Construction Birthday Party in Simple, Doable Steps

We like to celebrate. It is one of the ways we show up in our lives intentionally. Birthday celebrations are no exception. While I love to celebrate my children and make them feel special: I also work from home, have four kids (one of which is a very active 1-year-old), I take my kids to school and have THREE different pick up times, plus sports.

The thing is, I’m not that special. All you mommas are out there hustling and trying to make your babies feel special. You are all trying to show up and live your best life. Instead of cursing the Pinterest party, follow these few simple steps.

Focus

When celebrating for little kids, decorating is a must! It totally turns it from everyday to we are celebrating me. There is a trick to decorating though to save you time and money. Focus! Pick one place to focus your attention and decorate there.

I have a console table I clear off and I add some sort of backdrop. This is where the cake and treats go.

For Hudson’s construction party, I put most of my focus into the cookies. We love watching cookie decorating videos together and he was really excited about these.

The backdrop for the construction party was pegboard we had laying in our basement. We hooked a few construction hats on it, taped on some balloons and hung a birthday banner. So simple guys!!

The cake is even store bought, we just added the cake banner.

I promise you, decorating like this makes a much bigger impact, and it really gets the kids excited for their birthday.

Online Ordering

Instead of dragging four kids all over looking for birthday supplies, I turned to the internet. Amazon prime is a beautiful thing!! I even had Hudson curl up in my lap and help to pick out the decorations.

I cannot believe how much this simplified my life. We ordered the tool cookie cutters & construction vests from amazon and glasses, hard hats and other decorations from Oriental Trading.

Forget about Fancy Food

For Hudson’s birthday we ordered pizza, had some fruit for  healthy option, offered lemonade or water and beer for the grown ups. It was super simple, stress-free and kid friendly. The thing about food and a kid party is the kids barely want to stop playing to eat anyways. Hudson loves pizza and that is what he wanted. My job is to celebrate him, not serve a five-star-four-course-meal that would be total loss on him anyways.

Hit the Sweet Spot

Guess what food you do focus on at a kid’s party? The sweets! Birthday cake and treats are the highlight of a birthday party for a kid. For Hudson’s birthday, the main focus were those sugar cookies (grab the tool cookie cutters here). He loves oreos, so we added jars of those and of course, a birthday cake. I intended on making one, but sometimes enough is enough.

Keep it Simple

We invite grandparents, aunts/uncles and cousins and maybe a family friend or neighborhood friend. I don’t plan games or activities, because I don’t want to spend a party herding kids and enforcing rules. We just let the kids play and they have the best time being with their cousins. Don’t feel like it is your job to entertain, the company is the entertainment.

The end result was a little guy who felt really special and had lots of fun. He made us keep the decorations up for weeks and I had to take them down when he was sleeping one night, mostly because it was time to decorate for his sister’s birthday party!

 

The way I look at it, I am in charge for 18 birthdays and I am going to take the opportunity every year to celebrate my kids in a way that fills them up. That may change year-to-year, but we will continue to show up intentionally for such special days.

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