I am still a little misty eyed over the fact that my sweet and silly first born is now 3 years old! My oh my how the time has flown.
In planning Miss H’s 3rd birthday party I knew one thing for sure – the general theme was going to be “purple” because Miss H loves purple everything right now. She also has an elephant “lovey” that is her favorite, so I decided to combine the two and make the theme all about purple and elephants.
We decided to hold the party at our house and keep things simple. We catered in some wraps and pasta salad from Whole Foods and made fruit salad. I baked her a purple birthday cake and ordered a fantastic fondant elephant cake topper from the Cupcake Stylist on Etsy to tie in the theme, which also happened to match the elephant invitations I ordered from Minted. With the addition of some purple balloons, flowers, and a purple dress for Miss H, we were in business!
Going into this year’s party I wasn’t sure how well we’d be able to pull everything off. Juggling work plus 6-month-old twins and a lively (soon to be!) 3-year-old is a lot, leaving little time for party planning. But it was also the first year Miss H was really excited about her birthday. For weeks we had been talking about what her birthday cake would be like, and how she would blow out the candles. She had excitedly talked about who was going to come to her party and how she was going to wear a birthday hat. We wanted to make the day special for her!
I was so happy with how everything turned out and was especially excited I was able to make her cake again this year (here’s her cake from last year) – something I hope to do every year for my kids’ birthdays! It was a fantastic party from start to finish and we couldn’t imagine life without our smart and silly 3-year-old who has turned into a fantastic big sister!
blogger / nectarine / 2043 posts
That cake looks amazing!
Just wondering, how did you approach gifts this year? I was just reading your 2nd bday party post for ideas on how to ask for no gifts/specific gifts like books.
blogger / apricot / 366 posts
@Mrs. Carrot: Thank you! And this year we just decided not to saying anything about gifts one way or another. Instead we opted to slowly open them over the course of the next week or two after the party so that it was less overwhelming and so she could actually enjoy/play with the gifts as they were opened
pear / 1622 posts
What a beautiful photo of the 3 of you!
wonderful pea / 17279 posts
Very modern and pretty. What were the activities and games?
blogger / apricot / 366 posts
@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: Thanks! We kept it simple: letting the kids run around like crazy in the basement playing
(supervised, of course!)
grapefruit / 4584 posts
Looks like a fantastic birthday! I’m already excited for my soon to be 3 year old’s birthday at the end of June!
Can you share more about the cute birthday banner? Is it just printed on cardstock, or are the letters fabric/paper cutouts mounted on something else?
pea / 7 posts
My twins are turning 3 next month and this is exactly the kind of cake (with elephant too!) that I wanted to make for them. Can I get a few more details from you?
1) what size cake topper is the elephant?
2) I see you went with 4 layers instead of 6 layers like the previous year. Did you still use 8″ pans? Did you have to make each layer thicker since you had fewer layers?
3) how many people did this cake serve?
Thanks