A First "Bear"thday Celebration!

Several weeks ago I mentioned I would be posting some pictures from the first "bear"thday we celebrated a while ago, but it never seemed like I had the time to get said post together.  However, because this is Thanksgiving vacation for us and thus a break from school, I decided it was the right time to pull up the pictures and share them!  Enjoy!

These were the invitations made by the talented Andrea from "The Green Grass Grows" - an Etsy shop!  Ginger"bear" cookies were also given out with invitations.  :)

This was the hat I made for the birthday boy and one of his favorite bears holding it.  The mini banner in the background is another item I purchased from Andrea and it says "I'm GRRRowing Up!"

Upon entering the house, the guests were greeted by some stuffed bears on a table.  One was draped over this quote I love from Winnie the Pooh which I wanted to incorporate with the bear theme.

This was the "guestbook".  I had seen thumbprint guestbook ideas on Pinterest and loved how unique they were.  Thus I came up with a version for this little party - guests used brown ink to place their thumbprints on a mat around a copy of the birthday invitation (all to be framed later).  They then each drew a bear with their own thumbprints being the bear bodies and signed their names near their bears.  I love how it came out!

This was a moss covered number one on one of the tables with some balloons attached.  Just a bit of fun earthy decor!  

We had "bear"gers and other yummy bear themed food at the party!  These were some food signs.  :)

This is a picture of one of the "bear"gers!  :)

This is a photograph of the dessert table laden with cake and cupcakes of different flavors and colors set up on burlap cloth.  The frame behind them contains a collage of pictures showing the birthday boy when he was born (in between the letters spelling "THEN") and the birthday boy as he is now.

Here is another view of the table.  I swirled two flavors of cake together to make the wooded look you see for the stump.  The outside of the stump (dark part) was pure molded chocolate.   We also included some cupcakes made to look like toadstools and some made to look like two ponds with some fish jumping in and out (red swedish candy fish).

For favors, I made Hibernation Preparation bags for each family because visiting bears should never return home hungry, right?   The fun mix inside included honeycomb cereal (for honey), swedish candy fish (for fish),  and spiced gumdrops (for berries).

I'll leave you with one of my favorite parts of the birthday planning and decoration - the birthday boy's very own first "cub"cake (that was one of Andrea's brilliant ideas)!  :)  The cupcake container is one of the Wilton bear ones (I posted a link below if you are interested).  :)

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