The Many Adventures of Catie Turning 2!

My daughter is absolutely obsessed with Winnie the Pooh, so of course that had to be the theme of her 2nd birthday party. We had the party at her Grandparents house in North Richland Hills, TX( suburb of Fort Worth). I went all out to create her very own 100 Aker Wood. All of the gorgeous photos were taken by our wonderful photographers at Nine Photography. We use them for all of our family shoots and parties. You really can't beat the ease of not having to run around all day snapping pics yourself. Not to mention, they are AMAZING at what they do! I designed the invitations myself, using one of the cutest pictures from her 18 month photo shoot. Using a pattern that I bought on ETSY, I made her little tunic top. Which, of course, had all the characters from Winnie the Pooh, and the yellow fabric had little honey bees on it. My friend Tracy made the matching bows! Luckily for me, my in-laws have a completely empty dining room. This was much to my advantage! I used butcher paper purchased from a local teacher supply store to make the trees. My friend Tracy came over and helped me put it all together. These were so easy to do. We just crumpled the brown paper a little and stapled it up the wall to look like tree trunks. Then, we cut out leaves from the green paper and stapled them to the wall and ceiling. I hung a large yellow paper lantern(leftover from her Garden themed 1st Birthday) from the light fixture and used orange and yellow curling ribbon to hang down around it. That was our "sun". We hung blue streamers across the ceiling of the room as our sky, and tied 4-5 white balloons together in bunches and hung them around as the "clouds". I found a big package of cut out bees from the teachers supply store, and hung those all around the room and near the trees. Tracy hand painted the "floating Pooh Bear" on foam poster board for me, and we hung him at the entrance from his little blue balloon. It looked just like Pooh did in the movie, trying to reach his hand into the bee hive for honey! I used red and white gingham fabric as the buffet table cloth, and yellow and white gingham fabric to cover the guest tables.(all bought at Wal-Mart for a few dollars a yard, very cheap) For the buffet centerpiece I bought cheap cardboard letters that spelled Catie at Hobby Lobby and painted them with leftover paints. I hot glued them to wooden dowels and then hot glued the dowels to an old glass shelf that I found in my garage. To give it more height I set the glass shelf up onto 2 glass vases filled with colorful shredded paper. I scoured Ebay for the whole set of stuffed animals, and luckily found one of each character. Even better, I found the Birthday Pooh!! I used them on the buffet as my "food labels". I printed out the name of each food on cardstock and cut it out to look like little pieces of wood. Each character held their sign. I had "Tigger Tail Mix" which was Cheddar Chex party mix and cheese puffs. "Piglets in Blankets" pretty explanatory, and "Rabbits Veggie Garden". I made "Pooh Sticks", which were just pretzel sticks dipped in chocolate. Plus, there were fruit skewers, sandwiches and a chicken nugget tray. For the kids, I took the frozen Uncrustable PBJ sandwiches and wrapped them with a strip of really pretty scrapbook paper. Owl was set up in his tree house(which was made out of a cardboard box) overlooking the drink station. At the drink station there were bottled waters with custom labels(which I designed and printed myself to match the invitations), a kid friendly punch called "Pooh Beary Splash" and an adult friendly cocktail called "Kanga's Kooler". Even the adults need a little something...ha ha Outside we had beer for the guys in a cooler.I bought these amazing vanilla cupcakes from a local bakery called Trio Cafe and Bakery and just dressed them up with cheap cupcake picks bought online. I used my favorite cupcake tower and wrapped scrapbook paper around the middle to give it some color. I bought small flower pots at my local Dollar Tree and painted them to look like honey pots.(previous post here) Using some leftover honey bee fabric from Catie's top, I lined the pots, then filled cellophane bags with honey flavored Teddy Grahams. Those were given to the kids as party favors.Catie had lots of family and friends come to help her celebrate her 2nd birthday. She is definitely a blessed little girl. Here are some great pictures of her guests.Linked to: