Eliana's FIFTH Birthday was last weekend and we celebrated Angry Birds Style!
If you follow me on Instagram you saw that David and I stayed up doing midnight crafts the night before Eliana's birthday. We usually leave some sort of decoration for her to wake up to on her birthday. Last year we had rainbow streamers hanging from her door. This year her birthday party was going to be Angry Birds themed so we decided to do an Angry Birds theme! This is how we decorated the wall right in front of her bedroom door-- so when she woke up and opened the door she would see this! David drew these by hand and I colored them. I emphasize that because I am always so impressed by his artistic abilities! But enough about our art project and on to the party! :)
As you've seen from her other birthday parties (see her Rainbow party here or her Ladybug Party here) I go with simple. I know there are plenty of party ideas out there but I like simple and easy to do :) And I think we came up with some pretty fun and simple ideas that anyone can recreate! Her party was between lunch and dinner so we had appetizers for everyone and of course cupcakes :)
For the party we wanted to have healthy appetizers, with a mix of fruit and vegetables for everyone to munch on. For the fruit we had three bowls of fruit salad. The fruit salad was a mix of watermelon, cantaloupe, pineapple, strawberries, apples, grapes, blueberries and blackberries. I made four fruit Angry Birds; Red, Black, Yellow and Blue.
For the red Angry Bird we filled up a bowl with the fruit salad. I kept the pineapple and the watermelon separate and layered them on top by hand to resemble the Red Angry Bird. I started by making the circle with the pineapple and then filled the circle with sliced watermelon. The face is made from blackberries (eyebrows), apples and blueberries (eyes) and cantaloupe (beak). To keep the apples from browning I dipped them in lemon juice.
For the Black Angry Bird I topped the fruit salad with blackberries for his body. The eyebrows are watermelon, his beak is cantaloupe. His eyes are apples with mini chocolate chips on top.
For the yellow Angry Bird I used watermelon and pineapple on top of the fruit salad. His eyebrows are watermelon, his beak is cantaloupe and his eyes are apple slices with blueberries.
For the blue Angry Bird I had three mini bowls of blueberries for people to add to their fruit salads if they wished (In the game this bird splits into three birds while flying). I used apple slices topped with mini chocolate chips for the eyes and cantaloupe for the beaks. These were probably the hardest to make, mostly due to my lack of patience. The blueberries were very uneven and I was running out of time before everyone arrived for the party so their faces weren't as nicely done as the other birds. Sorry blue birds!
For the vegetable appetizers we went with a vegetable platter and some side cucumbers.
We made our own vegetable platter with baby carrots, celery, bell peppers and broccoli. We put another Angry Bird in the dip! The white Angry Bird is the veggie ranch dip. Red bell pepper, yellow bell pepper, baby carrots and blueberries were used to make his face :)
And what Angry Birds Party would be complete without some Angry Pigs?! For the pigs we had cucumber "pig noses". The noses were made with a large straw and actually make a really simple yet cute lunch accent for an Angry Birds Lunch! For an example you can see my Angry Birds Bento Lunch :)
I don't think I even got pictures of the complete set up! We had some 7 layer dip and some tortilla chips and more decor on the table, but for the most part this is how we set it up:
We bought only one set of the Angry Birds party decorations mostly for decor, and set them on top of plain white plates/bowls and napkins :) All of the Angry Birds decor I found at Target, iParty and online
. We also had a bunch of Angry Bird Tattoos cut up for the kids to decorate themselves if they wanted :) The kids also played the Angry Birds game
too! :)I snapped this picture after the party began..You can see the red angry and white Angry Birds were attacked first!!
For dessert the birthday girl asked for cupcakes :) Specifically vanilla cupcakes with chocolate chip frosting. So I made her vanilla bean cupcakes with chocolate chip cookie swiss meringue buttercream (I took some chocolate chip cookies and pulverized them in my magic bullet and then added them into the buttercream) :) They were so yummy!!
I went with these black polka dot cupcake liners
mainly because I already had them and didn't want to go out and buy new ones ;) I used a Wilton 1M Star decorating tip
with the buttercream. Because I was all about simple for this party I topped each cupcake with an Angry Birds Cupcake Ring. I have no sculpting skills at all and there was no way I was going to try to attempt to make Angry Birds myself or take the time and/money to have someone else do it! Plus everyone got a ring with their dessert! :) I have to give a shout out to All Things For Sale-- Thank you for providing the cupcake rings! Everyone loved them, but me especially. And you'll see why I loved them even more below.
Now let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, on the day of an Angry Birds Party for a very special 5 year old, Her mommy, papi and family members were busy decorating the house... The table was all decorated, everything was set and I was loading all the cupcakes, all freshly frosted with their yummy buttercream, onto my cupcake stand. And it broke. One of the tiers of the cupcake stand broke and most of the 24 cupcakes fell over, frosting face down, onto the table. I simply could not even hold it in.. I burst out into tears. It is so hard to see something you work on completely destroyed in seconds. This was minutes before the party and I had barely any time to swipe off the frosting and redecorate them (one of the perks of swiss meringue buttercream and a piping tip).
So my hubby, brother and mom figured out how to put the cupcake stand together again, minus the broken tier, and put the rest of the cupcakes on the table surrounding it while I recomposed myself and got a picture of this ONE cupcake. Because you can't see the damage from the pictures above or from far away I got no pictures of all 24 cupcakes all close up together because the frosting was all busted on most of them. It was such a sad moment for me. However, good news is they tasted amazing! And no one at the party cared about how they looked (expect for me of course.. ) And these cupcake rings saved me. Seriously. With the ring on top of the frosting most people's attention went to the ring, not to my horrible (yes horrible. yes I'm being slightly dramatic) smooshed frosting. Without those cupcake rings I would have HAD to repipe the frosting, even with no time and the party starting in minutes. So that is why I love these cupcake rings. The end :)
Here is a picture of Eliana eating her cupcake-- she clearly didn't care as much about the frosting mishap as I did! She took her cupcake away from everyone, found a seat and proceeded to lick the frosting off first before devouring the rest of the cupcake!
As long as she loved them it makes it all worth it! Even the tears! ;)
We all had such a good time! :) Eliana has loved Angry Birds for quite some time now and I'm glad we could all join in on the fun for one day! :) I can't wait to see what this next year holds for us! And I still can't believe my baby is FIVE! :)
Some of the decor we used for our party:
Linking up this post here :)
I topped the cupcakes with vanilla frosting, and some red, white and blue star sprinkles
! This was another place where Eliana enjoyed helping :) These cupcakes were super easy to make and they look gorgeous! :)
