Let Freedom Ring... and birthday candles sing.

We are finally home from our family vacation!  It was a great trip and I'm looking forward to posting lots of pics & tips.  The day after we pulled back into our driveway with a minivan FILLED with dirty clothes, dirty kids, and lots of junk... I had a birthday/4th of July party to throw.

So what do you do when you need to plan a party?  Exactly as you guessed...  I ran straight to Pinterest and started to look for ideas.  Ideas that would look cute without the pictures winding up on some "Nailed It" website (you know exactly what that means).  With my other kids I really took months to plan their parties, so with only a few hours to make this work I think it turned out pretty good.

I'm going to break my rule with posting pictures of my family, because Thing 3 is just so darn cute I have to give him a little blog time.  So without further adieu, here is my son's 1st Birthday/4th of July party (courtesty of Pinterest & no sleep):

For the birthday cake I ended up making a stand (I borrowed this idea from my friend Cecily a few years back) and filled it with cupcakes.  The stand is just made out of four different sized stroyfoam circles I bought at Michaels.  I covered them using scrapbook paper (I've also used wrapping paper) and ribbon on the outside.  I then used cans for the center (pumpkin filler for the bottom three and the top has a tuna can).  The very top was a balloon weight I found at the 99 Cent Store and I added the "1" with a hot glue gun.  The cut outs were handmade (ran out of time) and just hot glue gunned to toothpicks and shoved into the cupcakes. 

In the background you can also see the handmade sign.  I just used the same scrapbook paper that was part of the cupcake stand and used the Circuit for the letters. 

Saving money tip:  Reuse the stroyfoam circles for the other kids birthdays & save your birthday signs for the next year.  I also use boxed cupcake mix and make homemade frosting (my neigbor actually helped me make it this year) to give it a better flavor.

4th of July 1st Birthday Cake/Cupcake Tower

Now, it's time for the snacks and all of my Pinterest ideas:

The idea came from http://eighteen25.blogspot.com and I just reused the same scrapbook paper as the cupcake tower & sign

My adorable neighbor helped me make these.  I found the idea from http://lisastorms.typepad.com/lisa-storms/2011/06/4th-of-july.html

Can't foget the fruit salad.  This idea was found on witandwhistle.com

This idea was actually my neighbors.  It's YUMMY muddy buddies (recipe found on Rice Chex cereal box) with a little red chocolate added into it.  The star bowl was found at the 99 Cent Store.

Well, I'm glad to be back in The OC and will be posting a ton this summer with fun tips & ideas on how to save money while enjoying our great area.  But until then, here is one more picture of my Lil' Man:

Enjoying his bounce house ($60 rental found on Craigslist) and his newly grown mustache.

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