camping birthday party: put a bear on it!

Elsa loves finding worms and bugs and being outside. I thought a camping theme would be fun for her fourth birthday party and she was immediately excited about the idea. I didn't think we could compete with the fun we had creating her cardboard box party last year but the camping theme turned out to be super fun. Plus, it gave us an excuse to finally build a fire pit in our backyard!  

I created a bear roasting a marshmallow for the invitation and then had fun developing the theme from there. Lots of burlap and tree stumps and bears. And cake. Lots of cake.

I finally attempted to cut fabric with my Silhouette machine. I was so impressed with the results and had fun making various burlap banners. I also found out that you can print right on burlap. I actually fed a piece of burlap through my printer and it worked! I didn't end up using it for the party, but I'm excited about the possibilities.

Of course I had to cut a bear out too.

I used the same graphics from the invite to create these signs for the tables. Ben cut the little pieces of wood and then drilled holes for the sticks.

We had to include Elsa's favorite food, nutella. I made the Greek yogurt and nutella dip to have with strawberries, her other favorite food. 

 

And some salads the adults would appreciate.

The kids used the red baskets for their hot dogs and the adults used foil pie plates.

We had a drink bar where people could make their own sodas in mason jars. I knew the kids would lose track of their jars easily so I put chalkboard paint on the lids and wrote their names and then punched a hole through the lid for the straw.

 

 

I had fun with the desserts. Even though we were having s'mores, a birthday party isn't complete without cake. I made cupcakes for the kids. I wasn't sure if one cake would be enough to feed all the adults (it was) so I ended up making two cakes. Which was fine because there were a few recipes I wanted to try. 

 

Chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream. Some with sprinkles and some with graham cracker crumbs, and a chocolate bar on top.

The s'mores cake had brown butter graham cracker crust baked into two of the chocolate cake layers and a chocolate ganache between cake layers and on the outside. I followed this recipe but used my own recipe for the chocolate cake. I ran out of time for the meringue top so I just used leftover marshmallow frosting from the other cake. Then sprinkled graham cracker crumbs over the whole thing.

  Ben cut me some nice wood slices with a chainsaw and then I used wood glue to make cake stands.

I really loved the graham cracker layers and the ganache on this cake.

   

The second cake was a little more intimidating. A six-layer rich chocolate malted and toasted-marshmallow cake. I found the recipe here. (I used my own recipe for the chocolate cake again.) I was really concerned about this thing toppling over. But it didn't! Until we had cut half of the cake. The toasted-marshmallow frosting was so yummy. It had bits of actual toasted marshmallows in it. Making the cake turned out to be pretty easy compared to slicing it.

 

We ate cake for three days straight.

And of course the s'more fixin's. It's hard to beat a classic s'more. But I must say nutella was pretty awesome. So was cookie butter. We also tried peanut butter cups. So delicious. I'm pretty sure everyone went home in a sugar coma.

 

I made personalized labels for the bug hunt jars. We hid plastic bugs and gummy bugs for the kids to find.

I had fun screen printing little favor bags. We filled them with pop rocks, gummy bears, glow sticks, a mini flash light, and a small camping activity book. I also screen printed shirts for Elsa, Amelia, and Oliver.

And now that I've indulged myself with party details, stay tuned for another post that will contain pictures of actual people at the party, not just bears.


(If you don't get the "put a bear on it" reference, you better watch this clip from Portlandia.)