Sophie's 3rd Birthday Celebration: The Garden Party

We celebrated Sophie's 3rd birthday with a Garden Party this past Saturday! It was overcast and cooler than it  normally is this time of year but thank goodness the rain cleared up. Earlier in the week there was a 50% chance of rain at party time, but luckily the rain came overnight and moved off shore by mid-morning. What a relief! 

 
The highlight of the party was the dessert. Instead of doing traditional cake or cupcakes, we served dirt cake in tumblers that I painted to look like flower pots. Crunched up Oreos made the "dirt" which was topped with gummy worms. Then we put a colored daisy inside a green straw and stuck it in the middle to complete the flower pot. I absolutely LOVE how adorable they turned out! 

Here is the recipe for the dirt cake which was beyond yummy! I could eat a pound of this stuff!

2 packages Oreos, crunched
2 small packages vanilla instant pudding mix
3 1/2 cups milk
1 stick butter
1 (8 oz) cream cheese, softened
16 oz. cool whip 
Gummy worms

Mix pudding and milk. Add butter and cream cheese. Fold in Cool Whip. Alternate layers of cookies and layers of mixture. Refrigerate overnight.

Sophie declared it was "Yummy Yum!" 

And I couldn't stop taking pictures of these adorable little pots!

Find out what else we did for the party after the break! 


We kept it simple with the other food this year - chicken nuggets from Chick-Fil-A (Sophie's favorite!), fresh fruit, Chex Mix and goldfish. 

Robbie talked me out of making flower shaped iced sugar cookies when I started pulling out the ingredients at 10pm the night before the party. I would've been up until at least 1am and it just wasn't worth it, especially knowing that Sophie would've taken one bite before announcing "I don't like this!" 


Another special treat we served at the party was snow cones! Sophie loves ice so we looked into renting a snow cone maker for the party but found we could actually buy one at Bed Bath & Beyond for cheaper than renting one. Plus, we can use it all summer and for future parties!

Our activity for the kids was potting their own flowers. Everybody loved doing this -- even the parents! We had a small pot for each child and they potted their own Vincas to take home after the party. 

Here was the table before we got started (with a couple pots blown over by the wind!) Robbie used four 1 gallon buckets and a piece of plywood to set up the potting station which was the perfect height for the kids.

And then the fun started! 

 

 Here are some of the party guests with their creations:

I found these cute little favor boxes at Dollar Tree which we filled with Snickers and Milky Way's. I made the favor tags in PicMonkey. 

I also made the invitations myself on PicMonkey. 

Sophie wore a dress I made which was featured on THIS post. She looked so cute in it and I found the most adorable silver shoes with a hot pink flower to complete the outfit.

I couldn't resist doing a couple tissue paper crafts. These pom poms are super easy to make using this Martha Stewart tutorial.

I also made tissue paper flowers to accent the food table using One Little Project's tutorial. I decided to cut the ends of the tissue paper in a round shape instead of pointed as shown in the tutorial. I wrapped a green pipe cleaner around the middle to make the stem and put them in striped tin cans (a Target dollar bin find!) stuffed with green Easter grass.  

Sophie was thrilled that her cousin Robert was able to come in from out of town to be at the party. These two are peas in a pod! I can't believe both of them didn't collapse after how many times they went down the sliding board together.

At the end of the day, Sophie said "Today was the best day ever!" As always, all the work was worth it! These smiles are the only payment I will ever need!

Linking to these parties!