Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Teddy Bear Picnic

 
   
My daughter wanted a Teddy Bear Picnic for her 3rd Birthday Party. This was actually one of the easiest and most inexpensive big parties that I have done. And it was super fun. The kids loved it too! They were told on the invites to bring their favorite 'stuffed friend' as their guest to this fun Teddy Bear Picnic.
 
 
 
A lot of my decorations came from my local dollar store. It was easy to just get lots of things in the gingham (picnic table cloth) print and anything with teddy bears. This Teddy Bear Picnic was toward the end of the Summer, but I started picking up picnic stuff at the beginning of the Summer (and in the Spring) while it was still readily available. And I collected every teddy bear I had lying around the house and I borrowed teddy bears (mainly really large bears) from friends and family that had some and were gracious enough to let me borrow them.
 


 I made the Happy Birthday banner myself with my Cricut (scroll down to the bottom for directions for the banners). The cute little ants (ants at a picnic....) were from Amazon.com. And I thought the burlap table runner was a nice touch over my gingham table cloth. I had lots of BBQ baskets full of different snacks and treats all over this fun table too. And of course, a copy of the classic book The Teddy Bears' Picnic. I also bought an album of children's teddy bears songs off i-Tunes that I had playing in the background through-out the party.
 

 
PARTY FOOD
 
 I had fun with the food at this party. Obviously, I did picnic food! Sandwiches, chips, macaroni salad, veggies, and my baked potato salad. I get so many compliments on my baked potato salad and everyone asks for the recipe, you can follow the link below for the recipe.

 
 Baked Potato Salad Recipe:

 
 
And my favorite thing I did at the Teddy Bear Picnic was that I made cute individual picnic baskets for all the kids!
 

 
 
 
These were dollar store baskets with some cute gingham ribbon from the craft store and a checkered liner (the liners came with my BBQ baskets). I filled each basket with an Uncrustables sandwich, pack of Teddy Grahams, bear snack cup (from the dollar store, came in a set of 2 snack cups) filled with Honeycomb cereal, and a bag of gummy bears. The kids loved these! They showed up at the party with their stuffed animal friend, grabbed their own picnic basket and fun drink, and went out to sit in the yard and have a picnic.
 
 
 
 

 
I bought a case of 24 empty honey bears off Amazon.com for only $15 to use for the kids' drinks. The fun straws are from Walmart. I had a dispenser of juice and a Sharpie marker nearby to fill up these bears and to write each kid's name on their drink.
Even my baby loved having her own juice bear!
 
And of course, snacks and treats! They had to be bear-related!
 Teddy Grahams! Every flavor, in their own baskets, all over the party!
 

Honeycomb Cereal

 Cinnamon Bears
 

 Gummy Bears
 
These popcorn bags aren't bear-related, but they were in my party colors and on sale, and my birthday girl just happens to loooooove popcorn! And we displayed the popcorn in a picnic basket and the cake was displayed on a picnic basket.
 
And these adorable Bear Claw No-Bake Cookies that my best-friend made for the party! They were so freaking cute and delicious! (No-Bake Cookies with almonds for the claws).
 
And the CAKE!

 
 
 
 
This cake was made by the AMAZING Sprinklebelle Cakes, who makes all my cakes! You can find her and her incredible cake-making at Sprinklebellecakes.com . She is in Utah and I  highly recommend her to everyone. You can see some of the other cakes she has made for some of my parties here:
Very Hungry Caterpillar Cake and Smash Cake
Pink Lemonade Cake and Smash Cakes
 
And of course we had to go outside for our picnic. I had more gingham tablecloths outside with different centerpieces. Baskets and tins came from the dollar store and I got cheap mums from the grocery store to put in the baskets with a teddy bear.

 More BBQ baskets full of snacks on all the tables.


 
I was planning on setting up really large teddy bears as if they were having picnics and making it all cute so that kids could take pictures with the big bears, but we had a huge thunderstorm the night before the party and my lawn was mostly flooded. My other best-friend Adrienne did a fantastic job setting the big bears up even cuter than I could have imagined.

 This teddy bear was HUGE!! He was seriously bigger than me! He was holding a picnic basket full of teddy bear puppets (from the dollar store) that I sent home with the kid's as party favors (in addition to their picnic baskets too).


 
We put a tarp down over the driest patch of my lawn, with picnic blankets on top and a sunshade over it for the kid's picnic area. I made another cute banner that read 'Riley's Picnic' on the sunshade too. All the kids and their stuffed friends sat together and had a big picnic!

This ended up being the best Teddy Bear Picnic that I have ever been to! It was so much fun for the kids, cute for the adults, and my 3-year-old daughter still talks about her birthday party everyday! It was also easy and (fairly) cheap!
 
 

BANNERS
 

P.S. Quick banner tutorial. I made a 'Happy Birthday' banner, a 'Riley's Picnic' banner and a couple of cute decorative banners with the leftover paper I had.


 
I used the Cricut cartridge that came with my Cricut. I used the cutout for a tag. And then I cut out the letters I needed and placed them in the center. I used tan raffia from the dollar store to string them together. I used red, blue, and brown/white paper that matched my picnic colors.

 
 
 
Cake: Sprinkebelle Cakes Sprinklebellecakes.com
Photos: My best-friend Amy Lewin and her i-Phone. Amy also made the adorable Bear Claw No-Bake Cookies. She's an amazing friend.
 
 

1 comment:

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