With COVID-19 and the birth of our second daughter (“Stella”), we knew hosting a big party for Luna’s second birthday was not in the cards. Some creative thinking, however, enabled us to still mark the occasion in style through a hybrid virtual/intimate in-person party. Embracing a “Two the Moon” theme, we set up a command center — aka a laptop and monitor — so that the NASA jumpsuit wearing birthday girl (who we told guests was not available in person due to her previously scheduled space mission) could video conference with family and friends. Simultaneously, we hosted close, local family on our screened in porch and continued the theme with our decorations and menu. 

Our tablescape included a black table cloth dotted with rose gold star confetti as well as star shaped twinkle lights, meri meri star wands and some vintage Star Trek memorabilia I borrowed from my sci-fi loving husband’s childhood collection. We also had silver and rose gold star/moon/2 balloons anchored by iridescent weights (the balloons were a HUGE hit with Luna who carried them around the house for weeks following her birthday!). 

We snacked on galaxy cake (well, two galaxy cakes – my mom and I made a back-up in case we failed our mirror glaze attempt), star and moon cookies, moon pies, moon cheese, a rocket shaped cheese and crackers platter and our favorite Luna malbec. (I had also wanted to serve freeze dried ice cream and Tang, but decided we had more than enough for our small in-person gathering.)

I found this cute “Two the Moon” cake topper on Amazon for the main cake and on a whim, quickly made another topper by pressing bamboo skewers into the backs of iced and sprinkled star and moon cookies while they cooled for the secondary cake (more to come on these cookies in a separate post). For favors, we stuffed these cute rocket shaped boxes with miniature Milky Way candies. 

Overall, we managed to have a perfectly themed and memorable night while adhering to social distancing measures. I’ll call that a success!