Third birthday party planning

OH MY - our boys are THREE!!!!  Yes, I am in need of some posts to celebrate.  This year we did have a specific theme in mind, so when I asked the boys what they wanted to do for their birthday, Carter kept saying red.  So I said, challenge accepted, red theme it is!!  So EASY and we had a lot of fun with it too.  The other request that came up often was cupcakes.  

This is the first birthday we actually got to have at our own home, which was really fun.  Thank you to my sister for hosting the last two years, she was happy to not clean for an additional birthday party.  I remember there first birthday was super stressful to pull together because I was in a wedding the night before and I was trying to plan and buy everything in MN.  Last year wasn't too bad, but we still had to throw in 8 hours of travel, so we were really happy to be able to have fun, taking our time to get things together the night before.

I knew I wanted to have lots of red balloons and ended up buying this at little tank at Walmart for $20, I figured it was quicker, easier and about as cheap as going to the party store - have you ever waited for balloons, nothing quick about those places.  The downside, they lost their helium by the party:(  Then we had  bit of fun with some left over helium!  Keith sounded like a total creepo - its was pretty funny.

These hats put my crafting skills to the max - Notice I have not pictured the backsides.  Good thing I only had four hats to make, Keith was not impressed with my two-day turnaround time.  I should have made one for Alec, but was short on supplies.  

I put Keith in charge of baking the cupcakes - he is a much better baker than me.

we put added a bit of birthday fun for the boys to wake up to!  Unfortunately, I was at the Race for a Cure bright and early and didn't get to be there when they woke up.  

More party pics to come!