Jack's 2nd Birthday

So yeah, Jack had a birthday.  At the end of February.  I didn't ignore it completely!  I did talk about it, but I haven't posted pictures of his birthday party until now.  I'm just a little behind because I'm lazy busy.  Okay, probably more likely a combination of both, but anyway, here are pictures from Jack's 2nd birthday party!

Unfortunately, our house isn't big enough to host our family and friends so we hosted Jack's party at an event center/party room that my husband has access to through his work.  It's always a pain to plan and prepare for an event when you have to transport everything, but at least I didn't have to worry about cleaning my house on top of everything else, I guess :)

Jack had a lot of fun.  He spent most of the time running around with his cousins, having a blast.  There were lots of giggles.

His favorite truck was in attendance as well.

Jack wasn't super into opening his gifts, but he did open a few.

Mostly he wanted to continue running around playing as well as stop and play with whatever he opened.  Pretty much a repeat of the holidays this year :)

However, he was into the cake eating.  He helped blow out his candle.

And then dug right in.

He was all, "this is all for me?!"

"Oh, okay then.  Good!"

Some details:

The invitation:

Mark designed the invites.

We did kind of a drive-in theme and had hot dogs with chili sauce, cheese, chopped onions, mustard, and relish served with a variety of chips.  We also put together fruit and dip and veggie and dip platters.  We had red food baskets for people to use as plates.

I made these chocolate covered pretzels as well using candy melts and race car pretzel molds.

And don't forget the cupcakes!

We had Vanilla Cupcakes with Buttercream Frosting and Cherry Coke Float Cupcakes.  Mark designed the images on the little cupcake toppers and I cut them out of cardstock and glued them onto little lollipop sticks.  Oh, and the cupcake tower!  I actually made that last year for Jack's Cat in the Hat-themed 1st birthday party using this tutorial.  This year I just changed out the paper and ribbon and was able to reuse it.  Easy peasy.

As far as decorations, we kept it really simple.

We hung streamers, got some balloons, and I made these little truck garlands/mobiles.  I'm not really sure what you'd call them, but they turned out pretty cute.

LOTS of cutting, but the putting together was easy.  I got the inspiration from seeing this tutorial.  Jack thought they were pretty cool.

I made Jack's shirt using a freezer paper stencil.  Mark designed the image and printed it out for me.  I very carefully cut it out with what should have been an X-Acto knife, but in reality was a box cutter because I of course left this project until about midnight the night before his party and didn't think of the lack of X-Acto thing as a problem.  *Sigh*  Next time, must get X-Acto knife!  I was really pleased with the results though and I've since washed the shirt several times with no problems.

After all the work and scrambling and rushing to be on time I forgot to wear eyeliner, which is pretty much the only makeup I always wear.  Fail.  It was a good day though!


Photos courtesy of Gabbard Photography