twin birthday Archives - Loving Our Messy

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This Twin Tuesday is the final week of my Twin Birthday Series! (Check out weeks 1, 2, 3, and 4.)

Last weekend, we celebrated Reid and Luke turning TWO with a train themed second birthday party. We had to have their party on a Sunday morning after Church because of the older boy’s sports schedules the rest of the weekend. Josh and I were laughing a little because that’s kind of the story of your life when you are the third and fourth child. You just go with the flow. 😉 They get some awesome big brothers out of the deal though so they are pretty okay with this arrangement.

The boys have recently become obsessed with all things trains so we thought that would be the perfect theme for their birthday! I designed the party invitation in Photoshop using Kevin and Amanda’s adorable font Teacher’s Pet. I purchased this train graphic set from Vivera Design on Etsy and used it on the invitation and throughout the party.

I designed a couple signs to hang over the dessert table in Photoshop (but you could do something similar in PicMonkey or another free program). I uploaded them to Walgreens and had them printed side by side on their 2 x 8 banner. I found a real departure sign and copied the aesthetic with basic shapes. And filled in some themed trains/destinations of course. I love how it came out!

Usually, I focus a lot on the food for my kids parties. I know people take time out of their day (and some travel!) to come and celebrate so I absolutely want them to leave with a full belly. Given that this was on a Sunday morning this time though, I decided to focus my energy more on desserts. The older boys helped me make caramel apples the night before. We drizzled some with white and milk chocolate and left some plain for the caramel apple purists. I bought a bunch of apple cinnamon churros and put them in these popcorn bags (that I cut in half so they were a more manageable portion) from Amazon.

We decided to serve a lunch of Reid and Luke’s favorite things. I made this slow cooker mac and cheese which was perfect and easy for a crowd. We had fruit, a veggie tray and chips and dip. All favorites for our brand new two year olds.

I made blue and red frosted cupcakes for the guests and these cakes for our birthday boys. A separate cake for each of them of course! I followed this infographic on how to make the numbers from a two 8 inch rounds and an 8 inch square cake. I frosted them completely with white buttercream, laid broken up Hersey bars face down in the shape of a railroad track and piped on the black frosting to finish the track. I added a little bit of grass with green buttercream and my favorite grass icing tip. I found these mini trains on Amazon to set on top which were a huge hit with the birthday boys.

All the banners from the party I made at home with cardstock from Hobby Lobby. I’ve had some letter stencils that I bought years ago from Hobby Lobby that I continue to use for all their birthday banners. I cut out the cardstock with my paper cutter – I’ve had this one for almost 10 YEARS and absolutely love it. I think I’ve had to replace the blade only once. I used a foam roller with white paint over the stencil, let them dry, punched holes in them with this small rectangle punch and strung them up. (I love using that size punch to string banners. I think it looks cuter than the standard circle hole punch and the string almost completely covers the small holes.) Super easy and quick!

For the train cars, I also punched out one inch circles with this punch to glue on for wheels. The engines were from the Etsy graphic set I mentioned earlier that I blew up and cut out of cardstock.

I made these silly little railroad crossing signs out of posterboard, paper plates and a wooden dowel. We didn’t count on the wind that day so they took sort of a beating but they were a fun touch! Josh went to down with some colored duct tape he had for a little train crossing on the front sidewalk. I thought he did such a good job- it was so cute!

These little guys had the best day. I may or may not have had to bribe them with a cupcake to put on their hats and take a picture before guests arrived. I’m pretty sure it was worth it. 😉

I made Reid and Luke’s birthday shirts by designing the graphic in Photoshop, printing on this iron-on paper and ironing onto $3 shirts from Hobby Lobby. Engineer hats are found here from Amazon and bandanas were .99 at Hobby Lobby. (With those prices, I obviously had to get one for everyone.)

Our third second birthday party is in the books! I loved the train theme because no characters were involved! What are some of your favorite birthday party themes for your kiddos? Be sure to pin these ideas for your next party!

Twin Birthday Series

Week 1: The best twin birthday party themes

Week 2: How to celebrate twin birthdays

Week 3: Two year old gift guide

Week 4: Two year old update

Happy Twin Tuesday! This is week 2 of my twin birthday series and today we are talking about how to make birthdays special for twins. (If you missed it, you can catch week 1 here.) As you can see from the graphic today, we have a special in-house expert on twin birthdays you get to hear from today – my husband. He’s a dad of twins and a twin himself!

