IRIS' HALLOWEEN BIRTHDAY PARTY WITH FLYING TIGER

*We were gifted the party decor and some of the food from Flying Tiger Copenhagen in return for a blog post, all words and images are my own and honest*

Planning a birthday party for a 2 year old little girl is something I haven't done before, i've planned a 2nd birthday party for Lucas but to chose a theme for Iris was something I couldn't even begin to decide on. I batted back and fourth on not throwing her a party as Lucas didn't have one this year, I thought about her favourite characters and then it came to me! With Iris' first birthday it was a completely stereotypical girly birthday party. As our rainbow baby she had a unicorns and rainbow themed party and it was pretty special. You can see it HERE, but this time round I thought, she's born a just over a week before Halloween, she LOVES pumpkins, loves halloween films and is obsessed with yelling the word "SPOOKY" so there it was, I had it! A HALLOWEEN BIRTHDAY PARTY! A complete no brainer.

We decided to keep it small scale as our house isn't huge and just invite Iris' little friends and a couple of Lucas'. I started going hard into the decor and then we received a very excited package from 'Flying Tiger Copenhagen' with their halloween range starting at £1, you cannot go wrong and I don't think thats expensive at all really, especially not when you look at the cute designs too.
There will be a few items photographed that aren't flying tiger and i'll add a link to them but the majority of things are.

Iris' party was a massive success, with creepy treats, spooky decor and lots of littles dressed up in halloween costumes.
We have a lot of halloween decor we've built up over the years, due to my halloween love and now we have a few more bits and bobs we can re-use next year too.

FOOD

I'll start with the food side of things as it's quite simple.

• I made jam sandwiches and cut them with a bat shaped cookie cutter for a spookier feel to them.
• We also have Tomato ketchup popcorn from propercorn. This is a healthier popcorn for the kids and I thought this had a different, spooky feel to it too. I'm not sure whether they are limited edition for halloween but I thought they were a cute.
• I then purchased two boxes of "Claws" by Bear. I bought Strawberry and butternut ones and Apple pear and pumpkin ones too. I thought claws were the most halloweeny and the pumpkin in some of them make it more halloweeny. I wanted to include a few healthy treats too as I wanted to make sure the Mum's at the party didn't feel like they were just feeding their children sugar.
• Orange pumpkins, this is a really easy thing to do. Buy two packs of easy peelers and use a sharpie or a biro to draw a spooky face on and they look like mini pumpkins!
• We also have Chocolate pumpkins, the bigger ones are Flying tiger and the smaller ones are from Ocado. 
• I love the Trick or Treat mix with the gummy body parts, Lucas found them hilarious and wanted to eat the fingers.
• The halloween marshmallows nearly didn't end up on the table as they looked far too delicious to share but I was good and they were placed out and they were a huge hit. 
• Blackcurrant squash, to be more spooky than another colour!
• We made a chocolate donut tower for Iris' cake as we couldn't find a halloween cake. I added some fake spiders on it to give it a spooky feel too.

DECOR

The decor is the most exciting part of getting the perfect "look" for the party! 

• Ghost plates and Pumpkin plates have a really cute, simple face on them. I am really fussy with how I like my decor to look, I can't just walk into a "cheap" shop and pick up all their miss match party items, I like everything to match to an extent or at least have the same theme and feel to it. I also like cutsie things, so these designs are perfect.
• Ghost cups and Pumpkin cups. The same as above for these, they're just super cute.
• Black and White striped paper straws, these are from Sainsburys and were about £2.50. I thought these would match the cups perfectly. 
• The ghost napkins are so cute and obviously match the cups and plates. 
• I had also purchased some Hocus Pocus ones from Ebay  too, which I have placed on the table as I think they're super cute and with toddlers and open cups, theres bound to be a spillage somehow! 
• The spider web bowl is amazing, it was perfect for the Sandwiches to be placed in and made for cuter decor than just putting them on a plate.
• The cauldron was perfect for the Popcorn to be placed in! 
• The pumpkin bunting is amazing. It will be coming out every year now and I love it. Nothing beats pumpkin bunting.
• The happy Halloween bunting is super cute too and another one that will be coming out every year now. I love the glitter on it and the tassels too. 
• The treat coffins were great for putting some of the treats in
• I also grabbed a few black and white stripy platters from the poundshop for a few of the treats too. 
• I love the spider webs, it's a proper nostalgic item for me and one i feel will forever be timeless!
• The halloween party blowers were a perfect touch too for the littles, they loved running around making a lot of noise! So very cute. 
• The BOO balloons were from Ginger ray and a cute touch to our house! sadly with bunting like this which is inflatable it wont last another year.
• The cobweb table cloth is from the pound shop too, I purchased this just to protect my table a little bit.
• The confetti was from Ocado and was perfect for sprinkling to make the table a little extra spooky!

THE COSTUMES

• Iris' costume is one I picked up second hand on Ebay. It had never been worn before but I wanted to make sure she didn't have the same costume as anyone else at the party as little witches is popular for little girls ;) Also considering Iris is obsessed with Hocus Pocus it made sense for her to be a Witch.
• Lucas' costume is a cheap bat cape from Ebay too. I asked him who he wanted to be and he firmly responded with a bat, so that's what he got. 
• My "costume" was a witches hat I picked up from Ocado for £1.50

THE PARTY

The party was amazing, everyone had a lot of fun and lots of mess was made which is more than okay when everyones having fun. The bigger kids played upstairs and downstair was all babies and toddlers. It worked nicely as the three bigger littles could play together without stepping on babies.

Iris is one very lucky little girl to have lots of friends and we're so grateful for everyone that came. We really enjoyed everyones company and Iris will always have these memories to remember her spooky second birthday. We're feeling very grateful tonight!