Tags: birthdays Mom of Boys Party Planning
Liev pulled the short end of the stick when it comes to birthdays. Born December 2nd, his birthday is smack in the middle of Thanksgiving and Christmas. Since he was born, we’ve always lived far from family and any time spent together is either over Thanksgiving or Christmas—nobody wants to make an additional trip in the middle, which I completely understand. Given this, we’ve always tried to make his birthdays fun and exciting with just us.
Lately, he’s been going through this phase where he wants me to lie with him at night until he goes to sleep. I figured I’d capitalize on that and plan a birthday living room campout—figured he’d have a blast being able to sleep in a tent with Mama and Dada right there.
I had fun with this one. I went with a woodland camping theme and let me tell you what, December is the perfect time to have a woodland party because everyone is selling rustic/woodland Christmas décor. My first task: design the cake. I always start with the cake when planning birthday parties. For me, the cake is always the highlight of any party. Since I knew I wanted a woodland theme, I ordered a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream filling and a “naked” layer of vanilla buttercream on the outside. I thought a naked cake would look a little like a birch tree, and it sure did. It came out exactly the way I wanted it to.
Next stop was JoAnn Fabric. I picked up this adorable lumberjack-looking material and made a table runner. I also grabbed a few unlit mini Christmas trees for the table top and some lumberjack and burlap-patterned paper for a “Camp Liev” banner.
I knew I needed a cake stand that went with my theme, so I went down the wood aisle and found birch pieces. I grabbed a 3-inch wide/3-inch thick piece and an 8-inch wide/1-inchthick piece and using my trusty hot glue gun, created a homemade woodland cake stand.
Mr. Party Bear, as we lovingly named him, was a Target find—I just made him a party hat and used him as the cake topper. I got everything done pretty quickly and found I had some extra time on my hands before the party. Wanting to take full advantage of my planning time, I grabbed a piece of arrow weed we had brought home from Nature Class, broke it into uniform pieces and hot glued them together to make my “4”cake topper.
I kept the food super simple. It was just the four of us, so I let Liev pick his favorite breakfast,lunch and dinner meals and I prepared them. We had cake, of course, but I also wanted to make s’more to go with our camping theme. It was freezing outside soI went with s’mores I could bake in the oven. I simply set up a build-your-own station where the ingredients went in to waffle cone, got wrapped in foil and baked in the oven at 350° for about 10 minutes. They were amazing! We set up camp in the living room (mom and dad got to use the air mattress), watched a little bit of WALL-E, and enjoyed our s’more cones. Liev didn’t stay up as late as he swore he would, but he still had a great birthday and that was my hope. All in all, a great success!