In our house we celebrate birthdays big and our twins are no exception! The birthday person gets to choose how we spend our day, what they want to eat, and their birthday dessert. We always do what we can do make them feel special. I love my kids birthdays because they are also so special to me! I remember the joy I felt when I saw them, the immediate intense love I felt for them and (selfishly) the pride in myself for nourishing them and bringing them into the world (and keeping them alive ever since 😉 ).

Twins have to share a lot of things in their life (including their birthdays!) but it’s my goal as their mother to never treat them as a ‘set of twins’. I never want to lose sight of the fact that they are two separate and unique children with their own likes and dislikes. We will always work to celebrate their birthdays in a way that makes both of them feel special as individuals.

Our twins will be celebrating their second birthday in a few weeks so I’ve only had a couple opportunities to work on putting these tips into action. Lucky for us, we have the privilege of my husband’s experience and knowledge on how he celebrated his birthday with his twin brother for thirty-some years. Today’s Twin Tuesday is going to switch it up a little bit and hand the reins to Mr. Loving Our Messy. 😉

Josh offers advice on how he liked to celebrate his birthday with his twin brother and we share what 6 birthday traditions we will keep for our twins to make their birthdays as special for them as they are for our singletons.

1) Plan activities that each twin gets to choose. Growing up, my parents would let us each choose something fun to do on our birthday (or the weekend that followed). Sometimes we would agree on spending the whole day at a sporting event or a Fun World type place. Usually though we disagreed – shocking for siblings I know. Eventually it became tradition that one of us would choose a morning activity and they other would choose an afternoon one. That way we both got to spend our day doing something that we wanted.

2) Two birthday cakes! My mom always, always made sure to get us our own birthday cakes with the theme/colors of our choice. We kind of took it for granted at the time and never thought about it. Now that I’ve seen how other families do joint birthdays, I realize what a great idea that was. It may seem silly and wasteful but as a person who had to share a birthday, this is a big deal! This is absolutely something we will continue with our twins just like our older boys have their own birthday cakes they choose.

(Side note from Amy: After seeing pictures from our twins first birthday, one of my friends mentioned that she always had to share a birthday party with her younger sister because they had birthdays in the same month. She said that she always hated birthday cake because her sister would choose chocolate cake and they only got one cake for the two of them. It wasn’t until she went to college that she got to choose her own birthday cake! Definitely a detail that all of us who don’t share a birthday take for granted!)

3) Sing twice! Last year we sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to each of our twins individually and plan to carry on that tradition every year (alternating who gets to go first). While it may seem insignificant, I can’t tell you the difference it makes to someone who always has to share their birthday to hear “Happy Birthday dear Josh” instead of “Happy Birthday dear Matt and Josh”. Plus, then everyone gets to make their own birthday wish and blow out their own candles!

4) Get each twin their own gift. Even while our twins are younger and basically liking the exact same things, I will always insist that they each receive their own gift(s) to open. There is nothing worse then having to share your birthday and also having to fight over who gets to open the gift addressed to both of you. We have given our twins larger shared gifts at Christmas time but I won’t ever do it for their birthdays. Our families are really good about that, but Amy and I both always mention that two smaller separate gifts would be better than a larger shared gift to any birthday guests who ask.

5) Birthday kid gets to choose dinner x 2. In our family, the birthday kid gets to choose their favorite dinner and dessert to have on their birthday. We already know this year that Luke and Reid will choose different things for their favorite dinner and that’s okay with us. Pizza AND macaroni and cheese it is. Our older boys always get to choose and so will our twins!

6) Two kid parties for two groups of friends. When our twins are old enough, we will give them a choice to have two different parties for their friends. My brother and I were always put in separate classes at school so we each had our own set of friends. After a certain age, we always had two birthday parties every year – one for each of us. We attended the other’s party of course but it was great to be able to have our own party with our own friends!

Thanks to my husband for all the good insider scoop on sharing a birthday!

Are there any other ideas you have to celebrate your twins birthdays? Or any opinions from fellow twins out there?

You can check out week 1 of my Twin Birthday Series here – The Best Twin Birthday Party Themes!

And check out my Pinterest boards for what we are planning this year!

Tag: twin birthday

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