More Birthday Preps

We are three weeks away from Lily's birthday, and this four months of planning really paid off.  There was about three months where we were too busy walking the baby to work on anything.  Now, after a big push this week, we're almost finished! We just need to make a tree trunk, buy some straws, buy some cupcake papers, and put this whole thing together.  I even tested a cupcake recipe that was a hit with Daddy!

For the cupcake toppers, I loved these owl ones, but in trying to keep it under $100, I wasn't going to spend $40+ on just those.  I also wanted to keep with the (free) owl theme I found on How to Nest for Less, but those were round and I really liked the squares with the layered-looking border.  I was going to print white squares and layer them on scrapbooking paper, but I realized I didn't have enough of one color without going to the store.  And, I realized I wanted the back to say something different like the Pintrest/Etsy fancy ones.  So, I used Photoshop to create a layered border. 

cupcake toppers

I wanted to put these owl faces on glasses, but we were having trouble locating the right kind of glasses without buying a new set. When we were looking through ideas again, my mom and I came back to this picture of an owl-themed party, and mentioned that we have a ton of mason jars in the shed.  So, she did the mason jars up with the foam we had laying around:

owl glasses

I loved the idea of owl magnets as a party favor after I saw these.  But, again, I didn't want to spend $1 per magnet and wind up dropping $40+ on favors.  So, I purchased magnet paper off of Amazon for $9 and printed us up some 36 magnets. 

birthday magnet party favors

I liked the theme here, but we really didn't have much we could do with it.  So, I took the owl from the window and made it out of foam for our window:

owl for the window

We picked up a couple of silicone cupcake pans.  I was thinking about just buying cupcakes, but these gourmet cupcakes run about $3/cake here.  And, we need some gluten free ones anyway.  So, I picked up a couple of silicone cupcake pans for $25 total on Amazon.  Including the flour ($18ish), we've only spent $40 on cupcakes so far.  Just need to buy some cupcake papers and little butter for the frosting.