Party Time - Mickey Style!!

Whew!  Party is over!  A relief, yet sad at the same time. Although party time is hectic, it is so sad to see how fast that AJ is growing up!  He just turned 2 and it doesn't seem like it has been that long!!  We had an excellent party!  We had it at our local community center, which is ok, but really needs some drywall put up. To try and hide the flaws/tears that were in the walls, we decided to decorate with some lattice.  We used some lattice from our local church and snazzed it up with just some red and black tissue paper.  We added the paper in every other row and over one each time.  It alternated the colors really well and provided an excellent way to take the eye focus off of the walls and onto the party itself. I did add a Mickey Mouse outline border/banner along one of the lattices. I had originally wanted to put them along the front of the tables, but afterward I really like it on the lattice better.

On the goody table, I added in all the goodies to send home with the kids.  First off, I had the picture frames from the earlier posts, then I had the paper sacks with goodies. 

The sacks were just black sacks from Hobby Lobby.  I cut a 2.5x3.25 red square along the bottom of the bag and then I cut out 2 white circles and put it on the red paper.  This gives the look of Mickey Mouse and his signature clothes.  For the inside of the bag, each child had a bag of chocolate covered peanut butter crackers, a bag of chocolate covered pretzels, sprinkle covered marshmallows, a bag of chalk, and a Mickey Mouse puzzle.  In front of the goody sacks, we had a basket with Mickey coloring books and some Mickey Mouse shaped colors scattered over the table. 

My co-worker found some Mickey Mouse paint chips from Home Dept and brought a bunch to me.  I took the shapes off of the card and ran it through my Xyron machine to make stickers for it.  I was going to just put it in their goody bags, but then my husband mentioned sticking them all over our bucket-it looked soo cute!

The last basket on the table has Mickey and a sign that says "We've Got Ears, Say Cheers!" written in classic Disney font and it has the Mickey Mouse ears.  To make the ears, I bought a package of 6 headbands from Dollar Tree and some black felt (.25 at Walmart).  I cut the felt into thin strips and then hotglued one end of the felt to the bottom of the headband.  I then took the felt and wrapped it around the headband.  It took almost 2 strips to cover one headband.  I also found a template for Mickeys ears online and cut it out I glued the center of the ears to the headband and then I glued up around the edges of the ears, with the exception of a small opening. I then took 2 cotton balls and spread them apart a little bit and then placed them inside the ears and then glued the ears shut. They were just perfect as Mickey ears, as you can tell from AJ's cute little pic :)

The drinks/cupcakes table was next.  It just had our cupcakes with a mickey mouse topper.  The toppers and all Mickey shapes were done with my Gypsy and Cricut.  I just put 3 circles together to create the mickey ear/head shape and then cut it out with my Cricut. I did a few black ones and smaller red ones.  We spread the cupcakes out in the shape of his name, since its just initials, it didn't take much to make 2 letters lol! The water was covered with polka dot paper and then we added the red outline to the outside just like we did with the cupcakes.  On the front of the table we created a AJ is 2 sign/banner.  It was just adhered to the table.

On our last table we used it for the food table.  I used the Dollar Tree/candlestick stands that I used on Brayden's party as platters. We had the same food that the goody bags had, but also had rice krispies shaped in mickeys outline.  I saw the cookie cutters online, but I wasn't about to spend that much money on them so I just used one of my outlines from my Cricut and traced over the treats and it worked out Great!  I made 2 batches of treats and it made 12 large Mickey ears.  We then dipped the ears in chocolate almond bark.  The one pic I got was the last one we did and so the ears aren't covered well cause we were running out of chocolate-I should have paid attention to which one I was taking pictures of  :) 

Attached at the ceiling and on 2 of the tables are the tissue paper pompoms-so super easy!  Just accordion style 8 sheets of tissue paper.  I laid mine flat for several days under 2 heavy books to get some good creases in :) I rounded the ends of the folded tissue with my scissors so that they would be curved. Then I just tied up the center with a piece of string and then pulled the pieces apart from each other to create the rounded pompom.  You can't be hesitant-its tissue paper-don't be too careful-you want to get them real separated!

One of the most talked about was the DumDum Mickey ears.  I took a Styrofoam ball from Walmart ($2) and cut it in half.   I added Dum Dums all over the semicircle.  I found a large bag of Dum Dums at Sams for $7. I bought a package of Styrofoam squares from Dollar Tree (a 3 pk) and my husband graciously trimmed around 2 of the squares to make them circles so that I could use them for ears.  I spraypainted them black and we placed DumDums around it also. The only problem was that the Dum Dum sticks would hit the sticks from the other side and so it wouldn't let me add the Dum Dums all the way around.  It turned out just fine.  I put a dowel rod in the circle and put it in the large circle.  It really looked great!  Plus my husband loved taking all of the extra Dum Dums to work :)

It was an excellent party and AJ had a Blast turning 2!!!!