The Angry Birds Birthday

My wee guy has just turned 3!  How exciting!  My husband and I were reminiscing about the long weeks we spent in NICU doing Kangaroo Mothercare with this tiny 4lb (give or take half a pound) baby lying on our chests; it felt like an eternity and we wondered if he'd be tiny forever.  But as sure as the sun rises, our little man has grown into a tall 3 year old who is still into noisy toys, balls, and the new obsession: Angry Birds.

The wee guy has learnt to play Angry Birds both on my iPhone, and on my mother-in-law's iPad2.  He could play for hours if nobody was watching!

Someone's ready to go with spoon in hand!

To celebrate this little obsession I decided to theme our little family celebration for his 3rd birthday.  Each year we try to catch up with friends who we spent weeks with in hospital (the NICU), and have the immediate family and godparents to join us.  My mother-in-law organised the cake which was uh-MAZING (and if you want the email address of the lady who made it, leave a hollaback (comment) at the bottom of this post).
The decorations were loads of fun to put together, even though as per usual I hadn't much time or energy.  But they looked fab!

1. With a bit of inspiration from this Pin, and an obliging husband to help stick bits on the balloons, we made some Angry Birds balloons to hang from our dining window.

2. I bought some red tinted cups at The Warehouse and used up a bunch of white 'Introducing...' hospitality stickers someone left at my house and came up with these red Angry Bird cups.

3. I scoured the house for boxes which hadn't made it to the recycling bin (and emptied out a few almost empty cereal boxes) and covered them in brown postal paper that I'd drawn wood patterns on with a felt tip pen (inspiration from this Pin), and then drew 'greedy piggy' faces on to more of our collection of green pit balls (when I came up with that idea apparently I was the best mum ever!), and used them for the backdrop for our food table.  Add in some rubber duckies, some clear display stands and a couple of other props and we were set!

4. Using lime jelly in ramekins, decorated with random green/white jelly ovals and cut marshmallows, soft licorice and wine gums, I made some 'greedy piggy' jellies.

5. I made up my own recipe for blueberry and licorice cupcakes and using this Pin I made a much quicker (and WAYYY less food-colour-y) version of the blue birds cupcakes.  It was just basic buttercream frosting decorated with cut marshmallows, soft licorice and wine gums.

So there we go!  Some quick, easy and affordable ideas for an Angry Birds birthday that was a real hit for my 3 year old birthday boy.  And a week later, the balloons are still up and the leftover cups are still being used!