Tailgate 2nd Birthday Party

For our littlest guy's second birthday, figuring out what type of party to throw was no problem.  With balls being one of his loves (any type of ball...footballs, baseballs, soccer balls, volleyballs, basketballs you name it...) and his birthday being near the beginning of football season I knew that we needed to throw him a birthday tailgate party...and so we did.

The Invite
The first part and one of the most important parts of any party is the invite.  It is what sets the stage and gives the party guests a glimpse of what they can expect.  It also happens to be one of my favorite parts to make.  When I was a kid my parents bought me a Crayola Card Making Kit.  I loved it.  I would make cards for everyone with the plethora of art supplies, stickers and card phrases that came in it.  I was pretty sure that I had a future at Hallmark!  ;)  In the past I have created cards that I spent weeks on; designing, cutting, printing, and crafting.  They were fun but took way to much time for what I've got available these days.  For this party I found an invitation online that I liked and basically created my own photoshopped version.  I can't take much credit for them since I didn't really design it, but it did turn out pretty cute!

Once the invite was out, I continued collecting and studying my Pinterest ideas and worked to create the rest of the party while also working to keep it a bit more low-key and low-stress than previous parties had been.  Here is the result:

The Decorations:
Decorations are always important to me.  As a designer, I just can't help but create a space that is unlike the day-to-day; a space that turns our home from a house to an event space.  Although there is a lot of stress involved in party planning, making and hosting I have to admit that I love it.  I love the creativity, I love opening our home to guests and most importantly I love making something special to commemorate the big days of our special little boys.  For this party, I wanted to go with the football theme, but it was also important to me that it remain generic.  For basically anyone that knows our family even a little it is no secret that we are big Michigan fans.  We bleed Maize & Blue, but for the party I wanted everyone to feel welcome in our home...even the few Buckeyes that were invited.  For this reason I encouraged everyone to wear their favorite sporting attire and then went with a very neutral color palette: brown, black, white and grassy green.

The dining room is always party central at our house, and this party was no different.  I made our dining table the main focus by creating a scaled-down football field for the table's cover.  Then I made a simple Happy Birthday banner for the windows and finished it off with some crete paper and poms that I picked up at the Dollar Tree.

Happy Birthday banner on the left windows.  Football table cover at the center table.

I loved how the football field turned out!  I made it by spray painting the numbers, letters and lines on some indoor/outdoor grass carpet from Menards after drawing up scaled a plan of a football field using dimensions I found online.  Considering it only cost me $10 and a few hours to make, I was very pleased.  PLUS as an added bonus, I found the little orange goal posts at the DollarTree as part of a finger football game and they turned out to be almost exactly the correct size that I needed to match the scale of my field perfectly, making this type-A/perfectionist momma very happy!  :)

A number '2' that I made along with the crete paper and poms that I purchased from the Dollar Tree.

To go with family tradition, I had some M&Ms out on the table for pre-dinner munchies, and I placed them in some football shaped bowls that I found at the dollar store.

Concessions:
In addition to the Dining Room decorations, I had two other main areas of focus: The Concessions and The End Zone.  Since this was a tailgate/football party, I wanted to focus the food for the party around things that you might actually find at a football concession stand and wanted to decorate the area with items that would make that feeling come alive.  I kept things very simple by using my kitchen cabinets and shelving to feature the decorations and my kitchen counter to set out the food for the party.  On my left cabinet I made a chalk-board style sign using a piece of black pasteboard and actual chalk to write out the menu.  On the right, I made a similar sign posting the event's MVP (our little birthday boy) Stats.  Then, I simply made a small "Concessions" banner by printing out each letter on a piece of cardstock and using small yellow paper clips to hang them between the signs.  Finally, to bring home the Concessions idea, I also pinned up small chip bags that I purchased at Sam's Club on the shelves below the banner.

