We had a Jessie themed party. Josh has a MAJOR soft spot in his heart for Jessie the Yodeling Cowgirl. I don't know for sure, but it might be his favorite Disney character. Anyway - he has shared his love for Jessie with Scarlett so I decided a Jessie themed party would be just perfect!
Mama went a little nuts on Scarlett's outfit. A Jessie hat was a MUST. But - big problem - there aren't any baby-sized Jessie hats out there. And I didn't want to spend much on it either. My solution: I found this one on Amazon and added a white band (white elastic) and sewed white rope trim around the edges to make it into a perfect Jessie hat.)
Add a Jessie onesie & Jessie slipper boots I found at the Disney Store (I don't think they are available anymore), a cute Children's Place denim skirt I got as a hand-me-down, and cow print legwarmers from My Little Legs and our Jessie Baby birthday outfit was complete.
And adorable!!
We have a ton of family who live nearby, so we just invited family, but that was a LOT of people. Since our house is itty bitty and the weather wasn't nice enough yet for an outdoor party, my parents were kind enough to let us have her party at their place. Here are some pictures of the decorations! (Please ignore all my bad photos from the day of her party!! We didn't realized until AFTER the party my camera had a wonky setting the ENTIRE day. So, I basically ended up with junky photos of this special day - heartbreaking!!!)
The birthday banners! These were my favorite decoration by far! And not complicated to make. I just cut out fabric triangles and cut out felt letters (more time consuming than you might think!). Glued the letters on and sewed the triangles to some cute gingham ribbon.
I also put up Scarlett's weekly photos. People LOVED seeing these. Everyone stood around it picking their favorites, and oohing and ahhing at how much she's changed. It was a hit!
Can't find that yellow & red grid pattern fabric like Woody's shirt? I couldn't either!! So, I bought plain yellow fabric and whipped out a yard stick and a red Sharpie! Minutes later - perfectly cute yellow Jessie/Woody fabric.
As you can see, we had balloons all over the place. I found cowprint balloons at Zurchers (perfect!). We had a cute bunch with a GIANT mylar '1' (which is still floating in our house a month later!!) tied to the birthday girl's high chair.
Mini hay bales (found at Michaels) and our Toy Story pals made adorable decorations.
(We borrowed all the Toy Story toys from family memebers other than Jessie. She's ours.)
The "Watering Hole" where all the drinks were found.
Water, IBC Rootbeer, IBC Cherry Limade (because it was the right color! haha!) And adorable Disney apple juice for the little-uns. And a giant thing of lemondade. Yeah - I sort of overestimated how much liquid refreshment we would need. We had WAY too much!
The water bottle labels made me SO happy! They still make me smile looking at this picture. They just made the waters SO CUTE!!
I saw lots of people online making adorable Jessie Hat cookies. Mine did not turn out very cute. In fact, I almost didn't even put them out, they were so ugly. But I spent so much time on them I just put them out anyway. If I would have spent hours piping them they would have been much cuter but I was already annoyed at how ugly they were and totally impatient. Blech.
Bullseye was spotted munching on cheetos (if you've seen Toy Story 2, you'll get that joke! haha!!)
I even gussied up the cutlery!
Without even asking, my Dad dressed up in full cowboy gear. And when I saw him outside manning the grill (we had burgers - easy and YUMMY), I about died laughing. It was the perfect scene.
Oh, and I should mention that Josh got super crazy sick the day of the party. Like, he was barely able to put on a happy face and enjoy the fun he was so sick. I felt AWFUL and the timing could NOT have been worse. I owe a GIGANTIC thank you to the women in my family for helping me get decorated and actually execute the party. Josh thanks you too! I could not have done it without you!
We had coloring pages out (found free ones online & printed them out) for all the little ones to color while people arrived and we cooked the burgers.
And - probably the most fun thing we did at the party - the PHOTO BOOTH.
It seems like every party you see on blogs and Pinterest these days has a Photo Booth, and now I know why! They are a BLAST!! It was so fun to get to chat & laugh with everyone who came the party as I took their pictures. Plus I had hilarious and adorable photos to slide in with their thank you cards later!! I told Josh I want to do a Photo Booth at every party I throw from now on. It was a big hit!!
We also played two quick games with the kids. First up - "There's a Snake In My Boot".
Basically we just threw little plastic snakes into a cowboy boot. If you got one in, you got a gummy snake (aka gummy worms). You can see that all the kids from 3 to 13 played. We just had the bigger kids stand back further. It was simple, silly & fun.
Then we played "Pin The Tail on Bullseye".
Free printable poster and tail pattern from DisneyFamily Fun. Easy peasy! Gotta love that!!
Then we did presents . . .
Daddy surprised us both with two awesome Octonauts books!
Big slide play thing from Mommy & Daddy!
She LOVES this slide! (patting ourselves on the back!)
And last, but not least, we did cake! Ahh, the CAKE!! I wish sooooooooo much I had a better photo of Scarlett's cake. I absolutely ADORE how it came out, but all my photos are just awful. (I'm really sick about my dumb photos, can you tell?) Anyway - her cake was just too cute! Not too hard for mama to make either!
Another photo oversight - I didn't get a good photo of her adorable cake smash outfit. (Yes, she had a 2nd outfit, just for the cake smash.) I basically made her a pillow case dress out of bandanas. It was so easy because all the edges are pre-finishd and it turned out soooo cute. I'll dress her up in it again and snap some photos so I can post more pics and maybe a quick tutorial another time. It turned out sooo cute.
Scarlett's little cake smash cake matched her big cake. By this time, the poor birthday girl was EXHAUSTED. She had fun for a little while.
But once she started getting too messy, and accidentally rubbed frosting in her face, she was D O N E!!! We should have stopped while we were ahead.
We tried to get her to enjoy it, but she wasn't having it. Time for some milk and a nap!
Poor girl. We really pushed her to her limit.
As our guests left, there were party favors for the kids - little, fun, inexpensive, western themed gifts wrapped in a bandana. And a Cowgirl Cookie jar (thanks to Bakerella's recipe) for each family.
I was so inspired by many others who shared their own Jessie, Toy Story, or Cowgirl parties online. I wish I could thank everyone who took the time to share the pictures from their own parties. I was a google searching, Pinterest scouring fool as I was planning Scarlett's party. I would absolutely love it if my party helped someone else create a Jessie themed party of their own. Feel free to link to this post, facebook it, and of course PIN IT!!! The more people who are planning a Jessie or Woody party that can find this post, the better!! Gotta pass it on.
Yeah, so my family pretty much teased me about going WAYYYY overboard on this party all day long. And I know, I know. I did go a little crazy. But, hey! I've been waiting to throw a birthday party for my baby for a lonnnnnggg time. So - I did it BIG. haha. And I had so much fun planning and crafting and getting every little thing ready. Josh and I joke that after the baby went to bed, I pretty much didn't see him for two weeks prior to the party. I swear all I did was PARTY stuff. But it was a VERY happy, VERY fun day and everyone had a wonderful time. That makes it all worth it.
(Our shirts were from a group trip to Disneyland we took years ago. The morning of the party, Josh had the genius idea to wear them! So perfect!)
Scarlett can always look back at the photos of her awesome Jessie party and know how crazy her mama was . . .
. . . crazy about HER!
