tyren’s bday party

this year tyren’s bday party theme was construction. i decided on yellow and black for the colors, and occasionally safety orange (didn’t want to do too much orange cuz i worried that with the black it would look too halloweeny). i decided that solid colored plates/napkins/cups/etc would be fine…vs a construction picture that would cost significantly more (plus shipping…i found everything local this year to save on that!) so i got solid yellow and solid black plates, cups, napkins, balloons, streamers, etc….hence the decorations that you saw in the last post that the bday fairy used. this year maeven and i wised up and put out OUR decorations on the kitchen table for the bday fairy to use, so she would be going along with the theme. maeven thought this was a terrific idea! 🙂 i also found caution tape for like $5 at home depot.

i also SCORED BIGTIME in a lot of my purchases for the party this year…i always try to buy as much as possible for parties at 99cent store and dollar tree…this year i got just about everything there! i found all the balloons, streamers, and paperware for the party. got a yellow plastic tablecloth and then found a construction-themed plastic table cloth that had safety signs that had bday themed messages and safety cones on it!!

you can see that table cloth here (over the dishwasher, where i had all the beverages…):

and here, over the yellow tablecloth on the food table (this picture was taken after everyone left and i had cleaned up most of the food, so there’s nothing left on the table…

but we “constructed” sandwiches for the party):

here are more pics of the party decorations (this was done in addition to the decorations the bday fairy had already put up…so the whole house was quite decorated!):

this is what the back sliding glass door looked like during the party (you can see friends outside socializing). 🙂

this is after the party, my parents and my kiddos hanging out in the living room…tyren is pointing a flashlight at bompa (NOT a pretend gun, even though my dad is acting like it is…we don’t do guns in our family.) that’s the sign from the birthday fairy on the wall, and you can see the streamers and hanging tonka decorations and stickers i found on clearance at party city (another SCORE…they discontinued their tonka party just about a month before our party and what was left was only 50cents each!! i got all kinds of party favors and some decor for next to nothing!)

this is the other side of the living room…my mom really did a great job with the streamers…she helped me decorate. 🙂 she had them going down my big metal shelves…i don’t know how well you can see that here, but they went down both sides. and there were “party zone” construction sticker things that she put up there too, on the corners of things.

this is my birthday boy (very cheesy smile), showing us the front door decorations (after the party, notice the dirty face…he had quite a fun time!)

i also found orange safety cones at 99cent store, and got chips and pretzels there too. (they actually have some decent food there too! although not all the food is good, so i am choosey when i pick food there.) oh and i found party favor bags with a construction theme at dollar tree!

and for the kiddos during the party, i found bob the builder yellow hard hats at 99cent store and pulled the bob stickers off and glitter glued all the kids names on them…so they each got a hard hat, as well as a black tool belt and set of toy tools, all 99cents each. (the tools came in little kits with like 4 or 5 tools in each set!) and then since there were 3 different types of sets of tools, i gave all the kids one to start with (the one that had the hammer in it), and then the other sets i bought extra of and buried them in our sandbox and they had fun hunting for them.

so when the kids arrived, i gave them each their hard hat and toolbelt and pack of tools to put in the toolbelt…then i sent them to the living room to use stickers to decorate their hard hats. then once most of the kids were there, we went outside and hunted for the tools in the sandbox. for some reason i don’t have photos of any of that…guess i was too busy leading things. adam has video footage though, so i’ll see if i can get him to give me a usable clip to put up later.

then after that, i dragged out all the cardboard boxes i’d been collecting for weeks before the party…i had like 4 fridge boxes (didn’t use one of them though, we had plenty already) and a bunch of smaller pottery barn boxes that someone gave us. and adam and the kids put together an amazing house!!

i put the pools out for a “foot soaking zone” because even though the party was 6-9ish in the evening, it was still pretty hot:

we got a cake at costco that had flowers all over it and a frosting grid…my mom took off the flowers and took a knife dipped in hot water and smoothed the grid out and then her and maeven covered with crushed chocolate graham crackers and put some brand new construction trucks on it and some embellishments. 🙂 turned out really cute!!

more pics from the party: