All About Owls

Mini-Man turned one last week. We celebrated with loads of crazy owls. So many people commented on how cute it turned out that I thought I would share my inspiration for the theme.

The balloon owls were inspired by the owl party decorations at Pinning with a Purpose. I was going to hang them from the ceiling too, but I ran out of time. There were owls galore anyway and nobody missed them.

The balloon owls may not have been hanging from the ceiling, but they inspired a whole tree. The trunk is cut from a roll of craft paper. The oak leaves were printed onto card stock from this template at craftjr.com. I printed out a couple on copy paper and arranged them so that I could fit two on each sheet and then photocopied it onto green card stock. The lighter colored leaves are from the same template but reduced in size so that four leaves fit on one page of cardstock. If I did this again, I would definitely use a non-lobed leaf template.

The owl sandwiches, pretzel branches, and grape foliage were inspired by this post over at fleeting thing. We also had turkey and cheese sandwiches with cucumbers and black olives for eyes but I didn't get a picture of those.

The flock of owl cupcakes were modeled on this picture on Pinterest. We removed the tops of double stuffed oreos and then pressed m&ms into the filling for the eyes. You can't really split the filling so I put all of those lonely tops into a ziploc bag. I'll have chocolate cookie crumbs for a cheesecake crust later.  The beak is a whole cashew.  I used the Barefoot Contessa's Chocolate Ganache Cupcake recipe. It's so easy. Press the oreos into the ganache as soon as you dip the cupcakes and they will adhere to the top. No mess. No fuss. Just don't bake the cupcakes as long as the recipe says. I did 25 minutes but I would recommend starting at 22 or 23.

The picture which inspired these little gift bags used doilies for the owls' tummies but none of the kids seemed to care that my version was rather slap and dash: strips of colored copy paper adhered to a paper bag with a loop of tape. 

Maybe this will give you some ideas for an owl party of your own.