Little Bug Turns Two

For our eldest son's second birthday party I decided on a theme based on mud and bugs. The inspiration came from our little boy enjoying playing outside and who absolutely thrives being free and getting dirty outside in the garden. This was a really fun theme to play around with. For the snacks I served a variety of savoury and sweet. I made four balloons for decoration - a lady bug, a bee, a frog (which turned out nothing like a frog) and a worm. These I made the night before the party, and although it could probably look better, it was really quick and easy to make last minute. When planning the party and theme, I came across these cute bug pictures online which included a bug alphabet, so I used it to print my son's name and age, and stuck on the wall. Very simple decorations but so easy and fun to do.

My husband printed a shirt for the birthday boy with the number two shaped like a bug. This was so cute, and quite affordable, which was a plus! I found it to be quite unique.  A few friends my son's age were invited to the party, and I decided on one activity for them to do, besides playing and swimming. I bought a bucket with a spade for each friend and found these mini magnifying glasses. Each friend could take these home afterwards, a small thank you gift for making the day extra special. The aim of the activity was to find the hidden bugs in the garden. I bought a few toy bugs and placed at three places in and around the garden. I, and some parents, went with the kids to find the bugs, it was fun but also difficult to contain the kids, as some ran ahead and others trailed behind, but in the end it was fun, and each friend ended up with a few bugs in their bucket.

As the cute bug pictures were the center of the theme for the party, I decided to make paper cups and plates to fit with the theme. I printed a few different bugs on white paper and coloured them myself, which was fun but took some time, and pasted on dark green paper cups, small orange paper plates for the snacks and large square green plates for the food. For the kids, I made small bowls rather than using the plates, so that the snacks don't fall out, this really worked well. I also added a different bug to each side of the paper bowl and a happy birthday snail at the bottom.

The snacks were a combination of savoury and sweet, and I named each snack to match with something buggy, muddy or gardeny. The savoury snacks and name combo's were:

• Puff chips which I called bug larva.
• I served a few fresh vegetables (sugar snap peas, cut carrots and baby corn) with a dipping sauce and named the whole serving 'bugs should also eat'.
• An easy one was salty stick pretzels which were of course, stick insects.
• Another fresh (and sweet) snack was strawberries that could be nothing else than lady bugs.
• I discovered small chicken pops which is easy to make in the oven and decided to dub it dung beetle balls.
• A must serve is always mini meat pies or sausage rolls and decided to name these coal blankets.
• Lastly, I made cheese puff snacks which I called garden snails. I cut puff pastry into isosceles triangles, added a slice of cheese on top and rolled the triangles towards the end point, stopping about one centimeter from the edge, to get an effect of a snail's shell and a head sticking out. Then popped in the oven until golden brown. In the end it might not have looked like I envisioned but it was one of the hits of the day.

For the sweet snacks, I tried to stick to only a few, and it was so difficult as there are so many things to do regarding bugs and mud. Firstly, I just want to thank Mother Goose's cupcakes and cookies (click here) for making these divine and perfectly sized sugar cookies. These were perfectly sized for the little ones and exactly as I imagined it to be. The small bug cookies had a variety of bugs, including lady bugs, spiders, worms, snails, mushrooms and bees. I even got a number two cookie. Definitely a go-to for any kind and design of sugar cookie. The remaining sweet treats and names were:

• Water with slices of lime which I called irrigation water.
• Cream soda flavoured soft drink called grass juice.
• For each child, I made a small bottle of chocolate milk and named it mud water. My little boy couldn't get enough of this!
• I discovered these soft shell, white chocolate eggs and placed it on the table as bug eggs.
• I also made mud cups, which comprised instant chocolate pudding with a few sour worms in each. This pudding was so nice, some guests thought it to be mousse!
• I had this idea to make fallen tree logs, and made this snack from chocolate filled marshmallows, stuck a chocolate covered pretzel stick into each one, painted melted chocolate on top of each marshmallow and then topped with jelly tots. I placed these in the fridge to set for a few minutes.
• I really wanted to do something with Oreo cookies, and the idea was to melt green chocolate, cover with green melted chocolate and top with green coloured desiccated coconut, which represented moss - the idea was to make moss cookies. The chocolate bits I bought did not melt well, so I decided to stick the mint chocolate chunks to the Oreo cookies with melted chocolate and still sprinkle over the moss I made. You can never go wrong with Oreos!
• The last sweet snack, which was actually the first snack I thought of when planning the party, was rocks, which I made with chocolate Coco Pops and mixed with melted chocolate. I scooped the equal amounts of the mixture into cupcake wrappers which I placed in muffin tins to hold the shape, and kept in the fridge until set and ready to serve.

For lunch we served mini burgers, or sliders, the same we served at my husband's birthday party last year (click here). Before we served the delicious and juicy mini burgers, we sang Happy Birthday to our big boy, he blew out the candles (or tried to) and cut the cake. We all enjoyed a small piece of cake before heading over to the delicious and juicy mini burgers.

I wanted to make a mud and dirt cake, but since I already had a mud cake theme (click here), I tried a different approach. The idea was to have a cake covered in dirt with the number two raked into the cake, like a neatly raked garden bed. In the end the number two didn't really feature as much as I envisioned, but it is what it is. The cake itself was a vanilla flavoured cake, which was double layered, stuck to each other with Caramel Treat. I also topped the cake with Caramel Treat before adding the chocolate icing sugar. I then scratched the number two out of the frosting with a fork. Around the number two I sprinkled chocolate chards and broken up Oreo cookies, to represent heaps of dirt as well as grass, which was green coloured desiccated coconut. I also sprinkled some mint chocolate chunks for a bit more green and I made a little mud pool from chocolate ganache for the little worms could feast on. I found these cute, ready made edible bugs which I placed around the cake, and finally I wrote my son's name with mini candy coated chocolate. The cake might not have gotten the shine I intended it to get, but it sure was delicious, and I finally found a go-to vanilla cake recipe!

For my son's birthday party at school, I made party boxes from hamburger boxes and pasted the same bugs I used for his birthday party onto the boxes. This time around I printed the pictures onto different coloured paper. This took some time to make as each classmate received a party box, and I also printed eyes for each bug, which took even longer to cut out and paste, lesson learnt. But they looked so cute, was fun and affordable to make. Each party box received puff chips, a marshmallow cupcake, a chocolate wafer cookie, a marshmallow snake and a bug sugar cookie. The parents absolutely loved the sugar cookies and couldn't stop asking where I got them from - thanks again ​​Mother Goose's cupcakes and cookies.

The Invitation