Cruz is Three: A Firefighter Birthday Party

As you all know, we celebrated Cruz's 3rd birthday party last weekend. I love all things party planning, so I couldn't wait to get started and immediately hit up Pinterest for ideas. As usual, it didn't disappoint. {Check out this board for more firefighter-themed party ideas.}

{Food}

Since we planned to have people over all day, we made quite the spread. I mean, what's a good party without loads of food to munch on? For the main dishes, we had a chili bar (with Fritos, shredded cheese, oyster crackers & sour cream), sub sandwiches and then brought out take & bake pizzas later in the day. It was all pretty easy and as you know, easy is my middle name. I got a bunch of compliments on the chili (probably because nobody is used to me making anything myself) and even my mom has adopted the recipe after trying it a while back. It's a knock off of Wendy's chili - check out the recipe here.

{Desserts}

The dessert table was my favorite part, for obvious reasons. I decided not to do a big cake and instead put together a bunch of different dessert options. We had bundtinis & bundlets, cake pops, fire truck cookies and an ice cream cake.  Yum.

{Decor}

As far as the decor goes, the pictures speak for themselves.  Basically it's a mish-mash of others' great ideas and me tweaking them to make them our own. Most of the below came directly from pins on this board. And I love how it all came together.

For the buildings, I got the inspiration from this party, but basically just wrapped different sized boxes in silver tissue paper, cut a small hole in the top and then added a sheet each of red, yellow & orange tissue paper to create the "fire" coming out of the top.

The "matches" definitely took the longest, but I suppose that is why they are my favorite part of the party. If you follow me on Instagram, you've already seen these, but they were just pretzel sticks, white almond bark and red sprinkles. And they were delicious.

The flaming Jello is layers of cherry, orange and lemon jello. As soon as the kiddos realized they could eat them, they didn't stand a chance. I'm not sure what it is with kids and Jello, but it's always a hit and so easy.

I made the name cards myself. Just pulled an image of a firetruck from google and printed them on cardstock. (I just tried to find the image to give credit, but cannot locate it anywhere. Oops.)

I love the fire backdrop behind the wet bar - it's made from yellow, red & orange tissue paper and the tutorial is here.

And what is a firefighter party, without a fire hydrant and some buckets of "water" to put out the fires? 

The only thing missing was the firetruck pulling up in the driveway. It was scheduled, but of course it snowed all day, so we called it off. Maybe next year. =)

We had a great time and best of all we celebrated the best little three year old. Although, I may be a tad bit biased. Thanks to all of you for the sweet words about both the party and our little guy. It means the world.

{Links/Credits}
Fire Hydrant: Hobby Lobby
Small Metal Buckets: Amazon
Large Metal Buckets: Amazon
Blue Sixlet Candies: Amazon
Metal Fire Truck: Hobby Lobby
Metal Cupcake Holder: Amazon
Chalkboard Banner: Amazon
Bundlet & Bundtinis: Nothing Bundt Cakes
Fred & Friends Plate: Amazon
Firetruck Cookies & Cake Pops: Kristen's Cookies
Invitations: Etsy
Pinterest Board: here