Owl themed birthday party

 Clayton, our grandson, celebrated his second birthday last week. We attended the birthday party over Labor Day weekend. Last year, his first birthday party theme was sock monkeys and above is a photo I took of him for the invitation. Clayton was born nine weeks early, as you can see below, and is still small. He wears 12 month sized clothes but other than being small, you would not know he was premature.

 The theme for this year's party was owls. Clayton loves owls and gets excited any time he sees one in a book, on the iPad or at the zoo. Since owls are very popular now, it was an easy theme to do. Speaking of iPads, when Clayton sees my face during Face time on the phone, he says "iPad", as he knows I always let him look at mine and all the children's apps I have on it.

 I was going through my cookie cutters and noticed a witches cauldron cutter that looked a lot like an owl, so we made cookies using it. It could also be an alarm clock! It is always good to look at things in a way of other possibilities!
We love to make sugar cookies, do the royal icing piping and flooding. They taste so good, package well and are very impressive.
I made bag toppers using Spellbinders die and googly eyes for people to take a couple of cookies home in addition to serving them at the party.

 Allison made treat bags that turned out so cute. She, unfortunately, does not have a die cutting machine so she has to cut everything out by hand. The top is folded down and then stapled as you will see a little further down.

 Here is a card I made for Clayton. Here again, I used something that was one thing as another. The "two" was a "Z" until I trimmed off the top right corner. Also, the beak for my bag topper was a kite, both of which were discontinued Spellbinders die.

 Allison also decorated lanterns to hang around both inside and outside. After the party, we hung these in Clayton's playroom.

 Rather than die cutting pennants like we did for last year, Allison picked up a notepad of owls and I wrote a letter on each one to make a banner.

 We did cupcakes, including the ones above, to the left with Oreo and Reese's Pieces that look like owls. Sorry I did not get a better photo of them. We used double stuffed Oreos with a brown candy for the eye and an orange candy for the beak.

 I cut the watermelon below to use with the fruit. The outside of a pineapple was used for the wings, red grapefruit, lime and grapes were used for the eyes and orange peeling for the beak and feet. Skewers work great to hold on the larger pieces and toothpick will hold the smaller items.

 We made a single layer cake when we baked the cupcakes and Clayton enjoyed singing happy birthday to himself, blowing out the candle and actually ate some of the cake. Getting Clayton to eat is a challenge but he is getting much better about it. He talks up a storm now and loves playing outside. Here he is on the tricycle we bought him. Allison had a shirt embroidered with an owl on it and his name that he wore at the party.

 He loves all types of balls and sports and invents interesting combinations, like hitting the baseball with a golf club.

When he opened his Buzz Light year Action Figure he got for his birthday, he said, "To infinity....and beyond!" Same to you, Clayton!