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Sofia the First Party

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We had a Sofia the First Party for my 5 year old.  It was so cute and we just love Sofia around here.  I got carried away with all the little detailed crafts on this one … I had lots of fun with that part.  I should have planned a couple more games or activities, but it all worked out in the end.

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This was a fun (yet time consuming) little craft for the front door. below is a picture of how I did it.

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I got to reuse these flowers from a couple years ago… made from my cricut flower shoppe cartridge

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IMG_4207IMG_4206When the girls arrived, I had them start by decorating crowns while we waited for all the guest to arrive.

 

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Below is a tip on decorating a cake stand in a temporary way that won’t damage your platter.

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found this super cute butterfly dish from HomeGoods

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Birdies and flower from Michaels Craft Store

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I hot glued giant jewels onto wooden skewers and then added the grapes

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Lace glued onto mini water bottles

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guess I didn’t get a picture after I made the punch, but it had raspberry sherbet in it … yum…

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Saw this adorable sofia the first cupcake cake idea on Pinterest. The white pearls are sixlets candy and the amulet is a homemade purple hard candy (in a jewel mold)

We watched an episode of Sofia the First during snack.

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FYI… spray adhesive works better to hid the seams on a printed image, but I didn’t do that this time… whoops

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cake time

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cake face

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parachute games to fill some time (see my lack of planning games this time above)…

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crawling under the parachute

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party favors … found these super cute crocheted flowers in the dollar bins at Michaels and I hot glued a barrette to the back. Inside the bags are stickers, cheap tiaras (that I added some jewels to, to make them sparkle) and these (earring/ring set)

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I made amulets from beads from Michaels onto a thing ribbon. made the mistake of not making the ribbon long enough for some kids to get over their heads… 😦

That’s the party!  Now here are those last 2 how to projects mentioned above:

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I just took 2-3 strands of heavy gauge wire and made it into a large “5” … then cut little squares of purple tulle (you can barely see them on the table) and bunched them in the middle and hot glued the center onto the wire. Lastly I added some butterfly clips as shown in the top picture.

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Under my cake stand I attached some scotch packing tape around my platter (and stuck another one under it with sticky sides together, so it was only stuck to the platter at the very top and wouldn’t stick to it below.) Then you can hot glue whatever tulle, ribbon, fabric or lace onto the tape. When the party is over, just cut it all off… so this is pretty much a one time decoration.

Frozen Party

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Here are pictures from my 7-year-old’s Frozen Birthday Party with descriptions and links below!

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The wreath is Styrofoam wrapped with white tulle and I cut out some snowflakes on my Cricut with the Winter Lace cartridge. The printable Olaf is found here.

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I used the idea from Oh Happy Day to make these fun party hats.

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Frozen party supplies where hard to find back in March/April, but I managed to find a few things! I am sure supplies are more available by now.

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Blue LED Lights and some crochet and embroidered snowflakes and white tinsel as a table decoration.

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making beaded bracelets with pearl beads and clear tribeads

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Snowcap Punch recipe hereIMG_4087 And snowball sign holders found here.

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The Disney Frozen figurines are from the Disney Store… Sven fell into the cake and I loved how it looked with cake on his nose, so I just left it… He is a little mischievous sometimes, so it worked. I just bought the plainest white cake I could find and decorated it myself. The idea found here. I made the blue ice with a simple hard candy recipe like this. and the snowflake sprinkles are from Wilton.

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We played a Frozen scavenger hunt based on the lyrics of Let It Go… brilliant game and thanks so much to the Bombshell Bling for this free printable

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finding clues and at the end of the hunt, I had a bowl full of snowflake barrettes for each girl to pick one.

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We played a very fun game called Don’t Eat Olaf! It was a crowd favorite for sure (despite a couple tears when things got too loud). I saw it on Etsy.IMG_4096IMG_4097

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Another game we played was to divide into 2 teams and each team decorate one person into a snowman using toilet paper and hats, scarves and carrot nose. The birthday girl got to pick the winning team with the snowman she liked best.IMG_4093

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in addition to the bracelet and hair piece from the party, the kids also got a book and stickers for party favors

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Here is a link to my Pinterest board for more ideas!

