Birthdays Are His New Favorite

Sebastian's fourth birthday party was a great success thanks to everyone who shared it with us through their presence or their gifts and phone calls. It was quite a lot more work to pull it off than I had imagined it would be but all the more rewarding to see how excited he was when he showed up (after spending the previous night with my parents at their hotel) and saw the walkway lined with orange cones, his bedroom full of balloons, and trucks! On the cake! He kept saying, "Come check out this, Mama!"

I was hoping against a character themed party this year so when Sebastian suggested a Mighty Machines party, I headed in the direction of dump trucks in a color palette I could live with. I used a few ideas from this fantastic truck party such as the orange cones, the sand box on the porch, and the marshmallow building activity from this post on OhDeedoh. Some ideas were obvious for a truck themed party such as hard hats (scored at a thrift store!), mud themed desserts, a dirt pile cake, and a dump truck centerpiece to play with later.

We had gluten free cupcakes and healthy snacks to help off set the sugar high from the cake, soda, and mud pies. For those I made chocolate jello, added crumbled No-Pudge brownies, and topped them with gummy worms. Easy and kid friendly.

We can reuse the truck decorations and Sebastian will have fun playing in the storage container turned sand box all summer, or until he's managed to dump all of the sand through the porch rails.

Thanks to the summer toy section in Target, Sebastian's friends got to take home little sand buckets filled with bubbles and tiny markers, as well as a truck set that they played with at the party.

I was originally going to make a 'Happy Birthday, Sebastian' banner from grocery bags and duct tape and hang it over my clipboards but while I was taking my summer inspiration photos down I realized I had one of Sebastian in black and white. I spent the next hour and a half browsing through our Flickr sets and printing off photos of S after editing them to be black and white.

The garlands were easy. I was lying in bed late one night brainstorming about party decorations when I thought of using yellow duct tape I had on hand to make bunting. It felt 'construction-ish' and wasn't going to cost me anything so I made it the next afternoon while the kids napped. Yesterday, I came across Diane's fabulous Fourth of July garland on Apartment Therapy! I'm rarely surprised anymore when I see the same idea posted on another blog around the same time. There's some sort of science to it, I'm sure, and I love Diane's red, white, and blue combo!

The other garland is just tissue paper cut into tall rectangles that I folded over twine. I can't tell you how many times I had to pick the same two or three off the floor and rehang them whenever someone tall walked past one particularly low spot.

Here's a photo of Sebastian's first birthday party that we had at my parent's house. He was a mostly bald little thing just like Ruby is and I was.

And here's a photo that my grandmother took of Sebastian opening his backhoe. He's sitting almost the same way so it's fun to see how much longer those arms and legs are and how different he looks with dark hair. Or any hair! We're off to St. Louis to spend some time at the zoo and Science Center and wherever else our little adventure takes us. Thanks to all my online friends/readers that are representing the East side and sending recommendations for pit stops. I appreciate it!

I hope your Fourth of July celebrations end with your eyebrows intact.
xoxo,
Rachel