Teddy Bear Party -2yr- Bear Confetti

Teddy Bear 2nd Birthday Bash  I believe that any great party starts at the invitation level. 

With that in mind, I used invitations from a printer.  They were 5 x 7 and printed on card stock.  The outside edge of the invitation had two different color brown polka dots in different sizes and at the bottom of the invite was a big floppy teddy bear.  The wording said Colin Bear is turning two, please join us for a beary special celebration in his honor, RSVP to Mama Bear Samantha and all the details. 

Food wasn't fancy, homemade chicken and tuna salads, honey lime fruit dip, cut up fruit, veggie platter with ranch, meatballs and chips with a sour cream based dip.   I used orange and yellow as my accent colors.  For favors I found really cute little orange and yellow striped favor boxes at birthdayexpress.com.  Also on that site, I bought bubbles with a bear head blower, teddy bear coloring book and crayons, and mini Play Dough with a cookie cutter.  I put all of these into the box along with a snack size bag of Teddy Grahams. 

I decorated the outside of the box with little teddy bear stickers and also had special stickers made up at KodakGallery.com that said Thank you beary much for coming to my party, I hope you had a GRRREAT time! along with the date and a picture of him in the corner.   At the last minute I found out I had more kids coming than originally planned.  Instead of paying for express shipping to get the same thing for everyone, I decided to give the younger kids the boxes I had already made and do something different for the three older kids. 

I bought brown gift bags (small size) and stuffed them with pens/pencils, pad of paper, bubbles and a snack size of the Teddy Grahams also.  I tied the handles together with two different types of brown, orange and yellow ribbon and then decorated the bags with teddy bear stickers and the afore-mentioned personal stickers I had done up.  

Decorations:  here is how we decorated.  I found a bear shaped cookie cutter at the grocery store and made photocopies of it.  Then I blew it up so that I had four different sized bear templates.  I cut out about a total of 25 of these bears on four different colors of scrap booking card stock.  I bought a grab bag of buttons and used buttons for the eyes on all of them, different colors, shapes and sizes.  (The entire grab bag was only $5 and I can use them for all kinds of craft projects).  I also bought a couple bags of varying sizes heart-shaped buttons.  I super glued the eye buttons on and then super glued a heart-shaped button upside down for the nose.  I then used different colored scrap book pens to draw the mouths on.  Very simple, very cheap, VERY cute! 

I also managed to find for 50 cents at the local party store, teddy bear calendars.  I bought a bunch since they were cheap and I didn't know what I would do with them.  Well, I ripped the calendar apart and then cut around the teddy bears and tacked them to 12 x 12 sheets of brown paper.  The bears and the calendar pages were hung all over the living room, kitchen, food area, everywhere. 

I also managed to snag for a buck a bear shaped puncher.  I used my brown scrap paper to punch out bear-shaped confetti that I sprinkled all over the food table.  Then, I grabbed all the teddy bears in the house that I could find.  The day of the party, I had rented a helium tank and I blew up who knows how many balloons.  Each teddy bear that I had got one orange balloon and one yellow balloon on each paw and then they were placed around the house.  The other balloons were tied with long ribbons and let to just hang out all over the house.  Another big bunch was tied to the mailbox. 

Greeting the guests as they came up the driveway were orange and yellow pawprints that I had printed out, laminated and then simply taped to the sidewalk (I was praying for no rain that day or this would NOT have worked).  I also had an 11 x 17 posted on the door that said Welcome to Colin Bear's Birthday Bash, come right in, don't be shy.  On the poster was a teddy bear and lots of balloons. 

Food: as I said, our menu was simple.  However, the table decoration was cool.  I had bought clear plastic silverware for the meal, and wrapped one spoon and one fork in a yellow napkin and tied with one brown ribbon and one piece of ribbon that I found that was a brown and orange plaid.  I placed all the silverware in a basket on the table.  The dinner plates were yellow and I had a small orange tablecloth sitting on top of the big yellow tablecloth.  After dinner was over and we were ready for cake, I cleared the table and brought out the cake.  The cake plates were small and orange and the silverware was once again wrapped in a napkin, this time a small orange napkin and tied with yellow ribbon.  A very cute effect.   

The Cake: I decided to do the cake myself and so I bought a bear-shaped cake pan on eBay it is made by Wilton.  This was my first fancy cake ever!  I am not a baker a good cook but not a baker.  Since neither my son nor my husband like chocolate, the frosting was vanilla but colored with a baker's frosting coloring that I got at the craft store so it was a light brown.  I left it textured to look more like fur.  I had a hard time icing the sides of the cake so I bought Nilla wafers, put a little frosting on each and stuck them to the side.  Then just filled in where cake showed through.  For the eyes I found some cool licorice pieces in the bulk candy section at the grocery store that were yellow with black centers, they were perfect.  For the nose I used some raspberry shaped candies and for the mouth I used one strand of a Twizzler Pull n Peel.  Then I took pink sprinkles and made the ears.  I also made cupcakes, which I frosted white and used one big Oreo and three mini Oreo's to form a paw print.  I arranged the cupcakes around the cake to cover up any mess I made in decorating.  

Other stuff: I created on KodakGallery.com a photo book that showed, in pictures, Colin's last year.  It started with his 1st birthday party and went to the beginning of the month that we had the party in.  I asked people to sign it or write a note to him.  This is now a great keepsake for us.  I had Colin wear a long-sleeved t-shirt that had a big bear face on it and his baby sister was wearing a pair of denim overalls with a big pink teddy bear face on the top.  I thought it was a cute effect.  

All in all it was a very successful party and one that we will all remember.  Now to find something to do NEXT year!