Football Party -2yr- Inflatable Field Goals

Football Birthday Party  2Year old  My son loves to watch ESPN with my husband, so we planned a football party for his 2nd birthday in November. 

For the invites, I found football-textured paper at Michael’s craft store.  I cut this paper & white vellum into the shape of a football and joined the two together using brown leather lacing, also from Michael’s.  On the vellum, I printed ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL like the old Monday night football theme.  The party details were also printed on the vellum, as follows: You’re invited for food & play, As we celebrate Ibrahim’s 2nd birthday! Gameday:  (date) Kickoff: (time) Stadium:  (location) I also took the NFL logo & changed it using photo-editing software so that it said my son’s initials (IMA) instead of NFL. I made red & blue as our team colors, so the type & envelopes were in these colors.  The invites looked like footballs & all the dads loved them! 

For the party, we rented out the gym where my kids take classes, so my son was very familiar with the location.  To decorate the gym, we put clusters of football-shaped mylar balloons surrounded by lots of red & blue (our team colors!) latex balloons all around the gym.  We also had football cutouts from the local teacher supply store, which we put up in the gym’s windows & on the walls of the gym. 

I also found inflatable field goals, which we put up at opposite ends of the gym to give it the look of a real football field.  The gym staff provided soft mini footballs & I brought quite a few inflatable ones, which we had all over gym for the kids to play with. 

For activities, the gym staff, who we asked to dress up like referees with black & white striped shirts, ran their regular gym activities with a football twist.  They had relays, throwing drills, jumping exercises, etc.  At the end of the gym session, the gym staff had the kids form a huddle before walking to the refreshment area. 

They all ran into the refreshment area running like football players, chanting my son’s name.  Refreshments were a buffet of football-themed food subs, wings, pizza for the kids, which we served on football-shaped plates & platters.  We even had Gatorade for the little athletes! 

For the cake, we had one shaped like a football & one sheet cake decorated with a green football field, yardage numbers, field goals and red & blue team football players.  We presented the cake on a piece of astro-turf for the tablecloth.  We also borrowed football helmets from friends & family, which we put on the cake table.  We also laid pompoms all around the cake table. 

My two boys wore football shirts in red & blue (again, the team colors) with their names on the back.  Their ages were their numbers, which everyone got a huge kick out of!  Favors for the boys were 10-inch brown football-shaped buckets (found a while ago at Walmart).  I used foam stick on letters to personalize each bucket with the kids’ names. 

Favors for the girls were 10-inch megaphones in our team colors, which we also personalized.  We filled these containers with a ton of football-themed toys Nerf mini footballs, inflatable footballs, football whistles, football notepads, Big League Chew gum, referee whistles shaped like footballs (mostly from US Toy).  The favors were a huge hit!  My son loved his football birthday party & his friends had a great time!