Airplane Birthday Party

Just a few months back my little boy turned 5! How did that happen? I’m still a bit dumbfounded by it all, and now that the end of his last year of preschool is creeping up on us, I’m feeling all the mom feels. I’m going to go sob in the corner for a bit, be right back. Ok…I’m better now. Holy moly you guy! FIVE. Ok, I swear I’m fine.

At this point in party planning, my boys are pretty clear what kind of parties they’d like to have. And they are still little enough to really think mom’s parties are pretty cool. Believe me friends, I’m soaking this in. Soon it’ll be Chucky Cheese torture and “mom can you just drop me off at the mall”. So when our little intrepid traveler who loves jet planes said he wanted an airplane party “but jet planes like Delta momma” I was game. After all there are a thousand vintage airplane parties out there but very few airliner parties. It was fun to actually plan this party in our new kitchen/family room space. Last year his 4th birthday Penguin Party was in our under construction house.

So I enlisted the help of my friends, Eileen at Honey & Lou Baking Company to make some stellar cookies. I’m mean take a look at those!? Have you ever seen anything so lovely? To sweet Madison of Madison Rae Photography, to take the pictures. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s get a photographer. It takes all the stress off trying to capture the party and makes them events I actually get to enjoy. P.S. how cute is his airplane shirt!?

We had the sandwiches for the adults, the fruit and the cake catered by Whole Foods. I love having Whole Foods make me a plain vanilla cake that I then decorate at home. A simple way to make it your own with very little work.

For this party we got these sweet white boxes that look like baggage for the kid’s lunches. I premade PB&J sandwiches cutting them out with an airplane shaped cookie cutter, added a cute juice box, popcorn and grapes. Doing it all in advance and packaging it up made the actually party go much smoother. They all sat down and just started eating. No fuss and easy clean up. Plus how adorable do those “bags” look? I got the blue paper map placemats from Zazzle.

I had the airplane invitations made at Minted. They actually customize colors if you ask them, so I asked for a light blue and navy for the invitations to go with the adorable large map, which was the focal point of the dessert table, also from Minted.

The dessert table is always my absolute favorite to put together. And the kids are still young enough to adore them. I found these adorable white chocolate airplane lollipops on Etsy and had them made in a light grey. The meringue clouds were an easy night before adventure. I found this idea and recipe from Francois at Sweet Explorations, using a ziplock bag to pipe the dollops of meringue together to make the sweet clouds. These bake on low for an hour and a half and then sit in the oven overnight so they were a breeze to make and absolutely perfect on the table.

For the last several parties I’ve thrown the kiddos, I’ve gotten a plain white cake at Whole Foods and decorated it myself. I had this idea this time around to use cotton candy as “clouds” on the cake. I poked some chunks of cotton candy onto skewers and put them on the top of the cake so the wooden jetplane I glued on a skewer looks like it is flying. An easy and adorable way to take a grocery store cake and turn it into the true centerpiece. Plus you don’t have to worry about food dye allergies with those heavily frosted ones.

A couple of nights before party day, hubby and I sat on the couch folding and hot gluing paper airplanes onto cotton twine to make those adorable garlands we hung from the ceiling. It just takes a little bit of time to do it yourself  or you can buy them premade off Etsy here. Using round honeycomb white balls of different sizes, I made a garland for the mantel.

I painted the outline of jetplanes on the favors bags, simple muslin bags. I filled them with cookies, a pair of flight wings and stickers.

After the kiddos finished lunch and we sang happy birthday to Cade, I had the kiddos come to the table and they got to decorate their own airplane wood gliders. What a fun craft. They then took them outside for our only game of trying to fly them through a hoola hoop. Hubby was in charge of this activity and that gave me time to hang out with the other mommas. I think all kids really want sometimes is to just run around with each other. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I kinda wish our kiddos had warmer weather birthdays so we could do bounce houses, water activities and more outdoor play but they are all winter babies.

What a sweet day filled with friends and memories. Seriously, can’t. stop. crying. How is that little dude five!? Thank you Madison Rae Photography for capturing the day, beautifully as always. I can’t recommend her enough.