Michal's Terrific Telephone Party

Long before my daughter could talk, she would have lengthy pretend conversations on the phone, babbling away, pausing, and then laughing heartily. Land line or cell, real or fake, she's never met a phone she didn't like.
I saw several parties on Online with themes based on the child's interests and was inspired to do a telephone themed party for my daughter's second birthday.

Vintage phones were my jumping off point and a general vintage theme emerged as well. The phone book provided our color scheme - black, white, yellow, and red and also made its way into the decorations.

My Aunt designed the invitations for me based on the theme and colors. She used her Cricut cutting machine to cut out letters for a Happy Birthday sign and three sizes of telephone silhouettes, for decorating.

I snagged old phone books from family members and my church, (where we had the party), and used the pages to make
bunting on tables, and help transform a bulletin board into a large Happy Birthday sign. I created other signs for the party from a notes page I found in the books.

We used tables and chairs, vases and platters from the church. Luckily, everything worked with the color scheme and vintage feel of things. I used vintage linens on the tables and, incorporating another of Michal's favorite things, did vases of yellow flowers.

We had the party in the morning so as not to disrupt nap time in the afternoon. My husband made Banana Blueberry,
Chocolate Chip and Lemon Cranberry muffins, and we served them with cut up bananas and apple slices.
Drinks were orange and apple juice, milk, coffee, tea and hot chocolate. For dessert we did yellow and chocolate cake, and Munchkins, (donut holes), because Munchkin is Daddy's nickname for Michal.

I wanted to have fun activities for everyone. Tin Can Telephones seemed perfect for the kids, so I had my whole family save cans for
months, and I set up a station with all the necessary supplies and instructions for the project. For the younger kids
I photocopied telephone themed pages from a vintage coloring book and set up a kids sized coloring table. For everyone,
I had instructions for the Telephone Game (the one where you pass the message), and a large phone silhouette mounted on the wall for Pin the Dial on the Telephone, my take on Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

As favors, my husband made chocolate suckers, shaped like vintage telephones, using molds I found from Candy.com. On Ebay I found a vintage coloring book, put out by a telephone company from Texas, teaching kids about telephones. My mom photocopied it, and reassembled the copies in book form. In addition to the sucker, each child got a coloring book and a pack of crayons to take home.

I was so happy with how the party went. The muffins were devoured, everyone had a blast, and most importantly so did Michal. She danced to the music, played with her friends, and really enjoyed opening all her presents.