Last Sunday we had my younger son’s 2nd birthday party. We decided to go with a Teddy Bears Picnic theme, in honour of his favourite thing in the world – a raggedy looking stuffed polar bear we unimaginatively call ‘Bear’.

This is ‘Bear’, after turning up at the Lost Property section of DJs on Christmas Eve last year – and being delivered home by ‘Santa’ on Christmas morning… If my son’s second birthday party wasn’t his happiest day on Earth, the day he was reunited with his beloved ‘Bear’ most definitely was!

The Entrance to the Party

Party guests were greeted by bear footprints (made with chalk) and a faux wooden sign on the door.

Teddy Bear Biscuits

We made these Teddy Bear Biscuits using a gingerbread recipe as the base. The idea for the plate came from Pinterest.

The Cake

I used white fondant icing, a black food pen and some shaved grey artist’s chalk (‘painted’ on with a paintbrush) to recreate a miniature version of Bear for the cake. I found this teddy bear ribbon at a cake shop and on the final version of the cake, I wrote my son’s name with curly fondant letters in different colours.

Teddy Bear Games

Using my older son’s paintings, we made a personalised bow-tie for every little guest (with their names written on the white part in the middle) and drew a teddy bear on a big sheet of cardboard for ‘Pin the Bow-tie on The Teddy Bear’. You can find the pattern to make the bow-ties here.

My older son helped me make some coffee-stained treasure maps for a treasure hunt around the ‘woods’. The kids teamed up in groups of three or four to find the ‘treasures’. The other game we played was Statues (also known as the Freeze game) using teddy bear themed songs (Teddy Bears Picnic, Five Little Teddy Bears, and Teddy Bear Teddy Bear Turn Around).

The Party Bags

In keeping with the picnic theme, we made up party bags with brown paper bags and ribbon. I didn’t want to use full lunch-sized paper bags, so I managed to convince a fish and chip shop to sell me a packet of smaller paper bags for $2! The party bags featured a little pack of tiny teddies and some gummy bears, among other things. Each ‘little bear’ had their own beary-personalised name tag on their bag.

One Happy Little Teddy Bear…

And this happy little face made it all worthwhile!