My Little Pony Party

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It looks like we have turned a corner with my oldest and she has really wanted to help in the planning of her birthday parties.  I always let the kids pick the theme they want, but she wanted to be really hands-on with the decorations and what activities we would do and the order of the party.  Looks like I am training up another little planner!  🙂  She wanted a My Little Pony party this year.  I had seen that Hasbro has blank white My Little Pony that you can order, so I ordered some of those.  I had no idea how we would decorate those, but we decided on Permanent Markers… you can color the hair and everything.  I wanted the girls to be able to take them home and not get wet paint all over.  If you have more time, I would recommend the markers for the hair and then probably acrylic paint would be better for the body and produce a more even look and glitter glue for some sparkle.

Without further ado, here are the pics! 

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Lalaloopsy birthday party

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Lalaloopsies are so adorable, I was excited when my daughter chose that theme for her birthday party.  (the party was last fall and I am again behind on my posts!)  First, I bought a book (for the kids) that had most of the lalaloopsies in it, so I could get an idea of decorations and activities for the party (and Pinterest of course).  And we watched a Lalaloopsy show on Netflix (the show isn’t good, IMO … the plot is horrible), but I did get some ideas.  Here are the pictures from her party with links and comments!

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The buttons were cut out on the Cricut using my Wild Card cartridge. And then I just used a yarn needle and threaded yarn through the buttons to make garland.

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Found these wall decals on clearance at Toys R Us… good deal, but they did NOT stick well at all… they were in the trash right after the party unfortunately. They also have them on Amazon and Birthday Express and hopefully better quality.

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More Garland made from dessert size paper plates and a black paper button cutout glued to the plate.

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More button garland! (I guess I got crazy with the paper button cutting, because I had a lot!)

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Used the book mentioned at the top of the page to help lookup a bunch of lalaloopsies on Bing image search (make sure you set the image size to wallpaper (or large) find the better quality images! Then I added the names and printed them out… (they moved to her bedroom wall after the party!)

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For one activity, we stuffed, sewed and decorated little lalaloopsy pets. I prepared them, but printing out the pets on paper and tracing them and their pieces onto felt. Then glued some of the pieces on using felt glue (so they would have time to dry) and sewing the button eyes on. With the front and back felt pieces together, I used a very small 1/16 hole punch to punch around the edges. (warning: hand fatigue is possible!!)

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We used embroidery floss to stitch them together and I had a bunch of plastic yarn needles for sewing them and stuffing.

 

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Also felt markers (found at a fabric/craft store) for decorating.

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For the second craft, I purchased a bunch of small prepared canvas boards from Michaels and precut with my cricut the first letter of the girls who were attending the party. I traced their letter onto the canvas with pencil and we used thick glue dots to glue on buttons to fill in their letter.

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buttons from Oriental Trading

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The last activity was a Lalaloopsy board game and it was so cute. It comes with a little lalaloopsy doll and it involves someone hiding the doll and they others picking cards to figure out which room she is in and then they have a minute to try to find her. (I had all the kids go look instead of one at a time as the directions say). Also I took out the cards of the rooms that I didn’t want the kids looking in (bedrooms, etc)

 

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lalaloopsy party supplies found here. I also crocheted a few flowers to stick around.

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Button candy molds found here. I just melted Wiltons candy melts and poured them into the melts. Make sure you wait until they are good and cooled before you pop them out of the molds (some of mine turned out better than the others)

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super cute cupcake topper from Amazon.

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I found these tin lalaloopsy boxes from Hobby Lobby and they worked great to put their little animals in and some stickers.

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Strawberry Shortcake Party!

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Welcome to Berry Bitty City!

Strawberry, strawberry, strawberry shortcake!  The song is still in my head 3 weeks later!   LOL   This party turned out cute, but I wasn’t on top of things as I normally am (I have to start months early for the April birthdays since we have 2 of them and I ordered the stuff early, but didn’t get to the crafting part early enough) … so it was a little stressful at the end.  But it all worked out and my daughter had a great time!  We had about 16 kids or so this time.  The kids arrived and started on a coloring sheet/maze activity, then we played some games, had some cake and she opened her presents. 
 
