I can’t believe our sweet Myla is 2 years old and we have another little one on the way in less than 1.5 months! Last year we really enjoyed planning and hosting Myla’s “Cute As A Button” 1st Birthday Party (see HERE), and this year we decided to do a garden theme for her 2nd birthday party!
We searched through Google and Pinterest for decor and food ideas (thank goodness for the Internet!) for a child’s garden party, and we documented what we did through these photos in case you’re interested in hosting your own garden party too! For decor, we went very simple and modern as we mainly used butterflies. Ryan made four butterfly templates of different sizes using cardboard and then used these templates to trace them onto scrapbook paper. My family helped cut out these butterflies and we later taped them onto our feature wall using painter’s tape as you’ll see later on in the blog post!
We wanted to have some garden and bug themed food to serve our guests, and we knew they would be fun for the kids! One of the ideas we saw on-line were these caterpillar grapes: we simply skewered green grapes together and then added two white icing dots and mini chocolate chips for the eyes! Note that we skewered the grapes horizontally so they have a chubbier and cuter look. We also placed the eyes ontop of the grapes rather than along the sides (we did this initially but the icing started drooping downwards!).
Here are Ryan’s parents scooping chocolate pudding into special cups for our dirt cups that you’ll see later on…
We had A LOT of help prepping for Myla’s party, and I am so thankful for all our family members who stayed late the night before and came early the next morning to help us prepare each food item. Delegation is key! Here is my cousin preparing some special ladybug crackers…
My dad making “Ants on a Log” (peanut butter in celery with raisins ontop)…brings back childhood memories!
My sister helping out with the “Butterfly Bites”!
My brother pouring chocolate cookie crumbs into these little dishes that served as our food labels! We bought these little chalkboard signs from Michaels and Ryan used chalk marker to write the names of each food 🙂
After all the food prep and decor was done, this was our feature wall and table filled with goodies! You can see the scrapbook butterflies provided a beautiful simplistic accent on the walls. We also used the manzanita trees from our wedding on either side of the table too (we bought some small green balls from the dollar store to add to the trees as well). In addition to the special bug food, we also had “Layered Finger Jello” (which is always a hit at parties- I blogged the recipe HERE), our “Giant Birthday Cupcake (see HERE), mini and regular sized cupcakes and croissant sandwiches (not pictured in this photo below).
Here is a close-up of each bug food! Aren’t these ladybug crackers simply adorable? They were delicious too! We used Ritz crackers with flavoured cream cheese spread ontop. Grape tomatoes were then cut in half and then olives and chives were used for the head and antennae respectively. Little dots of black icing completed the look of these ladybugs 🙂 My cousin did a phenomenal job assembling these! You can see the recipe we found for these HERE.
For the ”Butterfly Bites“ we used celery with flavoured cream cheese, pretzels for the wings, pretzel pieces for the antennae and dried cranberries for the heads!
And here are those cute “Caterpillar Grapes” again! We placed them on a bed of mini chocolate chips!
The “Ants on a Log”…
Here are the “Dirt Cups” that Ryan’s parents prepared! They were made of chocolate pudding with chocolate cookie crumbs ontop. Mint leaves served as the little plants sprouting up, and we found these wooden spoons to help act as the wooden shovels 🙂
We were so happy with how everything turned out! It really did not take too much time and preparation since we delegated so much and had an incredible amount of help from our dear family! Here we are with our sweet little birthday girl 🙂 Thank you so much to our dear friend Elaine who helped us take these family photos!
Blowing out the candle on her special cake 🙂 Myla was so happy when the time came to sing happy birthday, blow out the candle, cut the cake, and eat it! Read all about how we made this Giant Cupcake in my blog post HERE!
For the favours, we saw a really cute idea on-line using giant lollipops as flowers! We knew it would be perfect for our garden theme 🙂 We found these giant lollipops at a great price at Bulk Barn, but they all had Halloween pictures on them since it was October. Thus, Ryan peeled off the wrapping and tightly rewrapped them with saran wrap!
Ryan made these labels saying “Growing Sweeter Everyday” for the flower pots…
Here are the Lollipop Flowers we gave as favours for each family! We found these clay flower pots at the dollar store (only 3 for $1) and we filled them with mini chocolate chips to act as the dirt. We bought the mini chocolate chips in bulk at “Bulk Barn”, and they were also a great deal since they were half price! Lime sour gummies served as the leaves!
The labels added a cute touch, and the children loved taking these home (haha given the amount of candy and sweetness in it, who wouldn’t?)!
Myla carefully placing a Lollipop Flower back after she had picked one up to inspect it 🙂
We really enjoyed preparing for Myla’s 2nd birthday party, especially since we could bond so much with our family! A lot of love went into this party, and we hope you enjoyed reading about it 🙂 These years go by so quickly, and we are happy that we can help Myla celebrate and document these memories for her so she can read about it and see all these pictures when she grows up too! What was your favourite party food that we prepared?
