My sweet third baby LJ turned five and I am in tears just thinking about what a HOMERUN this kid is! He is just the happiest and sweetest boy ever and I am so glad God blessed our family with his joyful spirit! We were so excited to celebrate him and of course, he wanted to have the theme be his favorite activity…..BASEBALL. Like there was any other option 🙂
I’m actually kind of shocked we haven’t had a big baseball birthday yet!
DECORATING WITH A THEME
I wanted to keep decorations simple and easy and we planned the whole thing while purchasing VERY minimal items.
I’ve shared this before but one of my biggest tips to add a theme to your party is to create ONE area that acts as your focal point. I make the one area usually a table with the cake and fun food.
You will want to create a tiered effect for tables – that way things in the back can be seen and reached! I always keep the items in the back the items that we use last or sparingly or are decor. The middle items are usually quick grab items (chips in individual bags, snack items or silverware) and then the lowest table items are things with spoons or majority of food. For the baseball theme, I created height using ball buckets (this is actually our bucket we drag to the ball fields every day) and crates left over from past parties. I usually drape the crates but in this case, they look great bare!
As decor, I filled glass vases with baseballs! Easy. Fast. A Home run for sure.
I did purchase baseball plates and napkins to add to the theme. Here is the link to the ones I got. You can always add plain napkins and plates but for the party kids, I like to have themed ones 🙂
FOOD
For all our parties, we try to keep it super simple food wise. We always try to prep majority of food before hand and keep it super fast. A big bowl of strawberries or grapes is always a hit. And a vegetable tray is easy to throw together.
CAKE
As for the cake, I usually buy a plain cake from the grocery store and scrape off the ugly decorations to add my own. It’s way cheaper than buying a cake from a fancy bakery.
For this one, I wiped red icing around the outside and added the baseballs around the base. The little baseballs are actually white dipped mini Oreos with red icing as the stitching. Since this cake was JUST big enough for the kids, I also added white cupcakes for any adult or child that needed more.
BALLOON TIPS
The one thing LJ did request was baseball balloons so I bought them on Amazon (here is the link to the ones I got) and filled them at home with a leftover tank. If you want an affordable option, you can always take them to Dollar Tree and they will fill them for $1 each.
Also – we have been known to deflate balloons and reuse them if the theme fits! These foil balloons can be very expensive in the party store ($5-$15 a pop!) so we order online, fill at home or for cheap, and try to get at least one reuse out of all of them! Thankfully LJ has a spring birthday so when little league was done, we filled these back up and used them again at his end-of-the-year awards party.
COMING UP WITH THEMED ITEMS
How do you come up with themed items to create a cohesive look and feel? Well it’s not hard these days! I think Pinterest is obviously the best resource…but also looking at what you have and how you can use colors to create a cohesive look. In this case we used a lot of red (LJ’s trademark color) and we sang Take Me Out to the Ballgame for more ideas 🙂
Of course, it wouldn’t be a baseball party without popcorn and chips!
And don’t forget the Baby Ruth’s!
Oh and in one of my little baseball vases (here is the link) I filled it with peanuts. You base-ically can sing the baseball song and just follow that as your cues 🙂 Did you see what I did there?! 🙂
For the actual meal, we did a hot dog bar. Of course, a lot of parties don’t opt to provide a meal but we always do because our kids want a meal 🙂
The ball park franks we cooked on the grill and the crock-pots had cheese dip and baked beans.
LJ was very excited to get photos with his two best buds from school. He told all his brothers and cousins they couldn’t be in this one because “these were his school peoples” 🙂 I love this age.
It wasn’t Ella’s party but she cried if she wanted. Actually it was my fault….I took the wrapper off the bottom of the cupcake before handing it to her and that was apparently THE WRONG MOVE MOM. She promptly rejected the cupcake and her new favorite party trick is throwing herself down to show her displeasure.
PARTY ACTIVITIES
The boys did a variety of activities – a baseball piñata (that kept on falling so we put the rope through the center and continued to hit it until the boys shredded it!), a baseball hunt in the backyard (I sit in a chair and the kids collect empty baseball easter eggs…when I get five eggs from someone, I give them one piece of candy. Then Jeremy periodically throws all the eggs back into the yard until I am out of candy. This makes the hunt last a whole lot longer and they get a more reasonable amount of candy, requires less prep time and the kids get fully worn out! WIN WIN WIN!) and a rousing game of homerun derby!
Overall – I couldn’t be happier for my big five year old boy! I was so excited to celebrate him. He has been just a JOY to parent and I always joke that he will forever be three in my mind (it’s true….he will) but honestly I think it’s just because that is when his personality really started to shine. LJ is kind and sensitive and he is patient and LOVING and basically a ray of sunshine on a dark day. He doesn’t just brighten up the room….he brightens up my whole world! I don’t know how I got so lucky to be his mom but I know that he is so special and I am a better human just knowing him! Happy birthday sweet boy! I love you so so much! It’s true….and I hope you had a dinger of a birthday!!!