Oktoberfest and Two Year Olds... Who Knew?

It started with an idea...

What if Rafaella's 2nd birthday party was an Oktoberfest themed birthday party? As usual, Husband thought I was slightly off my rocker for only a moment before agreeing to an adult themed birthday party for a 2-year-old. 

Numero One:

To make my life easier I ordered everything from the states this summer because finding everything you need on an island - that isn't the island of Manhattan - isn't impossible but it is totally frustrating. So I ordered and shipped everything to my parent's house in New Jersey and then shipped it to Santo Domingo.

Part Deux: I asked Julain, whose son's birthday is October 3 (Rafa's due date) if she wanted to co-throw the bday party together, so we were now joining forces to create Oktoberfestaganza! I found some fun Oktoberfesty pictures online, cut and pasted Rafaella and Harrison's face to them, and added in the birthday details. Print. done. The invitations looked like this:

Part Tri:

Next, we rolled up the invitations and stuffed them into empty toilet paper rolls. Luckily, I started saving these from September so we had enough for each family we were inviting. We stuffed the invitations with lollipops and then wrapped the rolls with Bavarian Flag plastic tablecloths that were trimmed to fit and tied with a ribbon. Although voilà is French... 

voilà!

Step Tri and a half: Get an Oktoberfest Pedi, Baby! Gotta do something for yourself.

Step Foursquares:

Decorating for the 3 o'clock party thankfully started at noon. I knew I would be decorating up to the 24th hour and I was right. (And it showed because when the party did start I looked like a hot mess but that's neither here nor there.) I wish I wasn't so crazy decorating so that I could have focused more on the pictures, but throwing a kids' birthday party for about 100 people is as easy as it sounds. So here's what we planned and set up more or less:

Here was out Pretzel Stand. We heard of an amazing German butcher - yes, you heard me. GERMAN BUTCHER in the Dominican Republic - sometimes this place totally surprises me. Anyway, butcher has a "bread guy." Bread guy makes pretzels. Pretzels were ordered and delivered and totally delicious. Move over NYC... there's a new pretzel kingpin in town.

The little blue goody bags had pretzel glasses, kazoos, a lollipop, and these Oktoberfest tattoos:

Because it was an Oktoberfest party, the food and drink was easy. Sausages, hot dogs, and mustards. I found a variety of mustards at the supermarket here - again... totally shocked. And lots of beer for the adults... in a kiddie pool of course.

 My favorite idea, however, was our party favor. I found these great photo booth props on Oktoberfesthaus.com so as the kids rolled in we would take their picture in the cutouts.

Here are how some of our picture party favors turned out:

After taking their picture, the kiddos got to pick a picture frame to take home and once the photos were printed they would have a keepsake from Rafaella and Harrison's Birthday Party!

Part Cinco de Mayo - German Style:

Party! (for everyone else) I loved it. I did. But throwing a bday party isn't the most fun a parent could have. I kept pouring myself a beer and then find myself doing something else and so I'd lose my beer. After a while I decided it was a good idea just to chug my beer, lest I wanted to waste any more perfectly chilled Dominican Presidentes. The same went for food. Amazing Husband made me a plate and cut up my sausage which was perfection since I only had time to walk past my plate and pop a few into my mouth at a time. Who has time to sit???

 

Archer's First Birthday Party... ever

 

The Grand Finale
It was cake time. We had decided that instead of getting one big 2 pound cake, we woud get two one pound cakes. The pretzel shaped one was an easy choice. Oktoberfest. Kids party. Easy Peesy. But what shape would the other be? What else is Oktoberfest and kids' themed? An apple juice filled stein, of course!

Well I guess it sort of looks like a beer filled stein?

We also went to Guli's, our got to coffee spot with the most amazing desserts, and they made us some delicious apple streudels and mini Black Forest Cake - which is apparently Germanesque. Who knew?

   

SINGING HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

It was a great day for our little family that was shared by our great big community. And at the end of the evening when everyone had gone home and we were done cleaning up. After Mike helped Shelly put our little stein-muffins to bed and we sat poolside staring at the place where we had just hosted an epic 100 person Oktoberfest kids' birthday party, we had a night swim with Julain, whose son was skinny dipping in the pool, and toasted to our successful birthday party.

Prost!