Liliana's 2nd Birthday Party (Part I)

Last Saturday we had Liliana's big "Liliana and friends!" birthday party!  It was SO much fun preparing, planning, and having the party.  The biggest bummer of it ALL is that Liliana wasn't feeling too well throughout the festivities.  She's already doing better and I called her daycare and they said she's doing quite well.  I think she just was EXHAUSTED from the travelling.  She stayed up until 10:30 two evenings in a row and that was just stupid of us to do to her ... the girl isn't even 2 yet.  That was a lot for her to handle.  At least she can look back on these pictures and see that Mommy did her best to make a FUN and happy party for her WONDERFUL baby girl!

I designed these prints myself (any theme can be done in the etsy shop!) and started sending my Mom lists of pink and red things to buy.  Those two colors kept the "theme" in mind which was a Dora and Elmo themed 2nd birthday party!

The night before, we started cooking.  On the agenda for the night were "estrella" shaped Dora brownies and the macaroni and cheese recipe that I posted about last week.

Fortunately I had some helpers (and I looked at my Dad with attitude as he critiqued!).  We all worked until about midnight so I am SO thankful for them!

The morning of the party we took all our decorations out and started forming a plan.  We had quite a few things to set up and knew it would take a few hours.  Fortunately, my helpers came back for more and with 6 of us, it took about 2.5 hours to transform the backyard in to a GORGEOUS

Pink and Red Delight!

The gift table was PACKED with goodies for Liliana.  These gifts are from ONE person: her godmother.  I think she's a WEE BIT in love with her girl! : )   The banner in the background was of things that Liliana loves at age 2.  It was probably one of my favorite designs for the party.  Here's an example of what a couple looked like:

To help get the red and pink theme going, my Mom bought about 20 lanterns and boy did we put them to get use ... Evan got on that ladder and created something SO special:

The table cloths and lanters are from party city.  I wanted the center pieces to be purely Elmo and Dora themed.  These were found from just about everywhere: grocery stores, party city, anywhere!

To help keep the kids entertained we had a "coloring station" (that I forgot to take pictures of), Dora tattoos, and a playhouse in the background.  We also had Pin the Nose on Elmo and forgot to use that too!  The party just went by too quickly! : )

I think that's enough pictures for today!  Tomorrow I'll finish it off with the YUMMY food and of course, some cute pictures of the birthday girl.  I can't believe she'll be 2 in one week!