I’m really not sure how I’m writing about my daughter’s FOURTH birthday, but alas, here we are. My tiny, 5 lb. 6 oz. preemie baby girl turned four on January 13th! We had the best time celebrating the amazing little girl that she is, and I wanted to share what we did to celebrate “pandemic-style” and still make it fun for her.
As you know, things are really funky these days. Parties and events aren’t what they were before, therefore birthdays aren’t really, either. It was so hard for me to scale back and keep things small, but I definitely didn’t want to jeopardize anyone’s healthy or comfort for a party, including our own. My mom and dad always made birthday super duper special and a huge deal growing up, so naturally I’ve carried that with me and do the same in our home. This is always Daisy’s first birthday really understanding what a birthday is, so we wanted to make it fun for her! So here’s what we did to stay as safe as possible while still making it an unforgettable birthday for our Daisy girl.
BIRTHDAY + YARD SIGN
Surprise 1: The birthday tree. We gave Daisy the option of taking down the tree or leaving it up for her birthday, and she insisted we leave it up because it makes her happy. So we decided to leave up the little pencil tree, and when she went to bed the night before I turned it into a birthday tree! Jimmy had the idea of putting her presents under it, too, and making it even more exciting when she woke up in the morning. OH! And Daisy’s elf on the shelf apparently got special permission from Santa to come back and celebrate her birthday, so he was around all week and left when she went to sleep on her birthday. That crazy Popcorny!
Surprise 2: We wanted to do something super exciting to light up Daisy’s face, and shout her birthday from the rooftops. Or in this case, from our front yard! The ladies over at Card My Yard hooked us up with the most EPIC birthday yard sign, letting everyone in our neighborhood know that it was the birthday girl’s big day. We all walked outside in the morning to take the dog out, and Daisy was so surprised (and a little confused) to see the giant letters almost her height in the front yard, all for her. We live in a small neighborhood and pretty much everyone has known Daisy since she was born, so it was cool to see everyone walking by and waiving to her and wishing her a happy birthday! Such a fun way to celebrate a special occasion of any kind (baby showers, weddings, engagements, retirement – you name it, they do it), and you can customize the colors, pictures and wording. You can even use code MYJAX10 for 10% off your next yard sign. Daisy LOVED it!
For the rest of her birthday, we let her choose every meal (she chose blueberry confetti pancakes for breakfast, Chick-Fil-A for lunch and pizza with the neighbors for dinner), and took her to the zoo for a few hours. Oh, and opened looottssss of presents throughout the day. She said it was a GREAT birthday!
BIRTHDAY PARTY
The birthday party was the tricky part. We have a lot of wonderful friends and so does Daisy, and we would have loved to have had them all here for a giant birthday party, but … COVID. I asked Daisy what she wanted to do for her birthday and her only requests were rainbows, a bounce house, and a rainbow birthday cake with cherries on top and gummy bears inside (no clue where she got the cake idea from). About a week before her birthday I finally solidified the plans and invited a few close friends and neighbors who I knew had been behaving.
The party was Saturday afternoon, and we kept everything outside. It was her first “real” birthday party, and I was so excited to share in her excitement! We rented the most magical bounce house we could find (which arrived at 9 a.m. and she started bouncing on immediately), I ordered a few fun rainbow treats and decor, and Pretty Pretty Party saved my life with this INCREDIBLE rainbow balloon arch. Seriously, it left me speechless! (P.s. If you need any kind of balloon decor, she can do anything. Tell her Blakeley sent you for $20 off!) I’d planned to make the arch the party backdrop with a pretty rainbow dessert table in front, but it was insanely windy and everything was blowing over, so we had to improvise.
We had a picnic station on the ground for the kids, camping chairs for the adults, and plenty of space in the yard for social distancing. I kept food simple with grab-and-go subs, Chick-Fil-A nuggets, individual bags of chips and fruit snacks, and a giant bottle of hand sanitizer. The cake … that’s a whole story on its own. I should have hired a local bakery to do it, but I decided to tackle that bad boy on my own. Apart from the icing cracking and the dog jumping on the table and eating one of the layers before putting it together, it actually turned out okay! It had cherries on top, gummy bears in the middle, and Daisy loved it and that’s all that mattered :). (I also made a matching cupcake to stick the candle in for her to blow out, so she didn’t spit all over the cake. Again, COVID times.)
We brought out the fire pit, blankets, hand warmers and a hot cocoa bar (with adult fixings on the side) once it started getting cooler, and let the kids jump their little hearts out on that bounce house until they came to pick it up at 7:00 that night. It was such a great day, and I am SO glad we were able to pull off a fun celebration for our best girl! Hopefully you’ll be able to have a safe and fun birthday for your littles, too :).
Shop the rainbow party decor:
Shop Daisy’s birthday outfit:
I hope daisy had an amazing 😉 birthday 🎁 Daisy’s birthday was so much fun -audrey
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So glad you could be there to celebrate with us 🙂 We love you!