honorable mention {2}

In July, Henry turned five. To celebrate we had our family and some friends over to the farmhouse for a superhero birthday party.

{warning! This turned into a monster post. refill your coffee cup and come right back.}

{Dessert table. Cake by Sandi. Cake stand and cupcake platter by Holly.}

{Sandi designed this cake to compliment the party invitation. She made the fondant; rolled it and dyed it to match. Amazing. She is an artist! My dad baked the cakes and they turned out delicious. This cake tasted every bit as delicious as it looks.}

 

{Fondant cupcake toppers are from this shop. A new Etsy favorite. Charynn is exceptionally talented, super sweet, and a total doll to work with. My frosting was supposed to look more like this. Something clearly went wrong. It was a hot day, I think it was a combination of my bad baking and the heat melting it, it was a total flop. Please don't judge the darling toppers by my terrible frosting.}

{Marshmallow pops. I dyed the white almond bark blue to match, dipped marshmallows on lollipop sticks in the chocolate, sprinkled them with red sprinkles-from the cake supply store-and once they dried I wrapped them in cello bags and tied them with ribbon. By far my new favorite thing to dip. I ordered extra large jumbo marshmallows, but they didn't arrive in time. These worked fine though.}

{Sara made each and every one of these darling sugar cookies. The design was all her idea and the execution was flawless. After she baked and iced the cookies with yellow, she added the blue icing and then the letters to spell either "Bam" or "Pow" made out of--get this--chocolate. Yes, they tasted every bit as yummy as they look. Amazing! These were the favors for the adult guests.}

 

{Water bottle labels. Holly helped me make these using strips of coordinating scrapbook paper; the comic graphics are from a Batman book I bought at the Goodwill for 25 cents.}

{Favor bags for the children. Simple stuff: superhero Pez, mini squirt gun.}

{Crunch! and Chomp! boxes, were prepackaged lunches for the children. They included a simple sandwich, bag of chips, pickle and apple. The boxes are these from a cake decorators grocery in Bloomington. My mom assembled all of the boxes and the lunches. And thank goodness for her! She worked hard and fast to finish on time.}

{Super Z: gigantic, uninvited super sized zucchini, plucked from our garden on the party morning.}

{Henry took to plugging his ears for the first time this year.}

{And a party is not a party without the homemade chocolate chip cookie/ice-cream sandwich that have become a summer party tradition.}

{I made capes and masks for each child with their initial using no sew/heat transfer iron tape and sticky felt. Super easy peasy.}

{This was our first ever party pinata. Henry was so excited to pick this out himself. William was so thrilled with his pinata loot.}

{Holly made this super darling party game. All hand drawn. Another artist! The children played pin the mask on the super hero. Dan ended up winning!}

My most favorite part of any party is the crazy/silly/downright exhausted fun that is had sometimes during, and always after the party:

A super special thank you to Sara who took so many of these pictures. You got a gift, girl! And to my mama, who came early so Patrick and I could have a date night Friday to celebrate our {8th} anniversary and who helped with every small and large party detail and everything in between. I am blessed.

One of my favorite memories that weekend was the next day, a Sunday. Dan and Sara spent the night so the boys got to have a slumber party. It was another steamy July day and Sunday morning, the boys had a major water fight.

happy fifth birthday to my sweet, sweet Henry! Around here birthdays are a big deal. Another year of life deserves a big celebration.