Breathe, breathe, and breathe some more! Yipeee! Adie’s 2nd birthday has been celebrated and the last hurrah was yesterday (which was his real birth date), we spent with family. Last Saturday we also threw him a simple party and invited our friends. So you can tell I’ve been buried deep in the heap of preparations.

I had a train theme in mind for my little tyke who adores trains (and everything else that runs on wheels) and it had my hands busy for a week, creating crafts.

Birthday invitation was of course a train with Adie’s pictures as smokes, and the wagon carrying jungle animals and a balloon with his new age! (:  Big thanks to my sister, Carey for turning my concept into one awesome invitation!

Used were scrapbooking elements from A Scraps of Our Lives/shellshok© DESIGNS.

After the invitations have been sent out, the next on my list was to make give-away bags for the kids.  I filled it with a wooden train letter representing the kiddie guests’ initials, a train picture for coloring, wax crayons and some coated rice bears.

Made the bag from scratch.

Next craft to follow was the flower pompoms for decors.  I wanted it in dark blue but that color wasn’t available.  I went ahead with pastel blue.

Couldn’t get enough of these beauties, so I made small ones for the vase.

Then came the piñata! We actually already bought one for the party, but it was Caity who chose it and it was a donkey in pink, purple, orange and other girly colors. It just doesn’t fit into the train theme I wanted. I got inspired to make a train piñata when I saw from one blog how easy that it was possible to make it. I recycled the beer box sitting out in the cold balcony.

The train banner was bought from Pro Party.  It was amusing when people started asking me if I made it too.

We skipped the party hats coz I know Adie won’t wear it anyway and let him sport this cool birthday boy badge. He looked dapper in his get-up; coin cufflinks would add an interesting appeal. Whatchathink?

I wanted to experiment with marshmallow fondant for Adie’s train cake but never got around to make it. ): He had to settle for mom’s amateur cake.

For last night’s party with the grandparents, I hurriedly whipped a name banner and set-up a throne for his Royal Highness. (:

I  had a lot of party ideas that weren’t implemented. Time constraints and availability of materials were the culprit. Maybe next time, it will be perfect.
Over and out… more birthday posts to follow.  I’m also thinking of making individual posts on how-to for the props.