Dog Birthday Party

Puppy Dog Birthday Party: easy ideas for a dog cake for humans, and a real dog, along with inexpensive dog themed decorations, and dessert table.

This past weekend my little pet doggie Oscar turned one, and we celebrated with a Puppy Dog Birthday Party.

Let me just say right off the top that I know some people might think this is a little crazy.  And it is.  I know my doggie didn’t actually need a birthday party. In fact, he probably didn’t even realize that it was his birthday party, lol.  But if we’re in the business of making life a party, then why not take all the  reasons we can find to celebrate?

I want to create crazy memories for my kids, and god children that they’ll remember when they grow up.  I want them to have stories like “remember when Oscar turned one and we had a little birthday party for him?  And it was so silly and so much fun.”  Those are the kind of things I want to hear them remembering when they’re all grown up.  Any excuse to celebrate, any reason to bake a cake and sing, any time we can gather with people we love and share a meal, and any day we can truly make life into a party -I say let’s do it!

The Puppy Dog Party

I had some fun setting up a pretty dessert table and a few decorations -but I promise it was all pretty easy.  And I think you could honestly show up at home with a store bought birthday cake, a new dog bone and a balloon and declare it a party at your house and everyone would be just as delighted.  

It doesn’t have to be too fancy, it’s really just about seizing the opportunely to celebrate, to play, to party with the people you love.  Because let’s face it, life is hard sometimes, and it’s good to sprinkle life with parties between the hard bits.

We invited our friends and the grandparents over for a long walk in the forest, which we knew the birthday boy would love.  After the walk we had some hot dogs -because dog party = hot dogs.

Lunch

I kept the menu really easy with hotdogs and sausage, veggies and dip, hummus, and chips.

For drinks we had easy lemonade in pretty re-usable bottles.

My colour scheme was blue, for my boy.  I kept things simple with a few honeycomb party decorations and a pretty succulent planter on the table.

I found some dog paw ribbon and used it to dress up the napkins.

Puppy Dog Party Dessert Table

My favourite was our little dessert table.  I made an easy backdrop with some scrapbook paper.  We hand drew some doggie words -Bow Wow, woof, and ruff and added in some bones too.  I used my sewing machine to stitch them into garland.  We hung them up with some “woof” washi tape.  This was so simple and inexpensive to make.

There were two birthday cakes -one for the doggie and one for his two-legged friends.

We used this recipe for Peanut Butter and Apple Doggie Cake, and Oscar loved it.  It was full of all his favourite foods -apple, peanut butter and egg.

And for the humans, I made a simple cake from a cake mix and decorated with some ribbon flags and toy dogs.

I just love how the cake turned out and it was so simple to make.

I also made some rice krispie cookie “bones” for the humans, with a bone cookie cutter.

My husband and kids LOVE rice krispies so this was a fun and easy addition.

Puppy Love

If you had told me even a year and half ago that I’d have a pet dog now, I really probably won’t have believed you.  We always said we weren’t pet people.  But somehow last spring on a family walk I started feeling like the picture would be more complete with a puppy in it.  When I fist mentioned it I was almost joking.  But the funny thing was I couldn’t shake the idea, and the more I thought about it the more I thought it just might be a good idea.  My husband was the hardest to crack.  The kids were on board from the get go, in fact they’d always wanted a dog but had literally given up dreaming about it because we’d said so many times “we’re not pet people”.  But something in us changed.

I kind of think God wanted to teach us some more about unconditional love.  There’s nothing like a dog’s greeting when you get home.  He’s just so darn happy to see you.  He makes you feel very loved.  And he doesn’t care how your day was, if you were particularly successful or not, if you made a lot of money or not, his opinion of you never seems to change.  He just loves you.  He doesn’t want anything from you, just you.  And there’s really nothing quite like that feeling.  I’d still say we’re not really pet people.  But we’ve become Oscar people.  I don’t particularly like dogs…maybe a little more than before.  But I like my dog and he likes me, and that’s pretty nice.

Here’s to many more doggie birthday parties in the future.

With a puppy dog birthday party, life really is a party!