DIY Birthday Party

Somehow 4 years have passed since my son was born. It’s gone from this:

to this:

quicker than it feels possible! Over the years we’ve done several themed birthdays and there is always a diy element to each party, but this year we went DIY crazy!

The one consistent DIY element is the cake. My mom-in-law, Patti, made all of the birthday cakes for each of her 4 children & this was definitely a tradition I wanted to carry on. Problem was, I had never in my life decorated a cake so I was relieved when she was willing to help me. Here are the cakes we made in previous years:

So this year, like many 4 year old boys, my Tyler is into Super Heros. With the help of Pintrest, I found all the elements I needed to find inspiration for a complete DIY Super Hero Party! First, I found this invite and printables birthday package on Etsy:

Rose from ThePartyProject was wonderful to work with. I just purchased the package, gave her all the party details and uploaded a picture of Tyler in his Batman jammies and she did all the graphic magic. I just printed it all and added some props and we were good to go. With this as my inspiration, I also found this cake on Pintrest:

We made some slight changes and came up with this:

This year we added a brand new element for us – fondant! And actually, I was so drowned in printables (which I wouldn’t have finished without Auntie Katie’s help!) that Patti did all the fondant work the night before. We have our eye on a birthday cake for Elise that will also use fondant so I hope to learn how to work with it on the next cake. I know some friends who make their own fondant, but since it was so new to us, we simply bought the pre-made stuff at Michael’s.

Here are some more pictures of how it all turned out:

I found the idea for t-shirt capes here and got the printable logos here. We had the kids glue on their chosen felt super hero logo to their chosen cape as they arrived using Fabric Glue, but it had to sit and dry the duration of the party. If I had to do it over again, I would have pre-made the capes or used an iron-on fusible so the kids could wear them for the party, but I think it was fun anyway and a great party favor to take on the road.

As always, we had a super blessed time with family, friends and laughter. I hope my son will come to appreciate all the love that goes into these handmade birthdays, but in the meantime, I’m having a lot of fun!