Cullen is 4!

Cullen turned 4 last week!

I am a little delayed in getting this posted due to my crazy-busy last couple of weeks, but better late than never because I love having these things saved in my online diary of a blog.

The day of Cullen’s birthday was pretty low-key. He had a couple friends over in the morning, played with one of his new PAW Patrol toys in the afternoon, and then him and Craig got ice cream at Tastee Freez in the evening while I was coaching.

Last Saturday, though, we had a proper party with friends and family over. Cullen wanted a construction-themed party, and it came together quite nicely with some decorations from Target and Amazon.

I had plans for a grand Pinterest-themed party, but time was of the essence and only ended up with a couple of themed-foods.

The “stop lights” included a red, yellow, and green piece of fruit on a wooden skewer. I used a strawberry, a piece of pineapple, and a green grape for these. (Ignore the skewers that have a green grape on top and the strawberry on bottom. . . Craig got confused.)

I also used the Little Cutie oranges for “wrecking balls.”

Finally, we had a “build” your own pita pizza for the main entree, which was a huge hit. We took pita bread and had people top the “mini pizza” with sauce (pizza sauce or pesto) and toppings of their choice (pepperoni, Canadian bacon, black olives, peppers, mushrooms, pineapple, cheese, etc.). We were able to have about 8 pizzas baking in the oven at once, so it went pretty fast.

I did make a couple of dishes from the Run Fast Eat Slow cookbook since it’s my current obsession.

I made Homemade Pita Chips and the Can’t Beet Me Hummus. Both were so good, and I never want to buy pita chips or hummus again. The pita chips did take a while to cut each pocket apart and spread the oil evenly onto the pieces, but it made a big batch. And the hummus was really easy–I just had to plan ahead by cooking the beet about an hour ahead of time.

I also served the Kale-Radicchio Salad with Farro from the cookbook since Craig and I are obsessed with it.

After dinner, Cullen opened his presents and, of course, every gift was a PAW Patrol toy of some kind. He now has more PAW Patrol toys than he knows what to do with.

For dessert I kept it simple with an ice cream bar since Cullen’s favorite dessert is ice cream. I bought a big bucket of ice cream along with all sorts of fun toppings: M&Ms, chocolate chips, gummy bears, crushed Oreos, etc. Then the kids could pick a cone or bowl for their ice cream. I love this picture of them all lined up, eating their ice cream.