Chickie’s Rainbow Themed Second Birthday

And just like THAT our baby girl is TWO.. How is that even possible? It feels like just yesterday we were driving home from the hospital at exactly 20 MPH terrified of anything happening to our precious cargo. Fast forward two years and our tiny baby is a TODDLER- the finger wagging, boss-you-around, make her opinions known kind- and we couldn’t be prouder of the strong girl she’s becoming; except when it gets in the way of her doing what we say..  😅🤣

Chickie’s first birthday felt like an incredible milestone for us Rices. It was like our official graduation from babyschool- LOOK WORLD, SHE’S ONE AND SHE’S ALIVE; WE DID IT! 🎉 We threw a big party with all of our closest friends (most of them adults sans-kiddos),  drank mimosas and reminisced obout those early sleep-deprived newborn days while our non-parent friends winced at the thought of feeding even themselves every 2.5 hours and our parent friends compared war stories. It was a great party, but it was completely and utterly for the benefit of us adults- cookie moster just happened to be everywhere you looked! 😂 For Chickie’s second birthday, given her love for attention and people, we wanted to do a smaller gathering of only kiddos and their families where Chick could just run around, eat cake, play and hug/kiss everyone in sight; a real kid’s party. We knew we wanted lots of balloons 🎈 since she’s obsessed with them at the moment and lots of color- #chickieday is a happy day and what says happy better than rainbows? 🌈 🌈

The first thing I wanted to check off the list was finding a venue. I would’ve LOVED to have it at home but in our tiny Southie apartment we just don’t have the space and lets face it.. who wants to clean up after 15 rowdy kiddos? #notme 🤗  I reached out to Boston NAPS. Initially founded by two nurses to offer pre-natal and post-partum services (which they still do!)  Boston NAPS now has a studio about 5 minutes away from #casarice in South Boston where they offer a ton of classes for both kiddos and mamas. Chickie loves their dance class and our nanny Maria teaches their ballet class! Connections all around.. The cool thing about using Boston NAPS for your birthday party venue is that they have access to all of the instructors for their classes- for only $100 the instructor of your choice comes in and does an activity with the kiddos! We chose their ‘mess maker’s class and us parents were able to relax for about an hour or so while the kiddos happily painted with Ms. Kristen. It was super easy and fun! The class totally took the stress away from me having to any plan party activities. Ms. Kristen brought all the supplies needed and big colorful aprons  to cover the kiddos clothes. They had a blast making a mess and caling it art 😂 It was awesome! I really can’t recommend Boston Naps enough, having the party there was easy, affordable and really, really cute!

 

Once we had secured the venue, next on my list was the decor. I wanted something easy that would still wow Chick and make her day feel special: enter ALL the balloons! I had scoped out this tutorial weeks before #ChickieDay and it made an arch look easy enough I decided to try it. I bough a packet of rainbow balloons, fishing line, these big needles and a cheap balloon pump on Amazon and I got to work.  To make the arch you just thread different sized inflated balloons on to the fishing line until you have a string of balloons, sounds easy enough right? The practice run went amazing, it was easy and quick. I went online and got some brighter, better quality  balloons via Studio DIY’s balloon shop for the big day and the day before the party I set out to d0 it over again. That day, with more balloons to thread, it was more of a mess. The hardest part was keeping the fishing line from tangling up. With a lot of help from the #handsomehubbs I got it done. The balloon line was SO big we had to borrow my cousin’s mini van to transport them! It’s DEF a two or even three person job to make such a big arch. A smaller one is a piece of cake! See the space between the green and blue balloons? It was soooo windy outside that when we took the balloons from the car to the venue, the string broke! We had to think on our feet..

Taping the balloons to the wall was a little bit of a mess. I used lots of duck tape. Initially, my plan was to hot glue some smaller balloons on to the arch. Of course on the day of, I didn’t have time but in a perfect world with enough time to spare I think it would’ve looked better with the smaller balloons glued on.

 

For the backdrop on the dessert table, I ordered a photography backdrop from Simply Photo Drops on Etsy. I googled the heck out of it and it seemed like that was my best bet for a colorful wall that didn’t break the bank. Depending on the size, the vinyl backdrop can be anywhere from $30 to $150. We had a standard six feet table and paid $60 for a 5’ x 6’ backdrop. It was super easy to hang up using just duck tape and they have TONS of designs and take custom orders. Shipping was surprisingly fast too! For the table we used this $1.99 bright table cloth from Party City– they have it in pretty much every color.

I got all the paper goods for the party on Amazon. They are by Meri Meri and I am obsessed with them- the party hats, favor bags,  rainbow plates and napkins,  star dessert plates.. I’m seriously obsessed with them all! I’ll link them all below the post on the slider with pictures for easy shopping in case you too are obsessed with them! 🙃🙃 For food we kept it REAL simple and just ordered pizza’s from our local pizza place. We just picked them up before heading to the studio and set the up on these platters.

My friend Caitlin made ALL the baked goods for the party, which (balloons aside) were really the focus of the decor. Her cupcakes, cookies and sprinkle cake were delicious and VERY on theme. Cait is a stay at home mama of two who is turning her love for baking into a small business using only the same quality ingredients she uses to cook for her littles. She puts so much heart into her craft! It’s not an easy feat to bake when you have a VERY active 1.5 year and three year olds running around the house. Somehow Cait makes it work! 💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼 Follow her on Instagram to see more of her creations and please keep her in mind for your next Boston Area event! Cait’s Cookies N Cakes is open for business and I could not be prouder of my bestie for it!

 

The last of the party “deets” are the favor bags (linked below). I put a ton of candy in them (sorry parents of hyper kiddos at home!) and some cheap goodies from amazon- silly straws, play dough (sorry again parents! I’m the worst, huh? 😅), gel sticky hands, and on-theme stickers! Chickie kept on of them and happily played with the contents for about an hour, a huge success in my book!

 

And there you have it, friends:  our very badly photographed, very much filled with love second birthday party! Babygirl’s last birthday as an only child.. 😭😭 Chickie had a blast and all of her friends did too. It really was a day to remember!