so the birthday

and the party.
I've decided I love love love kids' birthday parties. I would love nothing more than to sit and think of parties and ideas all day. Party planner? My perfect job. Of course, it's not like I am so creative as to come up with fabulous ideas all on my own... I mostly steal things from random corners of the internet. I love to gather a million ideas and then take a little here and a little there and in the end come up with my own version of things.

Anyway. I had fun with the golf ball party. Sawyer loved it. I would attempt to say he was golf-balled out, but he wasn't. We have what seems like a million little golf balls currently rolling around this house, and he still can't get enough!

I'm going to rundown the details of the party stuff, both for my own memory (as who knows when I'll get around to scrapbooking this birthday at the rate I'm going) and for anyone who might be looking for ideas for parties. Like I said, I scour the web for party ideas and I know how scarce they are, so I'm doing my part in sharing. Just in case anyone else ever has a two year old obsessed with golf.

I finally figured out an idea for cupcakes about 24 hours before the party. I had searched everywhere for golf cake ideas and most of what I came up with was like a full scene of a green with sand and water and the golf bag and clubs and the whole nine yards. I came across these (too much work) and these (still too much work) and finally these. I liked the big golf balls because that's exactly what Sawyer would relate to (he isn't too interested in actual golf courses yet, just hitting the ball). So I hunted down chocolate molds in the shape of a golf ball at a great little cake and candy supply shop not to far from me, and decided on those. I made 18 golf balls, baked 2 dozen cupcakes, frosted them with green frosting, plopped the white chocolate half golf ball in the middle and sprinkled green colored coarse sugar to look like it was lying in the grass.
For Sawyer's I added a tall skinny candle and attached a little #2 flag to it.














We dipped pretzel sticks in both white and milk chocolate and sprinkled them with the green sugar too. Also used a mold for yellow happy faces. Other snacks were just a cheese, sausage and cracker platter and then our favorite ham and spinach pinwheels. Oh, and I got this fake green grass table cloth. How cute is that?! Decorations were mostly green and white and red with flags and balls everywhere.

We moved out our dining room table and had Sawyer's new present set up in there for the kids to play with.
We also played my golf version of pin the tail on the donkey. We made a green (with "grass" scrapbook paper!) on poster board with a hole on it and the kids tried to "pin" their ball closest to the hole.















Then we had a spoon race with little plastic golf balls and that was pretty funny.
I think it's safe to say Sawyer's highlight was driving around in our neighbors' Power Wheels Golf Cart. We borrowed it for the party but none of the other kids (is it sad that all the guests were little girls?) were interested, but the birthday boy sure was, and Sawyer drove it around the driveway in circles for probably 30 minutes straight. The rest of the party was running around playing outside, doing more races with the spoons or hitting the Par 3 again, but Sawyer was happily driving around and around in the driveway. Super cute. Thanks again Sammy for making his day!
The plan was, after the festivities at our house, to head over to introduce Sawyer to some real mini-golf on a putt-putt course. But the kids were having so much fun, and the party ran a little overtime, so we decided we would save that outing for another time. We ordered pizza in and hung out with the gang and got the kids to bed on the early side. It was a full day!

Thanks everyone who celebrated with us, and to Mike and Kasey for making the drive out to see Sawyer on his big day (and for bringing your camera!!), and to my mom and dad for helping out so much with the preparations and the kids and just surviving the busyness in general.

I'm so glad Sawyer had such a fun day. I'm glad he could spend the day celebrating the things he loves while we celebrated one of the things we love the very most... our little big boy!