Hunter's Birthday 2012

Well it has only been six months since Hunter turned two, and only five months since Dad blogged about Hunter's birthday, so I'm catching up now!

Hunter's birthday was a BLAST! I feel like I worked harder on preparing for his birthday than any of Brianna's simply because he is so hard to buy for! I have some mental block in my head when it comes to buying toys for boys. Of course if you've been to a birthday party around here before you know I love trying out new cakes, and it's hard for me to choose between two different kinds, so my kids have been getting two cakes. I haven't heard any complaints so far and I love baking, so it works out quite well.

Hunter's free shirt I got from a friend. Worked perfectly for the day and was immediately passed on since his stomach was popping out of it by that evening!!

Some of the family: My Mom, Jennifer, Claire, Matt, Me, Stephen's Mom

Don't ask me why I am parading around with a drum stick. Maybe about to bop someone upside the head?

Aunt Leanne got a bunch of great pictures of my Dad with the grandkids!

 And a very rare family picture! She went out right after the party and got this framed in an 8x10 which now sits on our piano. She is so thoughtful!

 I saw a cake here that I definitely wanted to replicate. It looked easy enough and I knew I could make the colors more "manly" for a cake for Hunter. It's actually really simple, although if you are going to make this I suggest you go to her page for instructions, not mine, because I'm going to skim over a lot of stuff.

Basically, you take white cake mix and dye it with food coloring.

Cook some cake pops in a cake pop pan.

Cook the cake balls in white cake mix.

Voila!

The pictures above were my practice attempt. My family loves it when I have to practice a cake I'm making! For the real cake, I put more cake balls in the cake and closer together, to ensure that every piece had a polka dot, and sometimes two different colors.

I went online to find some cute decorations for his party too. Did you know you can pay just $15 (or more!) for printables for your kid's birthday party? YEAH RIGHT!! So I hit the ole Microsoft Publisher (oldie but a goodie) and created these party favors. I was really proud of these because I don't have a creative bone in my body. The treat bags were filled with things from the dollar store, like "ugly teeth", kazoos, hair extensions for the girls, and maybe a piece of candy or two. I can't really remember now!! The favor says "Thank you for coming. It was loads of fun!" and has a cute little dump truck picture on it.

This is the final polka dot cake from the outside.

Then, just a couple of days before the party, a friend from high school, Morrissa, put a dump truck CAKE on her Facebook page. Well obviously, I was going to have to do that for Hunter's second cake! She gave me the instructions and Leila helped me prepare it very last minute!

At Brianna's birthday party last year I had used an old formula bottle and dolled it up to make it a pretty utensil holder. I ripped off the scrapbook paper from her party and replaced it with more "dirty-looking" scrapbook paper. I made another sign that said "Dig in!" and stuck it in there.

A dump truck was dumping out it's load of potato chips next to the dip:

Hunter's birthday present from me and Stephen - thank you Moore County Online Garage Sale!!

I'm no psychic but it's easy to know what's going to be happening after these girls turn 16...

We had a BLAST at Hunter's party! Even tornado watches and warnings throughout the afternoon didn't deter us from partying it up. And now it's just a couple more months until Brianna's 4TH birthday party! What will we think of this year!?