Ellie’s 4th Birthday Party

I’ll admit that it was a little confusing to Ellie to wait until today for her birthday party. She had a party at school with cupcakes 3 weeks ago, our camping and birthday dinner weekend last weekend, and she even had her first birthday date night with Daddy on Friday night. We kept telling her that the party was today and she asked whose party it was! Ha! But, when the actual time arrived, she was ready to go.

We went with a Safari theme. Here’s the invite that I designed with my super remedial graphic design skills. I was happy with how it came out, though:

Obviously, we went with a safari theme. We had animal print balloons all over the house, and I used some green crepe paper in hopes of making the table look a bit more jungle-y. I also spent a large amount of time on the cake. My dear sweet friend Sue Duke allowed me to go over to her house on Friday night to learn from her cake-making expertise. I was so grateful! She gave me some great tricks on how to smooth the cake and how to make roses and lots of other little tricks along the way. She’s the best!! I didn’t want to use black icing, so I went for pink zebra stripes. Here’s the end result, and note that the roses are Sue’s not mine. :)

By the way, Ellie made me add the W since there was another Ellie in her preschool class and she goes by Ellie W. there. I appeased the birthday girl by adding it. :)

I also had some fun with the labels for the food. We went a little “wild”:

That’s all code for hot dogs, cheese balls, chocolate pudding with oreos and gummy worms, Cool Ranch Doritos, Doritos, grapes, Lime sherbet and Sprite punch, Ketchup and Mustard. :) There’s the whole table below:

All of the guests ate lunch, and then the kids decorated their animal masks:

They seemed to enjoy it. Here are some photos of the end products:

Jade and the birthday girl

Haley and Cruse

 

That’s what Matt was doing the whole party. (Just kidding – thought it was funny that my dad snapped that photo, though!)

Then, after the masks, we did a little giraffe-a-laugh limbo game that I found at Toys ‘R Us and couldn’t pass up. It plays a cute little song and then it laughs hysterically if it falls on the ground. It seemed to be a hit as well:

Then we cut the cake:

Most of our friends left, and then we opened gifts with just the grandparents. As usual, Ellie was hugely blessed by the generosity of her friends and family. She was thrilled with all of her gifts, and she was especially excited by her bike from Mom and Dad.

We heard before we opened this that Quinn picked out her gift himself. In case you can’t tell, it’s a pink soccer ball. It was a MASSIVE hit. She LOVED it and picked it to play with first after her nap. Thanks, Quinn!!

Below is Ellie closing her eyes and waiting for her surprise from Mom and Dad:

And her new (to her) bike:

It was a great day, and we wish our sweet girl a fabulous 4th year!