A couple weekends ago we celebrated our baby’s second birthday with our families. Stella had such a wonderful time, we had a yummy meal, and lots of fun even though we also got rained in and had a rather terrifying experience.
I’m serious. Terror ensued. Everything got set up and ready outside but just before we were about to sit down to eat, it started to rain (ugh) so we quickly moved the whole party inside. Luckily I had already gotten my pictures (phew!) and we had plenty of room to still set everything up all pretty inside.
But, just after moving everything inside and just before dinner was ready, we saw a bee.
Then we saw another one. And after we took care of that one we saw three more. After killing about 15 bees, things finally settled down and we ate our dinner, opened Stelly’s presents and had cake in peace. Now, maybe my telling of the story doesn’t sound so terrifying but it is because bees are the WORST. They are my literal biggest fear. Well, to be fair, wasps and yellow jackets and the like are the actual worst. I love bees because they make honey and honey is my favorite thing ever. But still, they’re all kind of similar and they all fly and can really hurt you and so that’s scary.
I’m terrified of bees because I’ve been stung (more correctly bit) on at least six different occasions and on every single one, I got 5+ stings. That’s right, I’ve been downright attacked by bees more times than I can count on one hand and for that reason, they are so much scarier than spiders, mice, snakes or anything in the ocean. haha JK, I refuse to get in the ocean because everything in there is so much scarier than a bee. I’m a wuss.
And, just so you know, the party didn’t end with no bee incidents. The birthday girl, our sweet and happy Stelly, got stung at the end. There was a docile bee crawling around on the floor and was blending in perfectly so we didn’t see it. It may have been hit before and didn’t die or it may have just been tired cus it was late at night by this point. Either way, poor Stella was just sitting there and then the saddest crying I’ve ever heard and my heard broke and now she is scared of bees too :(
So, even though her party turned out great and was all in all a wonderful night, it will be forever tainted by the memory of a bee invasion. By the way, the next day I had to take care of 25 more bees in my house. By myself. While trying to keep Stella safe. So it was a terrifying couple of days not knowing why or how this was happening but my husband got up on our roof, did a little spraying and they were gone the next day! So hopefully we’ll remain bee-free the rest of the year. Cus that was sure enough for me.
As for the details of the party, decorations and such, I went with a vintage citrus-y floral theme. I was inspired by this adorable vintage toy toaster my mom has for Stella to play with. Somehow though that toaster never actually made it into the party haha. How do things that like happen?! But the graphic of the oranges that I used as the backdrop behind the cake was from that toaster. Cute huh? Here is the toaster, that I meant to fill with flowers…:
I’ve just always loved it and filling it with flowers was the inspiration for the whole party set up, I thought it mixed so cute with fresh, happy flowers. Almost all the decorations for this party came from Zurchers and I’ll link them all below at the end of the post. I love using paper for my parties so there is much less clean up! The flowers were arranged by me using mostly wild things and leaves found around my yard as well as a couple of bunches of peonies I got at Whole Foods. The citrus drink umbrellas are a DIY from right here.
The cake was so easy to make! I basically just did the easiest way possible of decorating one because I’m not decorating pro so I hate to spend all the time and money on making a fancy cake and icing. So all I did was make two box mixes (white, with a packet of lemon pudding mixed in) in 8″ pans. I froze those, then when I was ready to assemble, I pulled them out and leveled them off a little with a knife. For frosting I just whipped together two cans of store bought frosting in lemon flavor and cream cheese flavor. I used a good amount between each layer then went around the whole cake. Then I scraped most of it off to get that naked look that I am just loving on so hard right now!
And I topped it with one of our mini mylar letter balloon cake toppers as well as more fresh flowers, leaves, and citrus. Don’t worry, we also put some candles in there at the end for Stella to blow out. She got so shy about being sung to haha.
Citrus plates: oh happy day
Yellow starburst plates: zurchers
Gold utensils: amazon
Paper platters: zurchers
Gold letter balloons: zurchers (16″)
Striped napkins: oh happy day
Pink cake stand: zurchers + spray paint on the underside
Gold cake stand: h&m, (no longer available)
Sixlets for party favors: zurchers
tubes for party favors: amazon
Green cups for flowers: oh joy for target (no longer available)
White vases: thrifted and ikea
Gold confetti: zurchers
