Cinco De Mayo Third Birthday Party

As a fun finale to our week of birthday celebrations last week, we had a Cinco de Mayo Fiesta for Milo and his good buddy Christian (maybe you remember him from Milo’s first birthday party?). Christian’s mom is my good friend Ivy, and we thought it would be fun to rent a big bounce house and split the cost. Serendipitously, about a week later there was a Livingsocial Deal for a bounce house rental. Done and done. We figured we’d just have a big bbq, and then realized it was planned for Cinco de Mayo, so we thought we’d run with that.

I threw together the invite with a Mexican Flag motif based loosely on these. I thought we could make some for simple decor. (I use the software Pages for all of my basic invites and design projects.) I had the stack of invitations printed and ready to send, then it was too late to send them, so I just attached a screen shot to an email. Classy. I’m obviously getting more and more laid back as I grow up:)

The flags were super easy to make, and turned out darling. Of course, it rained all morning the day of the party, so everything was a little wet. But by the time the party started the sun was shining and weather was fine. The little drips of water from the roof and tissue paper didn’t mix well, but we were lucky and only had a couple flag casualties!

We served a fun and easy taco bar with chicken from off the grill and bowls of toppings. We also whipped up some kid-friendly quesadillas right on the BBQ. Everyone enjoyed hunks of a sweet pineapple, and we had lemon water and limeade in our new drink dispensers (18 bones at Costco. For real. How could we resist?!) I ordered the un-decorated chocolate cake from Costco (since it worked so well last year!) and cut out some super tiny mexican flag pendants with an exacto knife to use as the cake toppers. Turned out cute, right?

Our good friends the Woods let us host the party at their home. It’s so rare around DC for young families to live in a house with a yard (and a porch, and a driveway…) that it was a total luxury to have a party there! I think it made everyone (all 1o or so families that attended) a little antsy for a home. I mean, as much as I adore my 950 square feet of heaven, a patch of grass to call my own sounds divine. In time, right? I digress. Back to the fiesta…

The bounce house was a huge hit. Pun intended. There were fifteen or so kids bouncing and sliding for two hours while the adults ate and chatted. Everyone had a great time and no one suffered major injuries. I was thrilled.

After bouncing and eating, we brought out the cake. Cute Christian thought the singing was a little too loud.

These two were adorable making a wish!

Finally, we had everyone line up, youngest to oldest, and take a swing at the piñata. It was pretty funny. The first time through the line of kids, it seemed the thing hadn’t even been touched. Then we went backwards from oldest to youngest (hoping the older boys could break it up a bit!) and it finally started to bust. Milo got some clean hits, then Christian had the final swings.

I love the stampede when a piñata breaks! The candy and toys were gathered into treat bags in about 45 seconds.

I think everyone made out pretty well with their goodies. Milo was thrilled with a bag full of candy all for him.

The treat bags were simple brown lunchbags. I wanted to print on them (like this) but my printer wasn’t having any of that. So, at the last minute I decided to design a little ¡gracias! to cut out of vinyl with my Silhouette. Worked like a charm. (I was proud of myself for even connecting the letters to that it was all one sticker instead of individual letters. Yeah, pretty smart.)