Cooper made deciding a theme for his birthday party this year very easy! By February (a full six months ahead of time), we knew we were going to be having a tool party, and piece-by-piece we built an awesome birthday for our Little Tool Man! In keeping with the theme, we made this quite a do-it-yourself party, as in I was going to put on my work gloves and get busy being crafty and keep this a low-cost affair! It was fun to see our house turn into a construction site and workshop for Cooper and some of his sweet little friends. Cooper's birthday is by far and away my favorite day of the year. The specialness of the day seems to grow each year as he does!
Birthday Pre-Party
We had Cooper's birthday present from us in the hallway for him to find when he got up that morning. It was not a present that could be wrapped, so we just threw a sheet over it! :)
What is it???
A tool bench for the Tool Man of course!
We also got him a backpack with a book and stuffed animal inside. The backpack was so he would get excited about starting Mother's Day Out. I thought he would love carrying it around. He could have cared less!
I found him sitting on his tool bench watching his cartoons a little bit later!
The Birthday Party Details
Here is an overload of pictures and information about our Tool Party!
The Invitation
I found some fun construction stickers on clearance at Hobby Lobby. I bought the last two packs they had! Everyone's invitation had the same wording but had different stickers, paper, and ribbon. This was my favorite one, and it's actually much cuter than this picture shows, but I wanted to keep our last name and address off the blog! We had a morning party this year so that we could take good naps afterwards!
The Favors
These turned out to be my favorite birthday craft. I used brown paper bags, black and white polka dotted and orange tissue paper, black, orange, and yellow ribbon, and stickers I made on the computer to cutesy them up. They had blow up hammers, bubbles, bath toys that looked like tools and construction worker rubber duckies, and a toy truck inside (all from Oriental Trading and Wal-Mart). They also stuffed the candy from the pinata in their bags after we finally got it busted (more on that in later pics).
The Decorations
1. You can see our mantle and fireplace when you walk in, so I wanted it to be festively decorated too. I found yellow caution tape online that said "Birthday Zone" on it, so I wrapped a spare piece of plywood from our garage with a yellow plastic tablecloth and then did the yellow tape on top. I also framed some pictures of Cooper playing with Karl's tools to go with it.
2. We set up Karl's sawhorses with another piece of plywood on the deck for drinks. We called this the "Fueling Station." We had juice boxes for the kids and root beer and orange cream soda (to go with the colors of the party) for the adults.
3. We wrapped our powder room door with a blue tablecloth and put up a sign that said "Porta Potty" so people would know where the bathroom was. Every construction site needs a porta potty!
The Games
We cleared off the screened-in deck and set up the birthday games and drinks on it. We set up several different games/stations (my teacher-side came out...I even made signs labeling the games!) to entertain the little ones. There were "Blueprints"-coloring on yet another piece of plywood I found in the garage and painted with chalkboard paint, "Hammer Away"-hammering extra long golf tees into floral styrofoam blocks that I spraypainted to look like wood, "Dump Truck and Diggers"-mini-construction trucks in a box of sand, "Build with Blocks"-well, that one's kind of self-explanatory, and "Model Homes"-I put out some of our homemade play dough and a variety of cookie cutters and toys to go with it. Karl's mom saved Karl's Tonka trucks from when he was little, and we put those out too.
The Food
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We had tons of food, and it all went along with our theme! We had junkyard dogs (Karl grilled hotdogs before the party, and we wrapped them in aluminum foil to keep them warm. We had ketchup, mustard, relish, and chopped onions to go with them), wrecking balls (cheeseballs), loose gravel (popcorn), 2x4s (cheesesticks), spare tires (chocolate covered donuts), tools (Karl's mom made sugar cookies and cut them out to look like hammers and screwdrivers), Reese's Pieces, and then an awesome cake.
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The Cake
This was my one splurge for the party, but overall, it wasn't a big splurge. A local lady makes fantastic cakes out of her house. I have several friends who have used her and highly recommended her. She actually made the cupcakes for my baby shower at school, so I knew firsthand that her cakes taste great! I told her what I wanted, and she did it exactly like I described. The best part of all was that it tasted as good as it looked! How cute are the tools and "saw dust" on top of the cake?!
One of my favorite moments from this birthday and his first birthday was when everyone sang "Happy Birthday" to my little boy. There is something about that that gets me teary-eyed!
He blew out his own candle!!! We hadn't practiced that, but he did it like a champ!
After the cake, we opened presents. Uncle Wade got Cooper his first pair of cowboy boots. Uncle Wade knows I'm not a fan of cowboy boots. When he apologized to me before Coop had even opened his present, I asked the obvious questions first, "Is it loud?" "Is it big?" And then it dawned on me... Wade moved to Texas earlier this year. Texans love their boots. I didn't even have to ask. I said, "You got him cowboy boots??!!?!" He laughed. Just between us though, they are really, really, really cute, and Cooper loves them. All children need cowboy/cowgirl boots eventually, so at least Uncle Wade footed the bill for these! After opening only a couple more presents, Cooper opened his Aunt Elmo's gift. She got him a chainsaw that also came with goggles! This child loves chainsaws passionately. I can't remember if I've mentioned on here or not that for relaxing fun in this house, we watch videos of Stihl chainsaws on You Tube. Coop brings us the I-Pad and says, "Chay-suh" until we load the videos for him. After he opened her gift, he didn't care about opening anything else (and he got some really great presents too). He was so excited about that chainsaw!
He immediately wanted the goggles on, as well as Karl's work goggles around his neck.
The "chay-suh!!!"
He spent the rest of his party (and the entire weekend) playing nonstop with his new chainsaw.
He loves trying to cut up the couch! He's such a patient lumberjack and never gets upset that he doesn't make any progress (thankfully)!
It was a wonderful day made even more special by our sweet family and friends who came to celebrate our Little Tool Man. We really did build some fun memories that day!
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