Bella's Pooh Birthday Party

Oh my! Is my Bella baby already 2 years old?!?!  Yes, she is growing up - and too fast if you ask me. We had a wonderful time having a Pooh party with some friends to celebrate her birthday. 

I never imagined I would miss construction paper and other craft supplies so much. But oh how I do! And birthday parties have definitely reminded me of just how much. I meant to order gold tissue paper and I ended up getting 100 square pieces of gold paper. I didn't want them to go to waste, so hanging up some gold paper evolved into this idea of honey following into the pot.

One of her cakes. (the better one lol)

We had: 

Tigger tails (chinese snack)

Acorn Bites (chocolate kisses stuck on cookies with pb)

100 Acre Woods Trail Mix

Bouncin' Tigger Corn (popcorn)

Fruits and Vegetables from Peter Rabbit's Garden

And other stuff ;)

We had hunny pot party favors, pooh bear hats, and pin the tail on Eeyore. 

We had bumble bees hanging from the ceiling all over the house.

We had pooh puppets for the kids to decorate and color. Philip drew the poohs. Isn't he great!?

And he drew characters on the balloons.

Here's the Birthday Girl!!!

We love our Bella Bella! Emma falling asleep already.

Playing pin the tail of Eeyore.

Bella's turn.

Daddy talking to friends

Bella's welcoming a friend by offering party snacks.

Time for cake! 

Blowing out her candles.

Bella's party was on her good friends birthday! 

We sang to her friend and let him blow out candles too.

All of Bella's sweet older friends fed her lots of cake.

And she loved it.

Giving friends good bye hugs

Between our cake covered floor and uncapped markers, our place was a mess! But we are so glad we were able to have a fun party with friends.

Philip's Harry Potter Birthday Party

Husband's birthday was coming up, as I was trying to figure out what to buy him I ran through the standard gift ideas that make good gifts for Philip: books, movies, music. But I wanted something different.... then it hit me. A surprise birthday party! Our kids aren't old enough to have the exciting anticipation of holidays and birthdays yet. And as we are getting older the holidays have lost some the excitement and magic. So I wanted to bring the magic back with a party themed with one of his favorites -The Wizarding World of Harry Potter!

The "wishes" sign fell down in this picture.

I'll put some close ups of the food and labels at the end.

  Happy birthday my love!

 I didn't think to take a picture until a couple people had already left, but here is most of the gang.

 There's the "wishes" lol... I also downloaded a free "Harry Potter font" from the internet.

Being away from family is hard on us and on them. I wanted them to be able to be as much apart of Philip's birthday celebration as much as possible from the other side of the world. So, the owl post had a storm of mail with birthday wishes. For added details, I drew owl stamps and put the HP mark on the back of each letter. 

I also had this big gaughty frame made to fit around the ipad so that his family could skype in for the surprise moment of the party as a talking portrait. Technical difficulties prevented us from being able to skype, so Dumbledore visited instead. 

 My mom came up with the idea to put glow sticks in balloons. It had a really neat effect that's not captured in the picture. She also sent glow in the dark balloons, which made it even more neat.

 One of Philip's favorite details was the toilet which says "Ministry of Magic this way"

Our Honeydukes store had some special treats from the Harry Potter world at Universal. I found them on Amazon and my mom shipped them over. A chocolate frog and Bertie Bott's every flavor beans. 

Here are the details for the party snacks.

Fizzing Wizzbees were hard candy covered in pop rocks.

Rings for everyone to go with their Harry Potter glasses party favors.