We went back and forth about how/where/when we'd have Nolan's birthday party this year. With a 2 month old in tow, we just wanted whatever would be the easiest route. I looked into renting a place (trampoline park, indoor play spaces, museums, etc), but the whole process was expensive and complicated due to bringing decorations/food/etc, so we decided to keep it small and have it in our basement this year. Our basement is unfinished, but has super high ceilings, windows, and sliding doors to our back yard so a good "blank slate" to host a party. Kids can be kids and nothing can really be damaged! Although this was our "easy" approach, lots of work went into clearing out our basement, which was becoming full of cardboard boxes/stuff to be stored/organized. This was just the push we needed though, to get it done, and now we can enjoy the space all through the warm seasons (it is too cold to really play down there in the winter).
Here are some pictures of the basement all decorated for Nolan's party and with toys around for kids to play with! The theme for Nolan's party this year was Robots (chosen by Nolan)! We didn't do formal invitations this year as I was so busy sending out birth announcements for Emilia, so instead we did evites featuring Nolan's favorite robot, Plex, from Yo Gabba Gabba. We had about 10 adults/10 children attend, which felt just right to keep things pretty laid back.
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| Our basement decorated for Nolan's party |
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| Lots of tents for kids to play in, skyline of Philadelphia cut out of cardboard boxes, coloring station with robot pages |
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| Easel, TV, Couch, train sets/toys |
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| We kept the refreshments super simple - ordered pizza, bought cookies, chips, juice boxes, water, and soda (no cooking!) |
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| Nolan checking out his new rocket tent with my robot creation in the background made with metallic streamers and a birthday hat ;) |
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| Outside had chalk for the patio, cornhole, a kid-sized basketball hoop, swings, and a bubble machine! |
We lucked out and the weather was absolutely GORGEOUS this day (it helped to move the party a week later in April due to Easter weekend - what a difference!) It was great to have easy access to outside as many people wanted to enjoy the beautiful weather!
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| Lots of outside playing! |
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| Nolan drawing on the patio with Shelby and Joelle |
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| The bubble machine was a huge hit! Nolan, Charlie, and Liam catching bubbles! |
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| Mattie, Cylar, and Eileen with the bubbles |
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| Cousins! <3 |
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| The crowd inside |
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| Emilia was well behaved and I got lots of help with people holding her as I helped host the party |
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| My coworker Colleen and her daughter Eileen |
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| My grad school friend Heather and Gavin |
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| Cylar - one of Nolan's BFFs <3 |
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| Uncle Luis, Aunt Jessica, Cousins Mia and Mattie |
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| Nolan's robot cake from Wegmans! It was the ultimate chocolate double layer cake with vanilla bean icing - delicious! |
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| Birthday boy ready for the cake! |
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| Happy Birthday to NOLAN! |
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| He's got this down by now (although the cake got a nice spray of saliva on one side - we cut from the other side haha!) |
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| He approves of the cake! |
We learned from the chaos last year, and decided to wait until after everyone left to open presents. This was much better! Nolan could open at his own pace, and no kids jumping in to grab presents/open things on their own. This seems to be the way everyone does it now at all the birthday parties we've been to this year!
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| Opening presents after everyone left |
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| Lots of outdoor-themed presents, which is great with the warmer weather! Bubbles, soccer goal, slide n' slide, etc. |
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| Checking out the most elaborate and cool pop up book I've ever seen! It was dinosaur themed! |
All in all it was a great success! We loved having the party in the basement/outside. We both were amazed after everyone left that there was virtually no clean up left to do! Everything was paper plates/recycled, and we could go back up to our untouched house and move on with our lives. Plus, now we have a cool cleaned up/decorated play space downstairs to use for the next 3 seasons! I call that a win, and the best we could ask for in our exhausted/sleep deprived states! Happy Birthday to our little guy - boy are you loved and spoiled! Hope he enjoyed the MANY celebrations this year. I think this is the last year we'll host at home for him - since this party we've received 2 invitations from his school friends for trampoline park parties, so I have a feeling we're in new territory moving forward! :)
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