Old McDonald Had a Farm: Annie’s Second Birthday

Old McDonald had a farm eieio 🎵 A few weeks ago we celebrated Annie’s second birthday! I’m sure some of you caught a glimpse of the celebration and the party theme over on my Instagram stories but if you missed out, I’m going to share all of the details with you today!

For Annie’s first birthday party, I had some help from the girls on Team Jilly, but it was quite hectic (make sure to check out our behind the scenes proof, here! LOL). So this year with a much smaller guest list and being so busy at work, I decided to enlist help from Michelle at Joie & Luxe, and I’m SO glad that I did! Other than deciding the theme of her party (which took me forever! LOL!), preparing the loot bags and take home gifts there wasn’t much else that I needed to do, which I really enjoyed! To be completely transparent, Michelle offered us a discount on her services!

COVID Precautions

So, before we get into the good stuff, I wanted to address the precautions that we took when planning Annie’s birthday party. First things first, we keep the guest list very small and as we did when we planned Leo’s birthday party we did a risk mitigation and assessed who we were inviting and where those people had been. It was also really important for us to remind our guests of the upcoming gathering and to be very mindful of where they were going and who they were socializing with prior to attending our event. Justin and I sent out a few messages to our very small guest list prior to Annie’s party reminding them of the upcoming event and the precautions that we were taking.

If you are nervous about talking to your friends and family about COVID you can check out the message that we sent to our very small guests list here. You are welcome to copy and modify it to send to your guest list if you are planning a small outdoor gathering!

Theme and location

Whenever I am looking for a little inspiration for party themes the first place that I head to is Pinterest to get some ideas! Originally I was thinking of a Peter Cotton Tail theme, but I really wanted to spice things up and get extra creative. So Peter Cotton Tail quickly evolved into … DRUMROLL PLEASE … an Old McDonald themed party!

As for the location, we usually tend to host Leo and Annie’s birthday parties at our house, but with the theme being Old McDonald, I decided to rent out a beautiful space at Sanctuary Gardens instead. They have the perfect indoor and outdoor venue, it fit the party theme effortlessly and the kiddos were able to run around outside (to burn off some of that energy before heading home).

Decorations

When it came to the party decorations there really wasn’t much that I needed to worry about as Michelle had everything under control (Michelle, you are an angel! LOL). She even rented this adorable (and delicious) little lemonade stand from Muddy Monkey Kitchens. I did bring a few of my wicker baskets along with some of our paper lanterns from Oh Happy Day! Is it really one of the kid’s birthday celebrations without a paper lantern wall!? LOL! 🤪 To top it off, we also had lovely florals from the team at Tangerine Orchid!

I also had so many of you asking about the BEAUTIFUL felt Happy Birthday decorations made by Sera and Chelsey from She Felt Lovely Designs. We used some of their decorations last year for Annie’s birthday so I decided to get a couple more from them! What I love most about their party decor pieces is that they are reusable and SO versatile, they go with just about every party theme and I will be able to use them for years to come!!

Michelle really pulled out all of the stops and even made sure that we had a few real animals for Annie’s birthday and it totally completed the Old McDonald farm theme! All of the kids were so excited to see the animals, I have to admit that I was super excited too!

Food & Dessert

This year we had the team from Start Fresh Kitchen prepare all of the food for Annie’s party! Start Fresh Kitchen is a one-stop-shop for all things sustainable food! Not only do they cater to various events, but I recently found out that they also provide a local food delivery service. You can shop for local and sustainable groceries online and they deliver them right to your front door! First of all, the food set-up was absolutely gorgeous and all of the options were not only fresh and local but fit well within the theme too.

When it comes to the sweet treats there are only a couple of ladies that I trust to take on that! Izabel from The Cake Mama created the most adorable red apple cookies on a stick (which were so kid-friendly) and the cutest and (not to mention delicious!) red apple cupcakes. Kakes by Kathie created the most adorable three-tiered Old McDonald inspired cake. These desserts were seriously almost too cute to eat! Last but not least, we had the most adorable mini apple pies from Well Fancy That!

The kids indulged in the most delicious sweets and the adults sipped away on an amazing assortment of red and white wines from Sandhill Winery (of course!).

Loot bags & takeaway gifts

Since we had more time on our hands I worked away on the loot bags for the kids and Justin worked on the takeaway gifts for the adults. The loot bags were filled with pom pom markers, play dough (I usually order it from Hello Dough, but I didn’t get my act together in time!), a few little candies, mini pencil crayons, a min wooden truck, a metal yoyo, a pack of fire clacks (because who doesn’t love those) and a few farm animals to go with the theme!

Yes, even the adults got to take home gifts too! With all of the gardening that we have been doing this year and Justin’s new found love for pickling, we decided to make some homemade pickles. The day prior we went to Footprints and got our hands on as many Weck jars as we could find and then we hit up the local farmers market to pick up as many mini cucumbers as we could find! We spent all day working away, but everyone was so thrilled with them and it made all the work totally worth it!

Well, there you have it! A complete recap of Annie’s second birthday party. I am still not sure how my sweet girl is already two years old! Where has the time gone!?

xo

Jilly