My Son’s Construction Themed Second Birthday Party

My son turned two on December 31st so naturally; we needed to throw him a birthday party so everyone who loves him could celebrate this special day with him. For his first birthday we threw him a great lumberjack/ woodland themed party, but I knew that the next year had to be even better. The cool thing about his second birthday is that at two, he had been able to develop more of a personality and he was able to show us his budding interests as an individual during his second year of life. So this year we could pick a theme centered on the things he loves the most: Trucks!

Pinterest was the biggest help in deciding what we wanted at this party. We found things that were related to trucks to help us come up with a theme. The most truck related posts all pointed back to a construction theme. So on my Pinterest birthday board, you will be able to see all of the ideas I thought would be best for his party.

When thinking about all of the things I wanted most for his party, I first thought of the food. Everyone at a party wants to eat, right? What type of food can you serve during the winter (AKA grilling was out of the question) that would be like a meal someone would bring to the job at a construction site? My first thought was a “bagged lunch” type of thing. So this meant sandwiches and potato chips. After surveying different places that serve either party subs or sandwich platters, the best bang for my buck was the party sandwich from Walmart (I’ve attached the link to their “catering page” but it doesn’t have the prices there so I’ll attach that here). At first, I was skeptical. How good would a sandwich from Walmart’s deli be? Well the answer is really good, especially for the price. We were able to get eight feet worth of sandwich for $60. Yes, $60. Walmart even put the fixings like lettuce, tomato, onion, mustard and mayonnaise on the side! The platter with the fixings was set up nicely, the sandwich was precut, it was cheap enough, and it tasted great. The only thing that I wish was different about Walmart’s party sandwich was that they offered you more sub options. The only options were ham, turkey, or roast beef. So we got two four foot subs. One was ham and one was turkey, both with American cheese. We also got individual bags of assorted potato chips. Almost all of the sandwiches and bags of chips were gone at the end, so I suppose you could say that was a success!

In addition to serving sandwiches and chips we also served soup. Who doesn’t want soup in the wintertime? The soup we felt would be best to serve was loaded potato soup. The recipe came from Facebook but originated here. However, we did a little tweaking to the recipe. We did almost a whole bag of medium sized white potatoes and added bacon bits to the soup as it was cooking. By doing so it gave it that smoky bacon flavor. We also did not cook it in a slow cooker; we cooked in our Insta-Pot for 30 minutes on the stew setting. After cooking and blending it, it says to cook it for another 30 minutes after adding the cream but because I used the Insta-Pot I did not follow that direction. The rest of the recipe stayed the same and it still came out delicious! This was the only thing that was completely gone at the end of the party. I highly recommend this soup.

With the meal we also served a salad and cut up vegetables on the side to make it like a salad bar because everyone likes different things in their salad, right?

For dessert we served stop light chocolate dipped rice-crispy treats, which were very easy yet time consuming to make. We bought Wiltons milk chocolate candy melts and M&M’s to make this treat. The melted chocolate was best applied by spreading it with a knife, rather than dipping it. In addition to this dessert, we also bought a beautiful and very yummy vanilla cake with chocolate buttercream frosting from a local cake and sweets shop called Pete’s Sweets. We got his birthday cake from them last year and we were so happy with it that we went back for more (literally and figuratively)! We provided the cake shop with all of the props on the cake. We were able to get the trucks that were on the cake off of Amazon. The rest of the props I was able to get from someone who has a son similar in age to my son who also had this themed party for her sons first birthday party.

 

The second thing on my mind when it came to the party was the decorations. How were we going to decorate for this party? Well after searching all over the internet I found the style of construction decorations I liked the most. This was at Target. Of course it was Target! I should have known from the beginning they would have what I wanted at a great price. The Spritz Construction Birthday Party Collection was everything I wanted. The only thing we didn’t buy from them were the silver treat cups and the spoons. We found that a nine-ounce cup would not be big enough for soup so we bought yellow soup cups here. This size cup was perfect! Not from the construction birthday party collection, but from Target we bought black, yellow, orange, and a gold number “2” balloon, as well as helium for the balloons, balloon weights, a number “2” candle, yellow duct tape, and black plastic tablecloths. The yellow duct tape and black table cloths were used together. We laid the table cloth out then put strips of duct tape down the center to make it look like a street. It was super cute!

Birthday In A Box was also a great place when it came to decorating for this party. We didn’t buy much from them, but we did buy a plain yellow flag banner and were able to make our own banner from it. There were actually enough yellow flags to the banner that we got to make two banners. One said “Zachary Is Two” and the other we put on his high hair that was just the number 2. To decorate we also bought some construction truck stickers so we used those to add a little something to the banner. In addition to that we got some truck Mylar balloons in order to make the center pieces I wanted to make. I was able to get the specific signs I wanted to hang around the house from someone who had the party like ours but if I didn’t get them from her I would have purchased them from Birthday In A Box. They also had them at Target but birthday in a box was cheapest.

 

From Party City, we bought a black number “2” balloon and some more, different looking construction truck stickers.

From Amazon I also bought a pack of construction hats and construction vests for people to wear at the party if desired (some people did and it was so cute!)

I also did some shopping on Etsy. On Etsy I bought a birthday shirt for Zachary from the shop EmmaAlyseDesigns. From the shop BlueOakCreations, I got a truck banner. The last item and my personal favorite item I got from Etsy came from the shop HedgePodge. We were able to get a beautiful handmade construction bib from them. The quality was amazing, and the shop owner was so kind. We then bought an iron on/ sew on black number 2 to sew onto the bib.

For myself and my fiancé, we bought a neon green and orange t-shirts (to fit the construction theme) from a site called Jiffy Shirts. From that point, we used some fabric paint and stencils from Amazon to make our own shirts for the party. These came out great and I highly recommend doing something like this for anyone looking to decorate a shirt.

We were also given a huge crate of things that could have been and/ or were used at the party. These items were: small orange cones for the center piece bases and to line the sidewalk outside of our house, small paint cans used for the salad bar toppings and cheese to top the soup, table cloths, plates and napkins, balloons, cake decorating props, photo booth props, signs, caution tape, pre-made party favors which were buckets and shovels with a toy truck and candy attached to the bucket, and yellow bins which we used to hold the variety of potato chips. I believe that is all I was given. We used almost everything mentioned.

And finally! We got our birthday invitations from a site called Simply to Impress. These were beautiful, cheap, and a good quality. I will for sure buy from them again.

And that’s about it. If you have any questions or comments about the party or how something was made, leave a comment! Also, almost all of the pictures were taken by my friend. You can find her on Instagram at: p.eliz.photo

I hope you enjoyed reading and that maybe it has inspired you! Thanks for taking the time to read this long post. Enjoy!