A Humpty Dumpty Birthday Bash

I absolutely love planning parties, and while I no longer do it professionally (at least for now), I have at least two opportunities a year to put my party planning savvy to the test. Of course, having two birthdays within two weeks of each other poses a challenge, but I still try to give it my all for both girls, and this year I chose a Humpty Dumpty and His Nursery Rhyme Friends theme for The Baby's 2nd Birthday. Humpty Dumpty is her favorite nursery rhyme and she laughs out loud every time she sees the illustration.

While  I don't normally post a lot of personal pics on this blog, I thought I would share these because it was pretty hard to find anything with Humpty Dumpty on the web. Hopefully this will help you if you every go in this direction with one of your own parties.

The invitation was tricky. I found just one or two designs on-line and I didn't really care for any of them. So instead I found a Humpty Dumpty drawing that I liked and uploaded it onto a cute Upload Your Own Photo template on www.vistaprint.com.

I kept the decorations simple, and thrifty. I purchased a program to make this cute Nursery Rhyme banner on Etsy. Mine says "Happy Birthday" but it can be customized with any text. I printed the design on cardstock, cut it, punched holes in the corners and strung it together using curling ribbon.

I called every party store and balloon shop in the area to find a Humpty Dumpty balloon, with no luck, so I ended up ordering this one, which was adorable, from Bargain Balloons, a company out of Canada. It was worth the cost of shipping every time The Baby laughed at it, or hugged and kissed it. I used a Balloon Time kit to fill it and the rest of balloons. That part was fun, and easier than I expected. Purchasing the kit at Michaels with a 40% off coupon made it cost effective, too.

And my pièce de resistance, was a homemade Humpty Dumpty piñata. I owe big props to the blog With or Without Nap on much of the inspiration, including making my own piñata. 

And the "how-to" to actually construct the thing, came from a blog called Frugal NJ. 

Here I used that same graphic program from Etsy, to create the decoration for the goody bags that the kids would use to collect their piñata loot. For the  two little babies who weren't allowed candy, I put a pack of gel teethers and a little Sesame Street book instead. I hung the bags on our mantel, using kitchen twine and clothespins. I had a "Three Little Kittens hanging their mittens" image in my mind, but I doubt anyone else would have picked up on it.

So eventually poor Humpty had a great fall and met with his demise. Unfortunately the pull strings didn't work on my homemade creation (who knew masking tape was so strong??), so I instantly turned into the Incredible Hulk and just ripped the thing apart, sending the candy flying onto the squealing bunch of kiddos below.

Our cake was a glorious work of art, created by Sweet Hubby. Humpty was made of chocolate, and the kids had so much fun breaking him apart and eating him before we even got the cake sliced. The cake was just as delicious as it was cute. It was sour cream poundcake with a green apple buttercream. It may just have been his best cake yet. My girls are so spoiled with his amazing cakes.

Sweet Hubby and I also made these adorable Humpty Dumpty decorated cookies to take home. Of course, he did most of the work, but I will take credit for Humpty's cute face and his fabulous packaging.

I would say the party was a huge success, and made wonderful most of all by the fantastic family and friends in attendance. Humpty Dumpty was a great character to include and my girl's happy smiles and laughter made it worth the extra effort to make it special.