Asdel Cisneros Family Blog: Everett's 2nd Birthday Party!

Everett's party happened on May 19th.

It was great fun.

We have such amazing family and friends. It always overwhelms me when we get so many of them together. They're all so awesome.

Before I get into any nitpicky stuff about design choices or food preparation, I want to show off some cute pictures of Everett being sung to, "blowing out" candles (we did that for him), and eating cake. He was either overwhelmed by the singing/candles, or he was just taking it all in and forgetting to smile. Either way, we didn't get any cute smiley pictures of him with his cupcake like we did last year. He's just so serious right now.

It was a puppet party. I explained why we chose the theme in the previous post. I felt a little guilty that we didn't have an actual puppet troupe come and preform. But we did have a puppet stage, plush puppets, a puppet making station, and some kids (and adults!) put on some short puppet shows, so I was content. Mostly the kids played with toys inside or in the yard, and the adults socialized. That's the way it goes.

Puppet theater:

Kids (Andy and Julie?) putting on a puppet show:

Adults (upper: my dad, lower: me) putting on puppet shows:

Kids (Andy and Julie) making puppets at the puppet making station:

Adults (Melissa and Henry) making puppets:

As I said in the previous post, I wanted this party to be really low key. And it was. But we went a little overboard on the food. I kept finding these great ideas for anthropomorphized treats. And my logic was, if it looks like a human or animal, especially if it's on a stick, it's a puppet!

To support my puppet food idea, I made this sign (which I was very happy with and don't regret making at all). It's just cut scrapbook paper taped to yarn. Very simple, but of course it took me a while to get all the colors and shapes right.

The penguins were a big hit! Super easy. Only time consuming because you want to keep them clean of cream cheese without sacrificing hygiene. So lots of napkins were used and hand washing happened. They were super popular too. Everybody commented on them, and many people said they wanted to make them themselves.

We also made mini pizzas on sticks with olive and bell pepper faces, snake breadsticks wrapped around skewers, mini mozzarella balls made to look like chicks (with grape tomatoes) on sticks.

We also served cat cookies (for people) and goldfish crackers.

So there was lots of food to play with.

But the things I HAD to make, that were time consuming and frustrating, and I will never make again were the cake pops! Grrrr. They're cake! On a stick! And I can put faces on them, and they'll be puppets! Sure.

I tried to do them way too late at night. The cake didn't want to stay on the stick, the candy coating wasn't smooth, and the ones that survived ended up looking like mutant muppets.

Good thing they tasted awesome! The inside was red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting.

Andy with a "Muno" cake pop.

But even though they tasted great, the ingredients of the cake and the candy coating so turned me off that I ended up making gluten free chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, so the kids wouldn't fill up on hydrogenated oil.

Everett takes a bite of another "Muno"

But now that I think of it, if the cake pops were all that frustrated me, that's not too bad.

I'll just post a few more cute pictures I wanted to share.