So many of you DM’d me with questions after I posted about Four’s second birthday party on Instagram. I covered a lot of it in stories, but I wanted to put it on the blog too (with links!) for any of you who want to come back to this when you’re planning a party or looking for inspo.

It feels like we JUST had Four’s first birthday party like yesterday, but it’s somehow been a year already. I guess a lot has happened this year. Right now, Four is obsessed with Disney Cars, so we did a Cars themed-birthday party with all black, white, yellow, and red.

We decided to have the party at our house, so I knew I needed to have to bring in some fun activities to keep the kids busy. I rented a full-on ball pit and slides from Bambini Soft Play Rentals and oh my gosh… it was a HIT. The kids played on it for hours (literally, Four did the slide like 30 times), and I loved that everything was soft so we didn’t have to worry about anyone getting hurt. You can see some examples of what they offer on their Instagram page. They let us customize the ball pit and we got to choose the ball colors too!

I also rented a bounce house, tables, and chairs for the kids from Bounce Universe. Based on the age of the guests (all around 2 years old), I chose the “learning club bounce house” — it was perfect. Definitely not too big or “scary” for the kids. We also had taller cocktail tables for the adults a place to put their food and drinks while they were standing and talking. *funny story – I totally forgot to get tablecloths for the cocktail tables so we used trash bags (at least they were black lol).

The night before the party, my nieces and mother-in-law blew up this amazing balloon arch with Duncan while I was out running errands. It turned out so good. Pro tip: use this balloon inflater to blow up your balloons so you don’t have to do them automatically. It will save you SO MUCH time. I also got 50 balloons blown up for the ceiling at my local grocery store.

For food, we had The Hamburger Man again this year and they were a MAJOR hit. They bring EVERYTHING and make it so easy. You don’t have to worry about paper plates or clean-up or anything. I can’t recommend them enough. We’ll probably have them for every birthday party we host lol. Since I know how picky a lot of kids can be, we also brought in Chick Fil A for the kiddos that didn’t want burgers or hot dogs.

If you know me at all, you know I’m absolutely obsessed with J.Raes Dallas. I picked up cookies from them *almost* every day when I was pregnant with Blake. I don’t know what it is, but their cookies are just DIFFERENT. I love how these turned out too… so fun. I sent each kid home with a goodie bag cookie and had Kirsten McFarlan Designs create the cutest little tags to include.

I knew I wanted a fun cake, so I ordered this amazing tiered cake from Goodies Cakery. Absolutely love how it turned out. It was (almost) too good to cut.

Custom cups and napkins were from The Essential Market. I love how easy they are to work with — they literally come up with the design for you and you just approve what they create. They did such a good job!

That’s all I can think of for now. You can shop all of the items I ordered online/used for the party here.