Best Of Summer Party 2yr - Felt Flowers

For my daughter's 2nd birthday, I wanted to just highlight all the things about summer that everyone loves. She was born in July and, since she is still too young to pick a theme or care much about it, I decided to stick with the season she was born during and bring in everything about it that we enjoy. 

For decorations, I made A LOT of felt flowers (cut petals out of felt and hot glued them to big colorful buttons and pom-poms [as the center of each flower] and used pipe cleaners wrapped around floral wire as the stems. I made them all different, in many colors and sizes and stuck them into floral foam wrapped in moss for centerpieces and some in terra cotta pots. We added some fake butterflies, dragonflies and bees that I picked up in the craft store. I put them all over the house. The only other decorations that I added were balloons and streamers in the same colors and covered the tables with yellow and white gingham tablecloths. With just those few ideas it made a very big statement. I started making the flowers, a little at a time, a couple of months beforehand so we were able to have many of them.

Outside, we rented some tables with umbrellas and white garden chairs. We also had the party inside since it was very hot and we don't have much shade out back. We also put a few picnic blankets outside and I used two old coffee tables that I found and painted pink to put on top of them as tables for guests to eat on while sitting on the picnic blanket.  

For invitations: I bought a plain white invitation kit from the craft store, made small felt flower shapes. At the top of the invite, I punched two holes and slipped green ribbon through them to tie a bow in the center. I hot glued the small felt flower to the ribbon randomly - as if it were a flower hanging from a vine. It was simple but cute. 

For food, we served bbq items such as hot dogs, burgers, mac & cheese, potato salad, pasta salad, green salad, corn and bbq chicken. Beverages were lemonade, fresh iced-tea, soda, beer and sangria. 

Dessert: We had three different kinds of cupcakes: lemon and strawberry cupcakes and ice-cream cone cupcakes (cupcakes baked in the ice-cream cones). The adults appreciated the lemon and strawberry cupcakes while the kids loved the ice-cream cone ones. We also made a make your own ice-cream sundae bar which included several different choices of ice-cream, whipped cream, sprinkles, marshmallow, hot fudge, nuts and candies. I had really wanted to track down the local ice-cream truck beforehand and have them come to the party so that our guests could go to the truck and get what they wanted but they had not come by before the party so we opted to just make our own sundaes. Would have been great though! 

Favors: I found inexpensive ceramic ice-cream sundae bowls online. We put them in felt favor bags and gave one to each guest.  Games/toys: We had a water balloon toss. In the yard, we put out the little kiddie pool, a sprinkler, croquet, some beach balls for the kids to throw around and some other outdoor toys. I found colorful butterfly nets and some big nylon butterflies on stakes to put around for decoration. There weren't many kids and those that were there was still kind of small so there were not many games to play - just lots of running around and having a blast. Typical of a summer day outside!