Strawberries are cut from the Hello Kitty cricut cartridge. 

 
My wonderful older daughters did all the coloring of the dots with some sharpie markers!  We just taped on the leaves and stem.  (warning… don’t let your kids play with these balloons when you take them down… the sharpie comes off everywhere… TRUST me!)

Strawberry confetti from birthday express, Table cloth from oriental trading.  The maize printout and coloring sheets are from the strawberry shortcake website.

My grandma crocheted these Strawberry shortcake dolls for me when I was a kid and I still had them.  They are amazing and worked great for centerpieces!



balloons from birthday express

This was a HUGE decoration that worked great for filling up a wall!  And only $6 at birthday express 

Images from google and bing image search.  Again… make sure you go to advanced search and search only for images with a high resolution to look better with printing!

 
This piñata was an idea I found on Pinterest from Grey Luster girl.  She is amazing at parties and had a lot of fun ideas!
I did make it into a pull string piñata because my girls prefer them.  (my string broke this time though… which was a bummer).  For instructions on making a pull string piñata see HERE

 
Strawberry Shortcake pin the strawberry on the vine game from Shindigz

Birthday girl!!

 
I made a bunch of these out of felt and we used them to play a musical chairs game.  Most of the kids have never played that before and were not happy about me taking them away.  LOL.  But it was fun to watch them figure it out.
 
We had strawberry shortcake music in the background!  You know… the ones that are still in my head!  (there are a lot of different strawberry shortcake albums available… we liked the Strawberry Jams and Let’s Dance the best.)



For the food, we had strawberry applesause, Strawberries, dried strawberries, Chocolate wafers, Pretzel thins, homemade suckers, cupcakes, and beverages.  Most things are from Trader Joes. 

I love making candy!  It is a pretty fast process if you have all the right tools.  I bought this hard candy mold from sugarcraft.  I also recommend getting the large candy funnel… Works great!  THIS was a helpful blog when I first started to make candy (without my mom, that is)!
chocolate cupcakes

I made a simple buttercream frosting with powdered sugar and butter (but I only used about 1/2-2/3 as much sugar as the recipe called for) and I added strawberry flavoring to it.  Oh man.. it was so yummy!

Remember these?  I don’t think I ever did say how I made them… They are from the flower shoppe cricut cartridge… probably my most used cartridge!  So many things you can use flowers for!  Anyway, you use a fancy pearl pin to pin them to the Styrofoam ball topiary.  (Be sure to store them out of the sun when you aren’t using them because the colors can fade)
 

Enjoying some goodies!
Ok… there were so many fun favors to do this time… I may have gotten a little carried away.  It was still under $5 per kid though which is my max.  🙂 
So, I bought THIS cricut cartridge just for this party and it made the 3D strawberries in the basket and the basket.  So fun!  Inside the 3D strawberries are strawberry daiquiri jelly bellies.  And also in the basket there is a packet of strawberry flavored Annies fruit snacks and strawberry Kelloggs pastry crisps.

These mini hand sanitizers are from bath and body works and I tried to find the fruity scents and just make my own label for them in Photoshop, printed on sticky paper and stuck them on!  🙂

Also there are coloring books and bubble wands ($1 each at Michaels).
 

 



Ice cream party!

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Ice cream birthday party

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ICE CREAM!  Actually the screaming didn’t get too loud!  🙂   Ok.. I’ll be honest, I never really know what to say in these intros, but sometimes I feel like I need to introduce each party!  🙂  Bla bla bla… I’m more of a picture person myself, so let’s just get right to the fun stuff!  🙂
 
First up the decorations:
I sorta threw this together last minute… I had made a large crocheted ball a few months ago as part of an experiment that didn’t work out.  And I had some of those cardboard like cones from Michaels from a previous party… so I hot glued on a ribbon hanger and rubber banded the tulle over my crocheted ball and shoved it in the cone.  Would have been cute with some beads glued on top for sprinkles. 

inflatable cone… what I am going to do with this after the party?

