This past weekend, we celebrated our sweet boy’s third birthday.  It was a perfect day filled with everything Wesley loved: family, friends, balloons, diggers and of course birthday cupcakes. The smiles and giggles were in abundance.

When I first asked Wesley what kind of birthday party he wanted to have, I thought for sure he would say something along the lines of Daniel Tigers Neighborhood, but to my surprise it took about 2 seconds for him to yell out, “I WANT A CONSTRUCTION PARTY, MAMA!”….and that was that.

I kept the party decor pretty simple and instead focused most of my time and energy on the details. As my husband would say, “the details are my thing” and SO much fun to do! We had a few balloons here and there, a few construction cones, some CAUTION tape and road signs but our food table was where it was at!

We served up spare tires (mini chocolate donuts), 2×4’s (veggie sticks), lumber (vanilla wafer cookies), nuts & bolts (Chex-mix), boulders (meatballs), and gravel (Reese’s Pieces).  We also had signal lights (watermellon, canteloup, honeydew), crew punch (juice boxes), a parking lot (apples slices/grapes) and plenty of safety cones (Bugals) to go around. Did I mention I love the details? It was all so awesome and oh, so delicious.

The snacks/appetizers were quite the hit, but before everyone could fill up too much, we had to haul out the Birthday cupcakes and desserts! So a little backstory here. Cupcakes are kind of my thing. I do them for every birthday, celebration, and party. I love baking them and decorating them to fit any theme. My husband and I had cupcakes at our wedding and now I reuse the tiers. Not going to lie. I get alittle sappy everytime I pull them out. But I love it and it’s so special.

Ok, back to dessert. In addition to the cupcakes, I also made sand pudding (aka a sand pit). Both were obviously a hit. Our recipe for sand pudding is here:

For the filling: combine 8oz softened cream cheese, 1/4 cup softened butter, and 2/3 cup confectionery sugar. In a separate bowl mix together  2 boxes of french vanilla pudding mix and 2 3/4 cups of milk. Pour pudding mixture into cream cheese mixture and then fold in 12 oz of cool whip.

For the “sand” topping: pour 1 box of vanilla wafers and 2 Oreo cookies into a food processor and mix.

Alternate layers: sand, pudding, sand, pudding. Enjoy!

To round out the day, we also had plenty of outdoor construction themed activities set up for the kids. Safety cone toss, sand box with diggers, a tool bench and saw horses.

All in all, despite the hazy, hot and humid 90 degree weather we all had to endure, it was a fun-filled day of love, happiness, and making memories.

The little ones left with sandy toes, big smiles and thank you bags filled to the brim with construction goodies. Happy 3rd Birthday, my sweet boy. May all your wishes come true.