A FIN-tastic birthday!

I am combining two parties into one post since the decor for both parties was much the same. This may be a huge mistake because there are LOTS of pics...look at them in a few installments if you must! I am warning you...LOOOONG.

We will start with "the family party"...

As I showed you last week, the left pic is of the invitations...I made invitations for both parties exactly the same except for the date and times. I could kick myself for forgetting to take a picture of the labels for the envelopes before I sent them. I like to try to make an envelope really fun to get since the mail is mostly bills or junk these days. The right picture is of course the door sign...used at both parties.

And by now I am sure you know the basic setup of my house and decorating space! Of course I have to have a banner in the middle and lots of balloons. I am not sure you can see it, but a few of the banner circles have "shark bites" taken out of them. Tate loved that part!

Then to dress up the serving trays, buckets, and paper goods...

We made a small candy bar for some early party snacking, I think I still have a sugar high from all the Swedish fish I consumed the past two weekends! (YUM!)

As I said in my "peek" post...I had to make 14 hats this year! So fun to have so many kids hanging around. We also had to continue in the tradition of taking a pic of my sisters and I in the party hats. I am not sure who had the idea of making it a little crazier this year...maybe it was that we did have so many hats sitting there...but what I do know is that it was a little later, we were a little sillier, and Avery had to get in on the double hat craziness!

I will spare you the gift opening and meal pictures since this post is incredibly long, but maybe I will post those on the Newman family blog (which hasn't been updated since October...eek.) We'll skip to that ever delicious cake, made by my high school BFF, Tracie.

She actually made identical cakes for both weekends. I used the same shark fin and cake topper that I made for both parties and added some extra long candles in between.

We sent all the kids at this party home with a squirting shark. I loved these because they would be fun for every kid at the party from babies to 6 year olds! Tate also brought them to school as his "birthday treat" because they can't bring food as treats to his school.

Then on to the "friend party" held this last Saturday, which was T and I's actual birthday. This is the first party for little people only that we've ever had and I think it lived up to both of our expectations. The trend is definitely to go somewhere for a big party these days, but Tate and I both decided it would be fun to stay at our house and play shark-y games here!

I got to decorate our dining room...we always use this room for parties, but I don't usually decorate it since people are kind of sitting all over the house and we do more of a buffet style with that many people. But with 8 kids it was perfect to set the table, personalized for each guest...

My favorite new thing that I've been dying to use for a party is these vintage paper straws. After an idea I talked about with another one of my friends named Tracy, I made each straw personalized with the kids names that were great for the little soda bottles the kids drank out of. (Here you go, Runchey! "Tracy straws" they are!)

You can also see in the back of the picture on the right I covered the pictures that are normally on my wall with cardstock. I knew the images that are normally there would bug me in pictures, so I decided that for a very minimal cost I could cover them with paper and make them part of the design!

After the kids arrived we played several games and made a craft...

(The sharks for the game are SO easy to make!)

The theme song from Jaws is great for musical chairs! The only game we didn't get to at the party because we ran out of time was to play a "Sharky, may I?"... a version of this game I used to play as a kid. We even had this shark hat to wear! We have had a chance to play it as a family since then, though, and it is great for kids of all ages. Even Beckett loves it!

Again, I will skip the pics of gift opening and eating...onto the cake!

The boys were on their way home by noon...

We had a great time and then I spent the rest of the day with my family (I even got a much needed nap in!).

Happy birthday, Tater Tot. Love you!