Kids’ birthday parties don’t have to break the bank or cause crazy amounts of stress. Time goes by so quickly, you HAVE to be able to enjoy celebrating your kids. In this next installment of my Simple Birthday Parties series, see what we did for my oldest daughter’s second birthday…
One of 2-year-old Abby’s favorite books was If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff. Starting with a color scheme, I chose to go with the green, white, and brown of the book as well as pink to make it a little more girly. Tablecloth, cups, plates, utensils, balloons — all solid colors from the dollar store.
As with all three of my kids, I’d been taking pictures of Abby, in the same corner of the same couch, every month from birth till age 2. An easy decoration, and shows how much she’s grown!
“Accent Cookie Dough” font — printed with dark brown ink, then lightly colored in with colored pencil.
The printout of the book cover I found via Google images. The 5 books were a box set that Abby got for Christmas. I found the stuffed mouse for $1 at a yard sale (that’s actually what convinced me to go with this theme!). Add some homemade chocolate chip cookies and a milk station — and the cake of course, but more on that in a minute — and voila!
“Smart Cookie” t-shirt from Life is Good (no longer available — similar one here). Financially it was my only splurge for the party. Although it was big on her then, she wore it for the next year or two, plus her sisters have also gotten use out of it (tip: don’t buy age-specific birthday shirts).
After dinner (typical summer-time food like burgers and watermelon), gifts, and playing outside (bubbles are fascinating to 2-year-olds) we finally had CAKE. This was THE most amazing cake EVER.
Want to know its secret?
Cookie dough (egg-less) in the middle.
Oh. My. Goodness. Everyone raved about it, and for good reason. I found the recipe here, but made a few changes:
- I used a box mix for the yellow cake.
- I didn’t have quite enough powdered sugar for the frosting, so I added some chocolate Nesquik and some baking cocoa. I think it made the flavor richer and the color darker.
- After covering the cake I had some frosting left over, so I melted a handful of chocolate chips and mixed them into the leftover frosting and used that for piping the stars.
We served it with vanilla ice cream. The perfect end to our cookie party!
Tip: Choose ONE thing to go all-out on for a party (like my cake), and keep everything else super-simple (like my printed pictures and books for decorations). Enjoy your time with your people!
Click here for more Simple Party posts.
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