My favorite picture of the entire day...
Alright... on to the party and why you are here reading this!
FOOD:
The food was wonderful and EASY. We had so much stuff that didn't have to be cooked. Here is a picture of Chef Mickey's kitchen...
Here you can see a clear shot of Daisy's Donuts. I ordered 20 dozen (yes 20 dozen, and well over 15 dozen were gone before the party ended). This was easy and pretty cheep. I ordered them from our favorite location the weekend before and went and picked them up the morning of the party. It was GREAT! You can also see the chips and dip... The little tag for this read Dale's Dip. I know what you are already thinking... the little tags are TOTALLY unnecessary! But aren't they cute? Just wait, it gets better.
Here from left to right you have Pluto's Popcorn, Clarabelle's Candy and Goofy's Goldfish. For the popcorn I went to our local popcorn store called Popcorn Papa and bought a bag of plain regular popcorn. Why? Because I didn't want my house smelling like popped popcorn and I didn't have to worry about it burning - a good $7.00 spent in my book! The candy is MnM's and just bought a big bag of them at Sam's Club. I also got the goldfish at Sam's which was great because they make a great snack for later.
I did miss getting a good shot of Minnie's Mix and the fruit bouquet from Edible Arrangements, these are about as good as those shots got.
Next we had our hot dogs... ahem... I mean Donald's Dogs. I hate having bun packages all over the counter, and this basket just made it all CUTE! Don't you think? Oh, and this was the only cooking we had to do the day of the party, but I don't really consider putting hot dogs in a crock pot cooking, but they were GOOD!
Toodles also had a food item, it was Toodles Tea... clearly from the picture we forgot to start making it until the party started... eh, it was still fine since we had so much other stuff to drink in the coolers outside.
Now onto my favorite things from the day food wise. First something I didn't make... The small 6" cake that had the candles in it. This was from Say it with Sugar in downtown Wylie. Let me just say.... YUMMY and CUTE! All she did was blow out these candles and as a family we ate this the next day.
One of my favorite things was the cupcake tree I did... I made all the picks on the tree with my cricut using black paper for the Mickey Heads and sticker paper for the 3's and Happy Birthday Laci centers. What do you think?
Still not done....
My favorite thing of all was the dessert stand. Yummy!!!! Here is a picture of the whole thing and then I will talk about each one.
First we have Laci's Lollypops. These were a mix of chocolate Mickey heads (used a mold found on Ebay - I don't remember which company I bought it from though but it was pretty inexpensive) and dipped Oreo pops. Quick note that White Oreo's are better for dipping as they are not as breakable (if you want more information on how to dip these, just let me know). Thank you to my mother in law for being a dipping expert on this one. I was nervous trying them, but she was done before I could blink my eyes and they were sooo good!!!
Next was Pete's Pretzels. Now I kid you not, that had we bought these pretzels at Say it with Sugar they are $1.00 a piece. Hello, earth to Say it with Sugar.... I made like 80 of these in about 20 minutes. If I had bought them from you I would have spent over $80.00. Um, no thanks. To do these all I did was take Almond Bark, melt it in the microwave in a plastic bowl that was safe in the microwave, and then once it was liquid enough used a spoon to pour over the pretzel. Then I laid it on parchment paper. Pretty easy and well over 1/8 of the price. While they were still wet we decorated them how we wanted except the drizzle ones we waited until they were hard.
The biggest hit of the day was the Mickey's Marshmallow Munchies. My mom has a secret for her Munchies... they are always so good! We used the cookie cutter we got in January to make these, both adults and kids alike were all over them. Now as a suggestion. When you go to make these and mold them. Instead of cutting the Rice Crispy Treats, you need to pack it in the mold from the top. It is not only easier, creates less waste, and have clean edges. Now as a quick note spray the cutter, your parchment paper and your hands in Pam, just thank me later for this note.
DECORATIONS:
First off, there was not one spot you could go to that wasn't decorated Mickey Mouse in the downstairs... (if you want to know how to make these wall/garage door decorations be sure to go here to my older post that talks about the CHEAP and EASY decorations...) even Jake's study doors were rocking the theme being Chip's Coat Closet (picture at the bottom). It was priceless to see the kids and adults expressions when they walked in. I know the kids thought it was awesome, the adults thought we were nuts, but by the end of it... everyone had such a good time since it was so well put together, it didn't matter.
Let me start by saying, no one would be able to miss where the party was at... oh, and there was a bubble machine that was going off as the party guests were arriving... magical entrance. CHECK!
The garage said, "Meeska Mooska Mouseketeers, Laci's Birthday Party is Here!"
Yes... that is a Mickey Head in the flowers ***Insert big cheesy grin here*** I love it!
The front door said "Welcome to the Clubhouse"
When everyone walked in they saw this...
One of the most things I got complements on is this Mickey Head that I made for the party. To see how I made it... look at this post...
Sign in the back yard... um... who's birthday was it again... oh right... Laci's...
Amazing and awesome bounce house... of course the theme is related!
My personal favorite spot in the whole house for decorations was the bathroom... Jake even got into the spirit and filled the four picture frames with the character photos. This room never had an identity before, and actually might be the one thing not to change. ***Small admission... lots of decorations are still up, but they do look cute***
With out further ado... here is the bathroom.
And because we wanted to make sure everyone was thanked when they left... here is the sign on the back of the front door... hehehe.
INVITATION: I know this is out of order in the party scheme, but I felt that it wasn't quite as eye popping as the party pictures...
INVITE:
When planning her party I like to make my own invitations. For one I think writing on a store bought invitation is cheesy and just not cute (sorry to anyone that I may have just offended!), the ones that you can buy printed for you are just too darn expensive, so I settle for making my own. I always use microsoft publisher and just use the shapes layered to achieve the look I am going for. Last year the theme was Curious George and the invitation was the shape of the Man in The Yellow Hat's hat. It was super cute. So this year I wanted to make a Mickey Mouse head.
Below is the invite I came up with. I have cut out 60 of these on the outside of the black line, put a sticker on the back as a reminder to RSVP, laminated them, cut them out again and as a Julie signature item... put a magnet on it so that they can put it on the fridge and not misplace it.
The sticker on the back says....
Put this magnet on the fridge
and SAVE THE DATE!
Don’t forget to RSVP so
that Mickey and Minnie
know you are coming!
We will have a bounce house,
crafts, food, cake and lots of FUN!
Can’t wait to see you there!
INVITE ENVELOPE:
I am a firm believer that packaging is everything. I mean, no offense to anyone who just hands out white envelopes with names written on them, or postcards with the preprinted info from a party place and handwriting in the details for the party (ie. time, date, name, etc.). I just was not raised to do this and want people to be excited about what they are opening! Below is a picture of this years invitation envelope (this is a sample - hence Laci's name in the middle and our address missing from the upper left). As you can see I did the Mickey park bubble picture in the bottom left and the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse logo on the bottom right. These were printed on a laserjet printer and are cute, pretty, and perfect for the theme. Inside is the picture of the birthday girl, a page with directions to our house (made this two years ago in Microsoft Publisher and just print them out every year), and the invitation. They were sticker closure envelopes so all I had to do was rip off the backing of the sticker and press it down to close.
The gift bags were really cute, but I still haven't taken pictures of them yet. Overall it was a great party and I know that Laci had a wonderful time. All the time and effort that went into the decorations and planning were worth the expression on every child and adults faces!
TTFN~
Linking to this party:
