M-I-C-K-E-Y…..PARTY : Planning a Mickey Mouse Birthday Party
Hot Dog, Hot Dot, Hot Diggity Dog…..that song plagued my dreams sometimes, but there was no way to replace the joy my son got from Mickey Mouse and his Clubhouse. I was planning on putting together a “real birthday” party for the first time, and a Mickey Mouse birthday party was the obvious go-to. I also did this before I learned about Pinterest so, in retrospect, I give myself extra kudos for creativity and internet search expertise!
By far, my favorite find from my searches was from eBay. I wanted Mickey Ears for everyone to wear, but didn’t have a budget to spend $19.99 on each pair. My searches on eBay came up with plenty of generic ears for cheap, but I wanted some real characters (R2D2, Toy Story, Goofy, etc). I hit the jackpot when I found groups of “mistake” ears that had been embroidered incorrectly or never paid for. They were sold in big lots and had great things like “Happy 40th Anniversarrry” and random names embroidered on the back. They became the centerpiece of the party, and everyone loved picking out funny, misspelled sayings or random names to take on a persona for the party. The ears were the perfect party-favor as we let everyone take their ears home with them.
Other great finds for the party include a giant inflatable Mickey “walker” on Amazon. I bought it at half the price of the store and took it to Party City to get filled with helium along with a giant “2”. Our other decorations included a set of Mickey wall stickers from Target. They doubled as another present for my son since we took them down and put them up in his room after the party.
The Mickey Walker balloon followed us all around!
This was also the year I made my first birthday banner. I have grand designs of hanging up all of their banners for their 18th birthday. We will see if they suffer through the embarrassment of their mom pulling out their 2 year old banner, but for now I’m still living the dream!
To make the banner:
- Pick your font (I downloaded a Disney font)
- Type out Happy Birthday in a font larger enough to have a single letter on each page
- You can print in black ink if you want the letters to be black. Otherwise, you can use craft paper in varying colors. I highlight all of the letters and change them to have “no fill”. I make the line color a light grey. This will make it dark enough for you to cut out, and leave you with letters in whatever color you choose.
- I then glued the letters to varying shapes (squares, rectangles circles, etc) and used a hole punch to put a hole on each side of the background.
- Pick a themed ribbon (Mickey in this case) and string the letters together.
- I also bought some cardboard Mickey figures to glue onto the banner.
My final party favor were the cupcake toppers. I drew some inspiration from Etsy and created them myself. Using Microsoft Word, I created three circles and printed them in a few different ways. I used typical phrases from Mickey Mouse Club House, my son’s name, and his age. I bought a circular punch and punched out different colors of foam. Then I glued the different sayings to them. Finally, I glued two of the foam circles around a toothpick to make my cupcake toppers.
The rest of the menu included:
- Hot Dogs (of course),
- Fruit and dip served in some Mickey Dip/Chip Bowls I found at Target (now on Amazon here)
- Custom M&Ms with “James is 2″ and Happy Birthday” written on them
- Ice Cream Bar using the same Mickey Dip/Chip bowls for sprinkles and other toppings
- Cupcakes : I made vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry cupcakes from my favorite sweet treat blog (www.mybakingaddiction.com)
Overall, we had a great Mickey Party time! Our friend Sarah won the present contest! She gave James an AMAZING car for his birthday by taking a traditional Cozy Coupe, painting it black and painting a batman symbol. We ended the night with James chasing balloon Mickey all over the house in his bat mobile!
