Katherine's 2nd birthday party

We celebrated Katherine's birthday the Sunday before her actual birthday with all her neighborhood friends. It was really like one massive block party for our neighborhood. I mentioned before that we have a family with a small kid (mostly girls) in pretty much every house on our street, and us, moms, have started a play date group and we meet up at the park at the end of our street every Saturday morning if the weather is nice. This has also graduated to a recent string of 'moms' night out' events - we did a wine night at a wine bar and a crafting night of making door wreaths - and we now call ourselves the Real Housewives of Sandowne Lane haha...

Anywho, since we knew we wanted to invite so many families and so many rambunctious toddlers, we decided to host the party at our neighborhood clubhouse. It is attached to the pool (obviously not going to use it now), a playground and sand volleyball court (in case the weather turned out super warm this would have been a cool option for the kids). And the place itself is just gorgeously decorated and super spacious. Our house could have never fit so many guests comfortably.

Here are pics of the space (some of which I took through the glass door because the property manager was out as always).

The week leading up to the party I made up most of the decorations (tissue pom poms), and cooked all the yummy food, and baked cupcakes. We also did a trial run with the Giant Cupcake which was going to be Katherine's official cake and spot for the candle.

We had a crock pot of meatballs in Pioneer Woman sauce, another one with cocktail weenies, a big bowl of Pioneer Woman layered salad, another one of fruit salad, and also some smaller snacks for the kids. Everything turned out really yummy.

For cupcakes for guests, I went with half vanilla and half chocolate, and all pink frosting. I made the cupcake toppers myself - cut out, glued and put on sticks every single one of them. All that scissor work gave me a pretty good cramp. I might invest in a pair of circle cutters for next year. 

We set up the food and sitting stations in the main room of the clubhouse, which has several couches and tables with chairs. And the large, empty room next to it was the perfect play area for the kids. We borrowed a bunch of play equipment from friends and brought a bunch from our house too. It was perfect. Shockingly there were no fights or meltdowns, which considering that we had over 10 kids, 2-3 years old, was pretty incredible.

The party was a great success and I think everyone had a good time.