For my daughter's second birthday party I decided to go with an owl theme. Owls are one of her favorite animals right next to puppies, kitties, horses, cows, birds....okay so she knows the word and the sound an owl makes. Mommy is the one that loves owls!
Since she is still very young and most of the party guests were still under two years old, I decided that a glorified playdate birthday party was the way to go. Our living room has been gated off since my baby girl began to crawl so it was the perfect toddler hang out! We moved some of the furniture out of the room and brought in a small ball pit, a large fabric playhouse, a bouncy horse and many other fun toys.
I had a difficult time finding age-appropriate loot bag items for such a young group of kiddos. Most things I came across at the store were too small and would surely find their way into little mouths. Also, I am a big fan of having the items in my party bags match the theme of the party. Unnecessary, I know, but thats the way I roll! So, this made the party bag issue a little more tricky. I found two items on Oriental Trading Company that worked great for the age-range of the partygoers. The first item made a great favor but also took care of the craft activity I wanted to include in the party.
An owl thumb print craft -- perfect for toddlers! It was super easy to put together. Each craft set came with directions and several pieces of foam craft sheet cut-outs. Two-sided sticky tape was already attached to each piece and was ready to be joined together with coinciding pieces. After the owl was pieced together, the child could add their thumbprints for feathers on the owl's body and wings. CUTE!!
I also found these stuffed owls on Oriental Trading.
Rather large in size, good quality and so adorable!
That's about where my luck ran out with store-bought, age-appropriate owl items. On to summoning my inner craft goddess! I had seen some pictures floating around on the internet of cute party favors that used M&Ms. I know some toddlers may not eat these candies but I figured if the child doesn't eat them, maybe the parent would ;-)
Here is my version of these candy party favors!
I also made a template for personalized labels for containers of bubbles.
Crayons were on my list for toddler party favors but I wanted to do something in the owl theme (duh). So I made swirly crayons in owl molds. This was time consuming and took WAY MORE crayons to make these than I had planned on using or buying. However, they turned out cute and given their large size they were easy for toddlers to hold and use.
I bagged them and made owl stickers to seal the bags.
Finally, I made owl sugar cookies. I used tulip-shaped cookie cutters and used icing and fondant to turn flowers into owls. This was my first time making cookies like this so they were much more work and took a little more time to finish than I had planned. But they turned out cute and made a great addition to the party theme :-)
I used the small owl cookies to dress up the cream cheese icing on the
yummy filled cupcakes. (Diet FAIL!)
The Owl centerpiece in the picture was purchased from
My big girl's party was a total HOOT! :-)
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