Leo’s 5th Birthday: A Sonic the Hedgehog Party Recap!

Where has the time gone!?! How is my little Leo already 5 years old!? If you have been following along for a while, you know that we like to throw a themed birthday party for Leo and Annie every year. I truly love planning and hosting their birthday parties, I find that it’s a little creative outlet for me, and hey, they are only young once! So this year, when it came to deciding the theme of Leo’s birthday, we had a few ideas up in the air, but we somehow landed on a Sonic the Hedgehog-themed birthday (talk about nostalgia!).

I was equally as excited AND nervous as my biggest challenge for planning his party was making this Sonic the Hedgehog theme look as classic and timeless as possible! LOL!

Sonic the Hedgehog Party Decor

Sometimes throwing kids birthday parties can be quite controversial; some parents feel like they are not relatable, and I can 100% agree with that. But I truly love planning parties, hosting parties, and even collecting party supplies… it’s one of my many hobbies and my little creative outlet. However, to be fully transparent, it’s not a one-person show. I have an entire team of people that help bring these parties to life and local vendors I love hiring for these events. I hope that sharing the behind-the-scenes stories on Instagram and their birthday blog recaps inspires you in some way, but I completely understand it’s not relatable for every family!

So with that being said, when Leo finally decided on a theme for his birthday (it was a toss-up between a few!) I got straight to ordering supplies within the blue, red, and yellow Sonic colour palette. I prefer to base the decorations off of colour versus ordering specific themed birthday supplies! Not to mention, they can often be reused over and over that way. As always, I placed a BIG order from my favourite party decor shop Oh Happy Day for his special day; it’s truly a one-stop-shop for all of your party planning needs!

Now decorating for the kid’s birthdays is a biggg operation, and this Sonic the Hedgehog theme was no different, so I called in some help from Team Jilly (they are the paper ball installation experts, LOL!) along with some help from Yuriko at Vintage Origami and Cloud Nine Designs. It’s always so much fun preppin’ for their parties; we had some music playing and even poured ourselves some mimosas by 11 am 🤪… now that’s how you prep for a party if you ask me!

Desserts & Candy Bar

For dessert, we had the most beautiful Sonic the Hedgehog-themed birthday cake by Kakes with Kathie, along with the most adorable cookies by Izabela from The Cake Mama. Even though we had more than enough sugar already, I couldn’t resist putting together a little candy table and including a few more sugary surprises in the kid’s loot bags too! 🤪

Leo’s Party

Long story short, we didn’t end up having Leo’s birthday on the actual day of the set-up and ended up having it last weekend. The entire set-up stayed intact, yes, even the cake and the cookies! I tried to preserve them as best I could because a birthday party just isn’t the same without them. With COVID still doing its thing we had Leo’s birthday party outside and we were well within the limit. We send out a big text message before any COVID-safe event, you can find it here if you are looking for a similar template to use.

I didn’t share many stories on the actual day because I wanted to be as present as possible, soaking in every last moment before he is off to kindergarten in September! 🥺 While Leo’s party was bigger than last year (it was still well within the limits!), we had such a fun day celebrating our baby … who’s not such a baby anymore.

Well, there you have it! A short and sweet blog post recapping Leo’s Sonic the Hedgehog-themed birthday party. Now, if you are getting ready to plan one of your kiddos birthday parties, remember to not put too much pressure on yourself, use this blog and pull some inspiration from it if you wish, but just remember at the end of the day, they will simply be overjoyed to be with you on their special day!

xo

Jilly