Teddy Bear Picnic Part 1

Me and the Birthday Girls in their birthday dresses. And look a hair bow on Kate!
Ha! I don't know who that man is walking in the background...

Whew! Party weekend is over. In case you didn't hear all the details, my sister and I decided to host a joint first birthday party for our baby girls since they are just a few weeks apart in age. My family was all in town for our annual Stampede Weekend (which I've talked about here). My sister and her two kids were staying at my house and we basically did the whole weekend together with a parade on Friday (I'll tell you about it another day), the stampede on Saturday (which is an all day and half the night affair because we go to the chuck-wagons/grandstand show) and finishing on Sunday with the birthday party. Let's just say that all those early mornings, late nights and missed naps have correlated into some very grumpy kids at my house today! But that's not what this post is about. It's about a party! So let's get to it.

I'll show you decor and food today and then take you through the party "fun stuff" on Wednesday.

We held the party at a local park as it's way more woodsy than my yard, and can fit all the people I need it to.

As I showed you the other day, we made the invitations using my silhouette to design them. For the decor I took the graphics and used it throughout for a birthday banner, signs by the stations and on the lunch bags.

These pictures were on either side of the door to the pavilion and I can't get them to go side by side. Grr.

Here is the banner that welcomed the guests. Now if I had more than 40 minutes to set everything up and didn't have to travel from the car to the site carrying all the stuff in that same time-line, the anal side of me would have brought a ladder to hang it above the door or something. Thankfully I have a practical sister who was armed with tape and hung it. Ha!

Around each "station" for the different activities we pulled phrases from the story/song of the Teddy Bears Picnic. They were:

"If you go into the woods today, you better go in disguise"
"There's lots of wonderful food to eat"
"Every Teddy Bear that's been good is sure of a treat today"
"Beneath the trees where nobody sees, They'll hide and seek as long as they please"

Of course we had bears around in all the corners of the pavilion and as the guests brought their own they could add them to it. We also made some pinwheels out of scrapbook paper and hung them around as well. And somehow (wait, I know, the made dash to get everything set up before people arrived...) didn't get pictures of them.

On each of the eating tables and around the pavilion we had photos of the girls from each month of their first year (I'll show you Kate's tomorrow).  And some of the girls together from throughout the year.

Lastly we had a piñata hung up that my sister made (it's a bee hive, but in our rush we forgot to put the bees on it. Whoops!).

For the food we went picnic style and gave each person a lunch bag which included:
-A Peanut Butter and Jam/Honey sandwich (wait, not all three together, but different combos. And Jam-only for the little ones and a few that can't have peanut butter).
-Rice Krispie Treats shaped like a bear
-A Bear claw cookie
-And a "Bear-y" flavoured juice box

Here's an up-close of the food label:

It's a bear. Humour me.

Umm, let's take a minute to talk about those cookies. De-lish. I'm addicted. I didn't mind at all that there were extra. I will live off of them this week. No lie.

We also had extra Honey Bear punch on hand, fruit kabobs and ants of a log.

For the cake I made a teddy bear face cake (made with 2 9in round pans, cupcakes for the ears and a "nose" baked in the bottom of my small pampered chef measuring cup/mixing bowl).

There is a reflection of the icing on the cake board on the left (or some from an ear falling).
I know, it threw me off too. I thought the cake had somehow become misshapen! Ha!

Now lets just talk about this for a minute. Cakes made a little bit tall, with slippery icing don't travel well. Like, when I moved it from the counter into the cake carrier, the ears started slipping off. I secured them with toothpicks and hoped for the best. My mom did really well holding it all the way to the site, but it was destined to fall apart at the ears and within 5 minutes of setting it up, they fell again. Next time I would secure it better when building it (as opposed to trying to do it after it was iced) and/or only make it one layer high. And I would take a picture before it ever left my kitchen. What was I thinking??

We also made cupcakes with ants on it al la Hello Cupcake. Those travelled great! Good thing since that's what the babies got as their smash cake.

Of course the real fun of the party is all the stuff we did, which I'll tell you about on Wednesday, so you'll have to come back. *wink*


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