7 things you want for your toddler's birthday party

We wanted him to invite his kindergarden friends over & see his family. In Germany, birthday parties often get split - one for the friends, one for the family. This seemed like nonsense to me as it would mean we would need to prepare two seperate events. Also it looked like my parents were going to visit around that time so we figured it would make sense to do both at the same time.

He told us which of his friends to invite & it ended up being 5 kids under 4 years old. This seemed like a good amount of kids, in case some cancelled, he would still have a few buddies to celebrate with. As kids that age usually come with mom, dad, and possibly siblings we were planning with a group of 10-15 people just by inviting those 5 friends. Then we added my partner's family and mine on top. We also threw in a couple of our closest friends and we ended up having around 30 people on our guest list.

Our son chose these invitation cards from Amazon - we bought one pack only and selected who would get a written invite and who we would invite on the phone. I also dug up some old invitiation cards from my childhood and sent them out to family who I wanted to invite as a gesture, but knew they would not be coming. My son saw this a couple weeks after we ordered the other invitation cards and threw a tantrum because they weren't the cards he chose. Their stubborness and memory can be so surprising sometimes!

His birthday was on a weekend. So it was easy to choose his actual birthday for the day of the party. If it had been a weekday, we would have chosen the Sunday after the birthday. In Germany, you never celebrate before the actual day - it means bad luck, so it's a big no-no.

Picking a time was easy - we know how long the attention spans of young children last so we figured that 3 hours must be enough to unwrap gifts, have cake and do some fun activities. We invited all guests to join us from 2pm to 5pm. This timeframe ended up being perfect - we were able to use the morning and early afternoon to decorate and bake. Then, we had the early evening to clean and put our son to bed on time. By the time it was 8pm we were in bed watching Netflix, proud & super tired. An additional perk was that we only had to serve cake & snacks as this was outside of lunch and dinner hours.

Finally, I really wanted to do a garden party as we have just moved to a really nice location this past year and have not used the waterfront garden yet. Also, his birthday is mid-September. If weather would permit it, I loved the idea of just gathering outside. Also, we could end the party by going back inside, which seemed like an easier way than telling guests it was time to leave your apartment. Fortunately, we ended up having 27°C and it turned out to be the last summer day.

I put a lot of thought into food as I wanted it to go with the theme. I knew that I wanted to serve finger food and cake and was able to narrow it down to what you see below.

I served a sugar-free banana bread with apples for our baby guests. Honestly, it was not a hit and I would not make it again. I just really felt like this would be considerate of those humans that really should not consume any sugar yet.

The real star was the chocolate cake filled with strawberries, jam & cream and topped with chocolate and strawberries. My son actually wished for it & as he does have a shockingly good memory, I would have not gotten away with anything else. I decorated it with stick-on firetucks and flames. I also added sliced strawberries which ended up looking like flames. It was cute. Would recommend!

I also ended up making a bunch of cookies. I did not plan to make many, I was just a terrible baker that day and none of them turned out like they were supposed to. So I ended up making 3 batches - healthy oat chocolate chips, and two kinds of unhealthy delicious chocolate chip cookies. They were themed in that I went to theM&M store on Kurfürstendamm where you can fill cups with the colors of M&Ms you chose - I went for red, yellow and orange which are the color of flames. As I had to bake more than I planned to, my partner also picked up some Reese's pieces from our local grocery store the night before the party which are yellow, orange and brown. You get the idea...

Orzo salad: these were honestly just leftovers from our brunch the day before. But they ended up being a hit and I think it was the first thing that was gone.

Tomato Tartelettes: these were such a crowd-pleaser. I was asked 4 times for the recipe and they are so easy to make. Would definitely prepare them again.

Flame cups: so fun - all you do is add a dollop of hummus or a different dip to the bottom of a transparent cup (we chose these multi-use cups from Amazon). You then top them with sliced red, orange and yellow bell peppers and carrots. They look like flames in a cup. Unfortunately nobody wanted to eat healthy that day so we had 75% leftover and ended up tossing them.

Sesame sticks: we opted for these instead of salt sticks for obvious reasons. We ended up tossing many unfortunately, our guests just did not feel like snacking on them.

We decided to not serve alcohol although I did end up putting out a bottle of Rosé at the end of the party and one guest asked for a beer which we had in our fridge in case someone wanted something.

Otherwise, we simplified it: we used re-usable cups and bought juice, sparkling water and something similar to ginger ale. We also had some iced tea. I went on a little ebay hunt for cheap coolers and ended up picking up 2 for a total of 12€ in the south of Berlin which we filled with ice cubes to keep the drinks cool. It looked like too little drinks initially, but it was more than enough.

This was the part I felt anxious about. I don't enjoy being the center of attention and entertaining groups of people, no matter how old they are. Given I had put thought into most of the planning, food and decor, I left this up to my partner to deal with. He browsed many websites for ideas but concluded that many games are not suited yet for kids this young. So he went with the following

We have not been invited to many children birthdays yet as my son is now starting to make friends and we do not have any adults friends with kids his age. But I noticed that the mom of one of his friends had shared a wishlist with guests which I thought was genius. This was the best way to avoid trash presents, you know those little nonsense figures that just end up being trashed eventually. It also allowed my son to get something he really wanted and us parents to add some educational gifts or things he needed. What was important to me was to have a list that I could add presents from multiple websites to and that would mark a gift as "bought" so it would not be purchased in multiples.

I chose nocake.de and were mostly happy. You can select a theme or upload a picture. You can use the search function to directly link to amazon or add your own links. And the "purchased before" function worked 90% of the time. He did get one present twice so something went wrong at one point - fortunately this gift were badminton rackets and we can use multiples of those.

He really enjoyed his gifts and was a happy boy. Overall, we had a great day and I would do it again. But I am glad the next birthday is a year from now and my partner and I do not celebrate ours. It's hard for me to imagine families that celebrate all birthdays with parties as it ends up being more work than you would like it to be.