ARDEN CRUZ TURNS TWO

ARDENS ANIMAL PARTY

A combination of family, friends, laughter, mini food, delicious overly indulgent cake and lots of fun had by all! I love doing the parties at home purely for the reason that I have time the night before and on the day to set up and get some photos before the chaos sets in! I am proud of how this came together. I didn’t have a full picture of what I had in mind, just different elements that I wanted to do and was hoping it would all come together. I surprised myself with how they all tied in to one another so perfectly and was so proud of how beautiful everything looked!

You know me any excuse to style something!!

Another year older already…seriously feels like yesterday he was just popping on out, and now he is running (always running) circles around me, discovering new things he can do, and saying new words every single day.

He’s been a handful. I thought the terrible twos hit early as I could hardly leave the house with him as he just ran away, got into everything, refused to be carried or hold hands and it was an utter nightmare!

Writing this now 3 weeks after his 2nd birthday he has suddenly turned a corner in maturity. He understands that he needs to hold hands when we go out. He asks for my hand now, and says “cars boom” whe we are near the road. He has simply calmed down and can communicate and understand so much better making all our lives so much better and enjoyable!

He is the sweetest little boy. He says “thank you mummy” all day long, snuggles in for cuddles and is in total adoration of his big brother.

So now I’ve done my sloppy speil about him for my personal records I can get onto the party!!

This year we did an animal themed party for Arden as he is going through a major animal craze and one of his favourite places to go is to the zoo.

I went with a simple colour scheme of black, white, light wood and lots of greenery with a few pops of colour.

I got all of these gorgeous party supplies pictured above from Pop Roc Parties and used things I had around the house for the remainder of the decorations. I had some animal images printed at the library and I cut them out and put on party hats, the little party hats I whipped up with some cardboard, a hot glue gun and mini pom poms, and the greenery was scavenged from the garden and I made use of my many house plants too.

So here it is…Arden’s Animal Party.

I made a rich chocolate layer cake with layers of milk chocolate ganache and rich caramel, covered in vanilla bean swiss merengue buttercream with more milk chocolate ganache drizzle. I winged it for the toppings and used the mini toffee pops I had with some m+m’s for a pop of colour and to tie it into the animal party hats. The gorgeous cake topper I got from Love From Seventeen.

All the kids food was done in mini versions – bite size so that they didn’t over indulge and make a mess!

I made chocolate chunk cupcakes and covered them in the silky vanilla bean swiss meringue buttercream.

mini hats on the animals, water balloons filled with air to make mini balloons, greenery from the garden and the food itself were the decorations for the main table. The cake was elevated on a wooden crate to make it the centre of attention.

A simple white balloon garland, made by threading string through the ends of the balloons created a subtle feature that filled up that blank space of the wall.

In the entrance we had the party animals leading the way…

I had every intention of getting some gorgeous snaps of Arden in front of his Giant number 2 which I had seen on pinterest…however this was as good as it got!