Birthdays deserve to be a BIG celebration. Deciding on the theme is the starting point to planning the perfect party for your special kiddo!  Max always chooses a theme that makes DIY creating a lot of fun….this year was no exception.  He LOVES karate so a Ninja Themed Birthday Party won for birthday #5 for our little man.  Once the idea was settled upon, his mama’s  creative gears started turning.   After a few sleepless nights (because she CANNOT turn that brain off when she is planning) Neon Ninja came to life!

From the birthday cake…to the fun activities…to the party favors…to the food….every part of the ninja party was planned in detail!  Our family is rather large, so many of these details are planned with both the kiddos AND the adults attending in  mind.  I must take this time to say that Lauren’s parties always have a large turnout because they are always so much fun!

The Cake ~

Lauren orders all of her cakes and cookies from Becky’s Cakes n’ Caboodles.  She sends all of her crazy ideas and Becky ALWAYS rises to the occasion.

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Birthday party themes are a big deal in our family.  As each year rolls around, there always seems to be a new favorite animal, superhero or fantasy figure that creeps into our world.  It is only fitting that this new love, whatever it may be, becomes the theme for that year’s celebration.  This year, Addi chose to have a purr-fect cat birthday party!

Party Dress ~

Of course, it wouldn’t be a purr-fect birthday party without a purr-fect dress!  Am I right?  Lauren ordered this adorable set from Etsy.  It was the perfect party outfit from hairbow to skirt!   She was so excited to wear it for her party…check out everything Sweet Sophia Designs has to offer below:

Sweet Sophia Designs has such adorable birthday sets! Check them out with this link!

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Two year old Max declared he wanted a “Just Max” party for his third birthday.  As is usually the case when having a discussion with Max, you can’t help but find yourself chuckling at his responses.  Life is definitely a lot funnier with him in our world!  After a bit, Lauren (his mommy) asked, “Why not?”  And that, my friends, is how the PHOTOriffic birthday party theme came to life!

In true Lauren fashion, creative ideas started flowing right away.  This girl definitely knows how to take a birthday party to the next level.  Even more perfect is that she got to mix her love of photography with her love of party planning!  The end result was a fun photoriffic birthday party theme that can be used for any age…child or adult!

Planning ~

You will need to decide if you want to use just a few pictures or if you want to use a large amount of various faces.  As mentioned earlier, Lauren, (who we call Photo Lo) has an abundance of fun candids so the choice was easy for her.  There are so many fun “faces” of Max that she couldn’t use just one or two.  I, personally, am glad we used a lot of photos as it was fun to reminisce about the different ones throughout the evening.  In fact, there were many responses of, “Bring ET back!”….this stemming from a short period of time when Max wore an ET mask everywhere!

Organizing the photos in one folder on your computer is very helpful.  In this era, we tend to keep a lot of pictures on our phones and on social media apps.  The most time consuming part is going through those pictures. If you have ever searched for a particular picture on your phone that was taken months earlier, you know this many times take longer than you expect.  Once you find ones you think you will use,  copy them into the folder you have created.  This will prove to be very beneficial as you start creating your party props.

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