Birthday Surprises and Banners

My oldest daughter turned 3 last Thursday. I can't be old enough to have a 3 year old, and yet, here I am.  She is one of the smartest, funniest, sweetest, most beautiful little girls I know. 

For her birthday, I thought it would be fun to surprise her when she woke up in the morning.  My husband and I (but mostly me) blew up about 100 balloons and filled her room with them. 

When she woke up and saw the balloons everywhere we didn't get the initial response we were looking for. She said, "Why is this a mess?" Once we told her that it was ok that her room was a mess with balloons and started playing with them, she decided that it was pretty awesome and had fun with them all day. Check out this awesome bed head.

I got the balloons at Walmart for $4 a bag of 75.  A pretty inexpensive way to make a birthday extra special.  Also, I used an air pump to blow them up.  I am pretty sure I would have died if I had blown them all up by mouth. 

Another thing that I wanted to show is actually something that I made two years ago for her 1st birthday party.  I wanted to create a birthday banner that I could reuse every year that would never go out of style.  I love the way that it turned out.  I used doodle bug paper and am so glad that I did since it is so timeless.  This is what it looked like the first year that I made it.

And now what it looked like this year.  It still looks brand new and will be the perfect birthday sign for every girl birthday at our house.  If I ever have a boy, I will make a boy version as well.  Until then, this works perfectly for us.

Overall, I like to use inexpensive and simple ways to make a birthday special, and these were perfect for that.