After a half year off, birthday season has come once again.  So, to start things off, Nora decided she would like a Hello Kitty party this year.  I love Hello Kitty, so it was a fun party to plan and relatively easy. 
First off were the invitations:

I bought the Hello Kitty cartridge for my Cricut die cut machine to make these and headed to Ben Franklin to get the cute papers.  For the inside, my super easy trick to adding the words is to print them out on Avery clear full sheet labels found at an office supply store… I love this stuff!  Then you can just cut it to the shape you want and stick it on exactly were you want it.

For the decorations:  I made some more Hello Kitty wall decor from my Cricut and put them all over the walls along with printing off some larger Hello Kitty faces and Daniel (the boy Hello Kitty) because there were boys coming to the party. 

The printed Hello Kitties are a little trickier… since you can’t find large images online with supercrisp edges, I usually find some that I like and “trace” them in Adobe Illustrator (which is a designer’s program that can create images that look crisp and sharp no matter how big or small you stretch stretch them).  (Note: I didn’t make the poster)
I also had the girls go around the house on a Hello Kitty treasure hunt to find little things for decorations like stuffed dolls, books, etc.  And then I bought the licensed plates/cups/table cover, etc. 

For the games:  I did 3 games, plus a pinata.  As we were waiting for more guests to arrive, my wonderful helper and husband, Dave, had the kids in a circle and played “hot potato” using a ball of yarn as the “potato”.  The kids were having fun just tossing it around really fast that we never did end up using the music (we picked the DisneyMania rock version of “We are Siamese” from Lady and the Tramp).  The second game was pin the bow on the Hello Kitty (bought this one).  For the third game, while the kids were eating, I hid a bunch of mice around the room and then had them all get on their hands and knees like Kitties and hunt for the mice.  🙂  They were pretty freaky looking mice too… I was thankful to find them in the Halloween section of the party store.  The pinata was a pull-string one (and it actually worked this time!!) and we filled with candy (of course), stickers, and silly bands!

Food:  This was a pretty easy one this time… only required about a half hour or so of prep time before the party.. it was awesome!  Mini pizzas (English muffins with a little pizza sauce and cheese and baked until the cheese melts), Papa Murphy’s pizza for the adults, strawberry (PINK!) gogurt, strawberries and apples cut up into a little fruit salad, caesar salad for the adults.  Drinks: PINK raspberry lemonaide, Pink strawberry milk or water.  This time we had all the kids sit down at the table and dished up in the kitchen and handed all the kids their plate (was a lot easier than having them all go through a line).  I forgot to take a picture when the food was out, but here are the before pictures:

The cake was from Fred Meyer:  white with white whipped frosting and german chocolate in the middle… it was SUPER yummy!

For the party favors, when the guests first game, they got either a flower clippie for their hair or bow ties for the boys (but the boys didn’t really want to wear them, oh well).  I made the flowers out of pink and yellow Sculpey (with 2 holes in the middle of the flower) and baked them, then used pipe cleaner to add them to silver barretts.  As the guests were leaving, they got a bag with the rest of the favors:  I found some 100 piece puzzles for a really good price at Michaels (Hello Kitty or Princesses for the girls and Toy Story, Cars, etc for the boys), glow bracelets, and for the girls, Hello Kitty lip gloss (Target) and for the boys, a couple sports $1 items.