Olive's 5th Birthday party

I included this picture because I just think it is so darn cute!

We do birthday parties every other year, mostly because they are a lot of work! 

5 is a very big milestone of a birthday and I'm glad we got to celebrate it with a party. Olive had lots of ideas of what kind of party she wanted. She was stuck on a Princess party for a long time but I was trying to talk her out of that because I think I used all my princess ideas on her third birthday. Finally after much deliberation, and some persuading from me, we decided on a Ladybug Party. Once she was decided on it she was very excited about it. She had a lot of the ideas that we did for the party.   

Olive helped me make these homemade invitations. I think they turned out really cute. Olive loved putting the googley eyes on them. What a better way to deliver your invitations than in your ballet clothes?

Olive with her friends Brynn and Bella. When each girl arrived they got to put on ladybug skirts (Olive's idea)

We tried our best to make red frosting for the lady bug cup cakes but boy is it hard. You have to dump a whole thing of food coloring in and it still looks kinda pink. But they still turned out cute. We used chocolate chips for the dots. 

I found lots of cute lady bug stuff for the party and made some of the decorations myself. 

I made these almost abstract lady bugs that were hanging from the trees. I thought they were kinda cool.

Olive got this little lady bug as a memento of her 5th birthday party but we used her in some of the games too. 

Here are the goodie bags. They were just simple but I thought they turned out perfect. I was so excited when I found some mini clothes pins with ladybugs on them. Score!

Another request Olive had was to make bracelets so I was able to find some cute ladybug beads. Each girl got one of these bags to make their bracelets while we waited for everyone to arrive. 

Here they are working hard. Turns out, it was a bit trickier than I thought, and they all dropped their untied bracelets, (Olive more than once), and might have cried some tears while restringing them again. 

Then it was time for games! First up pin the Dot on the Ladybug. Olive was really excited to play this game!

Then it was time for Pass the Ladybug (like hot potato). They only kinda got how to play this game. 

Then it was Ladybug tag but they mostly just ran around playing keep away. 

Then we read the Ladybug Girl story, also an Olive suggestion. Everyone was very into the story which kinda surprised me. I mean, you don't usually read stories at birthday parties. 

After our story we made pinwheels. Again, this activity was basically the adults doing it because it was a little too hard for the kiddos. Oops!

They sure had fun running around with their (semi-funcitonal) pinwheels though. 

Then it was time to sing and blow out Olive's candle. 

She especially, loved the cupcake and kinda devoured it. 

Red frosting everywhere!

After their tummies were full it was present time! YAY!

I love the pictures of her hugging her friends to say thank you. She loved everything she got and was so excited to open presents from her friends. It was a pretty fun and special party and I hope that Olive will have good memories of it!