For the food, we kept the menu very simple with football-named tailgate foods: 

• Hail Mary Hot Dogs
• Long Bomb Brats
• Hook & Lateral Hamburgers
• Passing Yards Pasta Salad. *
• Punter Potato Salad
• Victory Veggies & Dip**
• Fullback Fruit Salad ***
• Cornerback Crackers & Cheese 
• Chop Block Chips
• Penalty Flag Jello Jigglers

Notes:

*/** For the Pasta Salad and Veggies & Dip I found a great football-shaped bowl and football-shaped veggie tray at the DollarTree. 

***For the Fruit Salad, I found a watermelon football helmet on Pinterest that I thought would be a fun and easy addition to the party.  Since I knew my dad (who is pretty artsy) would be around the morning of the party I figured it would be a great task to give him.  I was right!  Not only did he make the helmet for me but he went all out for it and said that if he wasn't going to make a Michigan helmet there was no point in making one!  ;)  Go Blue!

The concessions with the food.  You can't see the plates good, but my hubby found some perfect ones that were very sturdy and matched the party wonderfully at Sam's Club for me.

Dad's Michigan watermelon football helmet!

For the drinks, we kept things very simple with a "Wet Your Whistle" zone including a sports-style water cooler, some Gatorade and some soda.

The End Zone:
The End Zone was the final focus of the party, with a touchdown table full of goodies to celebrate our MVP.  Here I kept the decorations pretty simple as well, making a goal post out of yellow crepe paper,  more poms from the Dollar Tree, a home-printed 'End Zone' banner, and some game plays made on more black poster board.  I also made a runner out of left over grass carpet to set all of the goodies on.

The goodies themselves included a football shaped cake (made with a Wilton football cake pan from JoAnn Fabrics), some football brownies, some vanilla cupcakes topped with "grassy" frosting and mini foam fingers (we're #1) that I found I Amazon, and finally some popcorn tubs with cheese popcorn and caramel corn (made by my Mom) to keep with the concessions/football theme.

The Game(s):
With so many kids coming to the party I knew it would be too much work to coordinate games for them all to play but wanted to come up with some game-time fun for the kids.  My husband borrowed his corn-hole set from work (a tailgate must) and then I purchased a gigantic football and a target football toss on Amazon for the kids to play with.  Unfortunately the gigantic football was a major let down.  I was so looking forward to watching 20 little kids play with a football bigger than they were, but when we opened the package we found that the ball already had a hole in the seam.  My father-in-law tried to patch it with the patch that came with, but it wouldn't hold, so other than a few pictures of the ball right after it was inflated, no one was really able to play with it.  The target football game seemed to be a pretty big hit with several of the bigger boys though!

For the really big "kids" (aka adults) we decided that there should be an actual game on for people to watch during the party...and what better game to watch than the Michigan game?  For this, my husband again borrowed a projector from work and then set up a "big screen" in the garage for people to check out of so inclined.

The gigantic football before it was completely deflated.

Hubby setting up the big screen.

Playing both games at once before the party started.

The Ticket Holders:
The invitation, decorations, food and treats are all wonderful, but what really makes it a PARTY are the guests!  Although it is a lot of work, we love having family and friends (from both long ago and those we are still getting to know) over for fun, food and fellowship and that is exactly what we did!  We had close to 40 people show up for the party (many of which remembered to wear their favorite sports gear) and had a great time playing in the back yard and the boys' playroom inside.

Sorry ladies...He's All Mine.

The Half-Time Show:
When dinner was over, it was time for the half-time show, also known as Happy Birthday to You!  We lit the candle, gathered around and sang Happy Birthday to our little man.  He loved it...or most of it.

Happy Boy!  Can't believe he is TWO!

Game Day Souvenir:
Finally, the party was almost at it's end and it was time for our friends to get their littles home and in bed.  Before they left though, we made sure each kid got to take a Game Day Souvenir home (choosing between some Amazon inflatable footballs or DollarTree foam footballs).

"Thank you for coming.  We hope you had a BALL!.  Please take a ball (and some sweet goodies) to enjoy at home!"