Clara's Minnie Mouse Birthday Party

Last week our little Clarabelle turned two years old!  I can't really believe she's two though; she just still seems like my baby!  And now that we have Bennett, I just feel like I have a big baby and a little baby!  But, as challenging as some days can be with this little spitfire of a girl, I sure do love her!  She can be so so sweet, she loves to help, and she is very affectionate--always wanting to cuddle or give hugs or be held and I really love that about her.

Right now, she's also very into Minnie Mouse and all things pink, so it only seemed fitting that we would have a Minnie birthday party for her.  But since I'm somewhat still in survival/adjustment mode with the addition of Bennett to our family and since Clara is only 2, and she hasn't really hit the stage of having friends that she actually plays/interacts with (other than knowing and recognizing them), I knew that I wanted to keep her party pretty simple and low-key.  So, in order to save ourselves from the stress of  hosting the party at our house, we decided to have it at one of our favorite places, Kiddie Park (you can read more about what we love about Kiddie Park in my Kickin'it in SA post here).

Having her party at Kiddie Park meant we really didn't have to do much at all by way of decorations, which is just the way this mama wanted it :)  And, we also decided to go really simple with the food since the kids really only care about riding the rides anyway!  We made a double layered strawberry cake (because it's pink!) with regular vanilla buttercream frosting that we made pink with food coloring and just placed the circles together to look like Minnie's head.  This is also where we simplified things--instead of having to rely on our artistic abilities to draw Minnie's face (and make black frosting, which I hate doing)--we just made a pink Minnie-shaped head.  And I personally think it's just as cute!  Then I googled "Minnie Mouse bow" and found an image I liked, printed it on card stock and just set it on the cake.  And voila!  A super easy Minnie Mouse cake!  We also made some extra marshmallowy, extra gooey rice krispie treats with pink sprinkles on top, but I forgot to get a picture.

For the plates, I just bought small and large black paper plates and stapled two small ones to each big one so they looked like ears.  Then I printed off more Minnie bows and taped them to the plates.  Add some mini (pun intended :)) water bottles with Minnie Mouse straws that we scored at the dollar store, and that was it for both the food and decorations!  The kids loved it and it wasn't much work at all for us.  Win-win.

While gathering our supplies at the dollar store, we found Mickey and Minnie Pez dispensers.  And with that, we had party favors!  We were originally going to make Minnie/Mickey ears for all the kids (most of Clara's guests were actually Will's friends, thus we needed Mickey for all the boys) out of card stock, but while wandering through the party aisles at Target, we came across these cute Minnie headbands!  Score.  Saved us some major time, but at $3 a pop, we decided not to get them for all 12 kids that were at the party and instead just got them for the girls and Will of course.  Bennett borrowed Will's for the picture.  Isn't he the cutest little sleeping Mickey???

I think my spunky little girl had a fun day!  And we had tons of fun celebrating with her.  Even Benny woke up and gave us a rare smile for our family picture (of course Clara isn't looking . . . but at least she doesn't look grumpy!)!  Happy birthday Clara-bee!