - which was definitely a concern this summer. The guys brought a football and had a good time throwing that around while the moms and kids played on the playground. We also had one of our family favorite games, ladder gold, and that was a big hit as well. We had made a bunch of water balloons, but didn't actually use them until most of the younger kids had left. Aria and her friend Ellie had a great time with them, though, and all the "big kids" (my brothers, husband and dad) had a blast throwing them at each other.

Overall, we had a blast, and I hope our guests did too. I'll post a couple recipes below, as well as some pictures from the day.

Panko-Crusted Baked Chicken Nuggets

(special thanks to my friend Margee for this alternative recipe. It turned out very tasty!)

Fruit Salsa with Cinnamon Sugar Chips

(warning: it is not this pretty, but it really is DELICIOUS!)