paper and cake: Sail Away Party

Sarah Keeth, the very pregnant author of the sometimes scholarly blog KeethInk.com, used our Sail Away set for her sons 2nd birthday party. I am beside myself with just how cute that bowl of jello is! Oh the craftiness! Oh, the super cuteness! Ahem, um anyway, here is some of what she had to say:

~ ~ ~

Motherhood as Performance: the Two Year old Party

I threw a party for my son’s second birthday with a sailboat theme.
-I made everything myself.
-I took all the photos myself (I’m obviously not a professional photographer).
-Entire party budget was less than $200.
-I’m seven months pregnant.
-I’ve clearly lost my mind.

Almost all of the cute printables are from Paper & Cake (I made a few complementary ones myself.) Printing your own partyware is cheap and rewarding, but you do need to start well in advance.

From the Paper & Cake printable: I printed the napkin rings on sticker paper and used them to label the water bottles. Tip: take the original label off first.

Here’s the sweet birthday boy with me & DH.
I. Am. So. Pregnant.
Also, I need to get my hair done.

Please look at the cute boys and the cute table instead of me.

I used Paper & Cake’s directions to make pinwheels, but I made them out of big 12×12 scrapbook paper and attached them to dowels with a staple gun. They are in cute little buckets filled with sand. (Cute buckets found at Target’s dollar bin.) I tried putting florist foam in the buckets, but it wasn’t heavy enough and DH ran to Lowe’s for sand at the last minute. Luckily, we live two blocks from Lowe’s.

Found the best prices on the requisite paper straws on Ebay.
Really wanted the cute whirly pops, too, but they just didn’t fit in the budget.

On the far left: fishbowl jello and some dolphin-shaped pb&j’s. I found the sandwich cutter at Buy Buy Baby for $2.99. I used the Paper & Cake boat placecards as food labels (note the boat “floating” on top of the jello).

Sandy cinnamon muffins, AKA Pioneer Woman’s French Breakfast Puffs. Thankfully, there were some of these left over for breakfast the next morning.

Did I mention I made all the food? I think that was a crazy choice. But it tasted good.

I didn’t make the chips, or the goldfish. Just bought those. These are the Paper & Cake printable snack boxes.

I made the cake, too. Covered with marshmallow fondant. A tip I might use for next year: You can go to your local grocery store bakery and order a plain frosted cake in the shape of your choice. Then you can decorate it, which is the fun part, without messing with all the layers and so forth.

~ ~ ~

More tips and tricks are available on her original post, found here. Thanks so much Sarah!

When Laurie at Busy Bee Birthday Shop sent us some pictures of her son's third birthday party, well we knew instantly we had to share them with everyone!

Laurie used our Sail Away printable party, a ton of creativity and her fabulous Cricut machine, to throw a party her son will never forget. Here is a taste of what she had to say...

• • • • • •

Happy Birthday Jake!

We celebrated our sweet son Jake's third birthday with a backyard sail boat party! It was a beautiful, relaxing day full of fun friends {and little swimming pools, a water table, squirt guns and water balloons}. I bought the Sail Away pdf file from paperandcake.com and loved it! For favors, we had a red, white and blue candy bar for all of the guests, along with books for each friend {from the $1 section at Target!} We love you, our silly sweet Jakers!

I used the "Life's a Beach" Cricut cartridge for the front door decoration, as well as the "Jake" banner and lots of little details {sail boats for the candy bags, water bottles, and thank you cards}.

The adorable straws above and red/white polka dot cupcake liners below are from bakeitpretty.com. The cute little straw flags are from the Sail Away collection from paperandcake.com.