Bee-Day Party 2yr - Swat the Pinata

When my daughter Aubreigh turned one, we had to have a BEE-DAY party being that her nickname was "Aubee" since that's what her 2 year old sister called her. 

I made invitations to look like bumble bees with vellum for wings.  I printed the party information onto the vellum…"Come to a BEE-Day party!" etc. I decorated the dining room like a garden. 

We had lots of potted plants and flowers and trees.  I strung bumble bee lights around the room.  The table was covered with astro-turf to resemble grass. (You can buy whatever length you need from home improvement stores and costs about the same amount as a cloth tablecloth.)  I used watering cans to hold the utensils and terracotta pots to hold different candies and yummy decorations for the sugar cookies we would decorate. 

I pre-made flower shaped sugar cookies and then we had each of the children frost and decorate their own cookie.  I love cut-up cakes, so I made a cake out of a ball-shaped pan to resemble a bumble bee.  I used one half of the ball cake for the body and then used a hostess snowball for the head.  I frosted the cake yellow and then used black licorice for the stripes and antenna.  I made clear sucker wings that stuck out of the top of the bee's body.  I used a lady-bug floating candle for the candle which looked so cute perched on the body of the bee. 

The best part, though was making individual cakes for all the guests that looked like flower pots.  I took small terracotta pots and lined them with tin foil.  Then I poured cake batter right into the pots and baked them!  Once they were cooled, I took a fork and broke up the cake a little on the top to look like dirt.  I stuck in a gummy worm into each pot and then decorated a huge sucker for each that was stuck right into the middle of the cake to look like a flower! (Green mint leaf gummies for leaves and gumdrops cut up for petals, then frosted into place around the sucker.) 

For such a young crowd, we didn't play games, but instead had a bumble bee pinata.  I stuck some screening onto the end of a large stick so that it looked like a giant fly swatter and we let the kids go to town on the pinata! (Without blindfolds of course!) Everyone left with their pinata treats and the cookies they had made themselves.  Everyone was "a-BUZZ" with excitement after having fun at our Bee-Day party!