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Blake's Football Party

Finally! I'm posting about Blake's birthday! I didn't expect it to be this hard to juggle working part time, blogging, taking two classes and home life - but it is! Sorry for my lag in posts.

We celebrated Blake's 10th birthday on 9/25. The boys had a blast! He chose a football theme again this year, but instead of one team like last year, he wanted all teams. They do sell team specific party supplies, but that would have been way too expensive, so we chose brown & green for the colors.

Thankfully his birthday matches up with the start of football season, because we found several types of football themed food. Like these football Ritz crackers. I picked up the football plate on clearance for $.50 at Joann's awhile back.

I found these brown & white candy sticks at Party City. But we could have skipped these, none of the kids ate any.

A couple of bags of football Oreos turned in to chocolate covered football Oreos. My piping is far from perfect, but everyone loved these!

I also made little chocolate footballs. These went pretty fast too.

I found a big tub of football pretzels at Walmart.

And of course we had chips to snack on. I found these bowls at the Dollar Tree.

Mike and Blake made these goal posts on the table. They are made from PVC and Blake got to do the spray painting. Thankfully we had that bright yellow left over from Layla's birthday.

We thought about doing a football field for the cake, but in the end I decided on cupcakes instead. I figured it would be easier and a better way to get more teams represented. The images I used on the cupcake toppers came from Designer Graphics and the brown cupcake liners came from Caroline92101.

I found the fringed streamer on clearance for $.25 at Party City. This table was for the pizza when it arrived.

I found the two small footballs at the thrift store for $.25 each. I never thought I'd actually buy can koozies! The big football in the middle is a bank, I just took the end off. The green & white straws came from Big Al's Collectibles & More. I thought about paper straws, but these were way cheaper & the boys don't care anyway!

We made this chip stadium out of cardboard & aluminum foil. It was inspired by something I saw on Pinterest. Yea, theirs is better, but also huge and I'm happy with ours.

This didn't get used, but I'm showing it anyway. Most of the boys play football together, so we set up what equipment we had in an obstacle course, much like they use sometimes at practice or camp. We had the cones (not shown) and a ladder...

Hurdles...

And even a tackling dummy.

But the reason those ended up not being used was Mike painted a football field! The boys were literally out there all day. We had to drag them back in for cake & presents.

But it started storming so that helped get them in! We used that time to open presents. It was quite chaotic. Thankfully the screen porch kept them out of my house.

It let up some and they were back to football.

But then we had to drag them back for cake.

While it was raining, Blakes' Playstation was brought out to help keep them busy. As you can see he could hardly take his eyes off his new Madden game. The black & white candles were leftover from his Totally Gross party, and they reminded me of the referee's shirts.

Here's a closeup of the cupcakes. I'm really happy with how they turned out, even though frosting all that grass was a pain in the hand!

And since I love brightly colored cake so much, I decided on a neat surprise inside the cupcakes. The inside of the cupcakes match the team colors on the topper! Like the Dolphins one above - it's teal & orange inside!

And this Steeler's cupcake is black & yellow.

Instead of pre-scooping the ice cream, I let it melt a little & them molded it into a football shaped silicone pan. We had chocolate & vanilla.

And we can't forget the party favors.

The rest of the afternoon was spent playing football in the rain. And sliding into a giant mud puddle!

I love this group shot of the boys. It took a few tries though!

Linked to:
Tailgate Throwdown 2011, Look What I Made at Creations by Kara, Weekend Bloggy Reading at Serenity Now, Friday Favs at Naptime Crafters, Delicately Constructed Friday at delicateCONSTRUCTION, Show & Share Day at Just a Girl, Market Yourself Monday at Sumo's Sweet Stuff, Talent Tuesday at Vintage Wanna Bee, Too Cute Tuesday at Funky Polkadot Giraffe, Whatever Goes Wednesday at Someday Crafts, Hookin Up with HoH at House of Hepworths, 4th Annual Party Party at My Insanity, CSI Project Birthday Party Challenge

Football Party Favors

Blake's birthday was a big success! I will have that post up soon, but for now I'm going to share what I did for his favors. I wasn't sure how many kids were coming, but a lot were invited so I didn't want to do anything that would end up too expensive. So we went to Party City and checked out the 15 for $1 candy bins.

We picked out several types of green candy and one brown. There wasn't much that sounded good for brown candies!

I picked up some clear baggies from the jewelry making section at Walmart.

I still wasn't sure what I was going to do at this point, and then I happened to stop in Target when the school supplies were 75% off. I picked up these green notebooks for $.05 each! I wrapped each one with some brown yard, added the candies and a tag that said "thank you" and that was it!

Felt Color Book

I'm so excited to have finally finished this book! I got the idea to make it for Morgan, because she couldn't stop looking at a color book I had made for Blake years ago. Problem was, it was paper, and she wasn't being very easy on it.

I thought I had pictures of steps prior to this, but it's pretty basic. I just decided on a size and cut rectangles out of some felt I had. Then I dug through my fabric stash & picked out some of each color.

I cut different sizes and shapes, decided on placement (leaving room for color names) and stitched them on.

Then I dug out the embroidery thread and got busy with the lettering.

I did the lettering freehand so it isn't perfect, but that's ok.

(Morgan got a hold of the scissors.)

When that was finishes I laid them out in order, back to back, and stitched them together.

I poked a hole in the corner of each with a needle & a knitting needle, and ran a binder ring through to connect them.

And there you have it!

Linked to:
Show & Tell at Blue Cricket Design, Inspired By You Wednesday at Eisy Morgan, Whatever Goes Wednesday at Someday Crafts, Transformation Thursday at The Shabby Creek Cottage, Hookin Up With HoH at House of Hepworths, Whats Up Wednesday at Sew Woodsy