Ladybug Kid's Birthday Party Theme

We recently celebrated my daughter's 4th birthday and I've been looking back through all of her birthday party pictures. She's only had four, but I love them all! Her 2nd birthday in particular was a lot of fun. She actually picked her own theme. Ladybugs!

We start all her birthdays by filling her room with balloons while she's asleep. Gotta start her special day off right!

We had her birthday party at a park in Gentry. We grilled hotdogs and hamburgers and we had raw cut veggies and fruit, lemonade, red and black candy, olive and tomato ladybugs on crackers plus ladybug cupcakes.

One of the great things about the ladybug theme is you can find so many different things!  

We got puffy ladybug stickers and put them down the center of the tablecloths instead of using a runner. Lala loved them! She kept trying to pull them off the tablecloths, which wasn't so great for the plastic tablecloths, but at least she enjoyed them!

The centerpieces we made ourselves. The flowers, flowerpots & moss came from Dollar Tree. The stand in the middle is from Dollar Tree as well. It's a ladybug shaped bubble wand! We painted them black and red and alternated them along the table. The sheet underneath is scrapbook paper with rows of little ladybugs.

We decorated the posts with ladybug die cuts that Lala glued together herself. She was so excited to make things for her birthday! The big balloons came from The Balloon Closet in Siloam Springs. Wonderful addition to the party. Besides being giant and pretty, they stayed aired up for about 2 weeks! We also used them for her birthday pictures. You can see one at the bottom of this post.

These are just straight cylinder vases we already had on hand. We glued the ribbon on with hot glue and filled them with all the red and black candy we could find.

These were an idea from Taste of Home. They are a great place to check out for themed food ideas. So super cute!

We did the cupcakes ourselves but we did have a bit of a complication when it came to these. Lala is allergic to red dye 40! So am I and so is my nephew. Usually, we just try to avoid anything with artificial red (or purple or orange or some blues - it's harder than you would think!), but ladybugs just happen to be red and black. All the red and black icing we could find contained red dye 40 (yes, the black too). BUT the liquid icing dye does not. Go figure! So we took plain white vanilla icing and dyed it ourselves, adding powdered sugar to bring it back to the right consistency. The cupcakes were super cute, but they didn't hold up too well to the August heat.

The adults took these and left the unmelted cute ones for the kids.

They sure were tasty. Oh, and bonus DIY - I added a ladybug button to a plain white bow for her hair.

Since I am the photographer, party planner, decorator, server, assistant gift opener, etc...I didn't quite manage to get pictures of everything. Not pictured are the red and black paper plates, the extra-ladybug-decked serving tables, the bunting around her highchair tray and Lala's adorable ladybug dress. Oh, and the plastic ware! We put 3 stick-on rhinestones on the end of each fork. They fell off eventually and they were disposable forks anyway. But we had fun doing them and every girl's party needs some sparkle!

We had a lot of fun celebrating my happy girl's birthday. I thought she was so grown up, turning two. Now two seems so long ago and just like yesterday, all at the same time.