So, I painted this cone for a game, but realized it was too small… so it just became a decoration.

(Ice cream try number too for pin the cherry on the sundae)

to make ice cream cone garland… see THIS blog post

I saw these cute ice cream balloons on Pinterest, so I tried them… they are helium filled balloons, but what I found out was that the weight of the cone (paper) was so heavy that they wouldn’t stay up in a bouquet… so I just tied them tightly to each chair and that worked.  Still a fun idea though… if you try this with a lighter weight paper and it works, let me know.

I ran out of time to make a piñata, so I bought this at our local party store… I think it may have been the first time we used a piñata that wasn’t a pull string one… it was interesting!  (my girls are not much into hitting with a bat)
This was one of the games.  I had 4 buckets and filled 2 of them with some pom poms I made with this brilliant contraption.  And I bought these cute ice cream scoopers.  So, the game was a relay type race… there were 2 lines of kids and they had to scoop a ball of “ice cream” and run across the room to the empty bucket and drop it in and run back, then the next kid goes.  Which ever line finishes first wins.  We played a few rounds of this.  It was a nice calm active game for them! 



I may do a blog post about this game too.  Have you all heard of the Cupcake game?  It is a super cute easy game for kids.  I spent a bunch of time creating a game like it, but it was making an ice cream cone or sundae instead.  5 kids could play at each game, so I made 4 games total.  I will link to the post after I blog about that. 

Pin the cherry on top of the Sundae!

 

I found this cake pop kit on clearance at Michaels and it was just perfect for the party.  It was pretty easy to make… the instructions were well written and they looked adorable.

lot of syrups!

Lots of toppings!



and MORE toppings!  (I am always happy when I get to use this fun ferris wheel serving piece from what used to be Southern Living at Home.)

Here are those finished cake pops

popcorn cones

ice cream bowls from Oriental Trading

 
We had a ton of different cones, but the majority just wanted to use the fun bowls.  The plates and napkins were from Birthday Express

I had my helpers (sis and mom-in-law) pre-scoop the ice cream onto a cookie sheet and stuck it in the freezer.  Then when it was time to serve… we dumped them into bowls and they were ready to go.  This was super helpful and make things fast and not as messy!

chocolate chip mint

and vanilla

She didn’t want a cake, so candles went into the ice cream scoop!  🙂



party favors (in the green bucket there are THESE ice cream shooters for the boys)

These party pails were from oriental trading and they had the idea HERE

inside the pails there was Ice cream scented nail polish, tattoos, ice cream lip gloss and stickers.  (just the sticker and tattoos in the boy’s favors)

Note: on the instructions from Oriental trading… the didn’t say anything about how they got the blue / purple/etc color under the iridescent glitter… I just hot glued on some ribbon of the same color and then glued the glitter stuff on top!

 
Happy birthday sweet girl!
 

Girl baby shower

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One more baby shower from a long time ago.  It was nothing fancy and I just have a few pictures from this one.  I will just post some pictures.  🙂

Invitations  I had to hand cut these… in my pre-Cricut days.
 

This topiary was given to the new mommy for the nursery.  The flowers are paper and they were made from my Cuttlebug die cut machine.

This fruit bowl wasn’t easy to do, but I love how it turned out!

Guess the baby game!
These were another gift to the momma-to-be.  I had everyone put their addresses on envelopes and gave her these thank you cards for easy baby shower thank you notes!

Bling baby shower

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I wanted to do a couple catch up blogs from past baby showers. This one is one I co-hosted with a friend in 2011.  I wish I had more pictures, but my camera battery died during that one. It was super cute and fun and sparkly.

 
We added jewels to flowers cut out on my cricut (paper lace cartridge) for the labels and to scatter around the table and we bought a few more sparkly jewels and hanging crystals to scatter around too.

Check out the super fun crystals we hung from the tissue poms!  (the instructions for making the poms are on the martha stewart website)

I made some home-made jewel/gem shaped candies for the party favors.  You can find the molds for the candies HERE.  They take a couple tries to get the color just right and the timing of pouring the super hot sugar!

 

Pretty right?!  I want to do another Bling party!!