Last year my daughter turned a whopping 2 years old and after the stress, time and money that went in to the “Cinderaiyla” themed 1st birthday that I threw her, I swore to myself that I would NOT even think about another birthday party until she was at least old enough to remember it!
But then, less than 3 weeks before her birthday, I got suckered in after scrolling through a “Kid’s Birthday Party” Pinterest Board. I can still remember whipping out my calendar, looking at my bank account and then I was all in planning a last minute fiesta for my baby girl.
For invitations, I typically go the Etsy route so that I am able to pay to download the file and print as many invitations as my heart desires, plus they have super cute and creative templates that you can customize for pretty much any theme, it’s awesome. I have been asked about e-invitations and I think they are cute, cost-effective and convenient. Personally, I am just more old fashioned when it comes to invitations, so my preference would be to have them printed and delivered!
I also use Etsy to purchase a premium font to use to customize the invitation envelopes with. Once again, Etsy is awesome as they have so many different options to choose from and they’re pretty easy to use.
I am still searching for a picture of the envelope that I created and will edit the post as soon as I find one! In the meantime, I used a hot pink envelope and printed the name and address (if invite was being mailed) using a word doc and the font purchased on Etsy, which was a calligraphy font.
**Helpful Tip: Always make an invitation for yourself to keep for memories, scrapbooking, etc. I typically address an envelope to myself, from myself complete with an address so I can look back at where we lived at the time when my daughter gets older, pretty cool keepsake!
The cake has become my absolute favorite part of planning birthday parties! If I could just design cake ideas all day long, I totally would because I just love love love it. My go-to bakery is Legacy Cakes located in Grapevine, TX. They really bring my ideas to life and offer great suggestions when my plethora of ideas that I throw at them during the design process get a little out of control; plus all their cakes are delicious so I am a forever Legacy Caker.
My idea for the Taco Twosday cake came pretty easy to me, I wanted an explosion of colors with gold accents and I wanted it to be BIG! The flavors we went with were (brace yourself) Cookies and Cream with Cookies with Cookie Dough Filling on the bottom tier and Strawberry with Strawberry filling on the top tier. Sugar-freaking-overload but it was delicioussss!
Okay so I will admit that I have been told that I overdo it on the cakes a little because I am often left with so much once the party is over but I can’t help it, the cake is the focal point of the party and is just such an important aspect for me so I end up giving lots and lots of cakes away to coworkers, friends who couldn’t make it, etc… let me live people, cake is my happy place!
Here is the design process on paper, I scratched out the prices and my phone number for privacy but if you would like an idea of how much the cake did cost, feel free to email me and I can suggest a few ways to cut the cost for a similar cake if you scale it down a bit.
Here is the finished product, there were fondant cacti around the cake that you are unable to see in the photo but this is the best shot I had. Details for the cute themed Snapchat filter will added below!
Continuing on with the topic of food, I had custom cookies made by Sweet Zero Cookies which also served as party favors for the guests to take home. I sent her over the design and the idea for the cookies and she executed them beautifully! (Inspo came from Pinterest and I tweaked it a little)
**Helpful Tip: Always keep a copy of the invitation (electronic or physical) if you are ordering something to keep the colors consistent. I provided the invitation for the cake and the cookies and they were able to pull out the major colors to tie everything together!
For the actual food at the party we did a simple and cute Taco Bar. It worked out great to feed a lot of people with plenty still left over. The Taco Bar consisted of taco meat, cheese, Taco Rice, guac, sour cream, lettuce, tomatoes, pre-made taco shells etc.. The hot items were kept warm in a tin pan over the little flame burner things (not sure of the exact terminology, sorry guys.) The guacamole was a tad ambitious because the avocados started to brown pretty quickly. Overall, it was delicious, self served and easy clean up.
All of table decorations, food labels and goodie bags were made by my extremely talented sister, Ryan Threatt, owner of Pristine Event Designs. @_pristineeventdesigns on IG.
The Snapchat filter shown in the photo above with the cake was also found on, you guessed it, ETSY! You can also get a Geofilter made through Snapchat itself, but I will pay for convenience and was pressed for time so I chose the Etsy template and uploaded and paid for the service through Snapchat. So basically I paid for the template on Etsy, then I had to pay on Snapchat to make it go live the day of the party. All together it was less than $20 so it wasn’t too bad.
This was my all time favorite party to plan and I loved the way it turned out! I would love to hear what you thought about the party and see your executions if you did something similar or were inspired by this post! Find me on IG @roandyaya
I would like to add that I have read some comments on the Fiesta Themed parties found on Pinterest about culture appropriation and as a minority woman myself, I would like to give credit to ALL cultures that inspire others with the beauty of their traditions and heritage, all of the credit is truly yours!
Ro’s Rabbit Hole 