party favors

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!!

Team Umi Zoomi party

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Hey Umi friends!!  We hear a lot about Team Umi Zoomi from our now 3 year old, so when I asked if she wanted an Umi Zoomi party, she was so excited and talked about it for a couple months before her party (and even the few weeks after it).  It is a really cute show on Nick that is a math based show.  But also, it is only in its second season, so as of now, they don’t have any licensed party supplies.  They did, however, have a lot of stuff on the Nick, Jr website… printables, crafts, recipes, games, etc.  So, that was super helpful in my planning.  I printed and cut out a couple table centerpieces, posters, game posters with stickers, placemats, made Milli headbands and Geo’s shape belts, I made my first pinata from scratch!, and made Milli cupcakes, and decorated with other items I found online.  (I will describe more under the pictures.) We invited a few of her little friends and well…. see for yourself!  🙂 
The birthday girl in Bot’s Belly Screen on the photo wall.  Printed these from nickjr.com and attached Bot to a cardboard piece that I folded (at the top) and tacked to the wall.  Worked really well.  So, the kids could just sit on the bench and get their picture taken!  (this one was before I wrote Trina’s name on the poster)

The posters are for a couple games we played where everyone took turns putting on the stickers.  (found on Nickjr.com) and the numbers are from Oriental Trading.

Another nickjr activity I had on the wall (but we never really did the activity) … it was mostly for the older sibblings that came to the party.

Flowers were made (reused) from my Cricut and the laterns and tissue fans were from JoAnn Fabric’s dollar section!

Placemats to color as guests arrive and in between activities to keep the fast kids busy!

Was thrilled to see that they had these stuffed animals at Toys R Us!

Another printable (with lots of assembly required) from nickjr.com

paper fans (made similar to this, but to make them large, you need to glue 4 sheets (12X12) together end to end after creating the fan pleats.)  I put a Milli sticker in the center.

Loved these flower balloons from the local party store
Left this up from the last party we did!

colorful containers from the Dollar Tree

Milli Cupcakes

Milli headbands

Because I would want to know:  The display for the Milli headbands is made from taking a piece of fabric and batting and wrapping it around a Quaker Oats container and pinning it in place.  And the characters are more printables from Nickjr

The pinata just after I added the pull string to it.  I forgot to take pictures of the process of making it, but I used this website for instructions.

printed Umi Zoomi stickers to put in the pinata

more pinata stuffers

the finished product… it was actually super easy, just a lot of fringe cutting and gluing it on, but it actually didn’t take as long as I thought it would!! and the pull strings worked way better than the ones I have previously bought from the store.

Party favors, Geo’s shape belt, Milli headbands and favor bags

Inside is a hand clapper, crayons, magnetic numbers, and some shapes, and a coloring book.  I was going to make the outside of the bags like this, but ran out of time.

low key pizza and movie party

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Well, time to write about another party!  We just had one turn 8 years old at our house!  This year my daughter wanted to do a sleepover party, so with that decision, the deal was that she could only invite 3 kids over (plus her sisters for the movie part) and I wouldn’t be doing a super involved party this time.  But of course I just can’t help myself and did do a little something to make it cute!  🙂

We had pizza and cake, then the girls watched “The Tooth Fairy” and before the movie, they got to pick a mini pillow pet (to keep as the party favor), a boxed candy, and fill their cup with an assortment of popcorn choices.  It was cute and I think the girls enjoyed themselves. 
The “sleep”over was a bit harder… there is always the one girl that wants to sleep, the one that wants to bother/bug and the ones that just want to chat and giggle… can be a hard combo sometimes.  It may be a few years before we do more than 1 friend again!

Anyway, let’s get to the fun part… Here are some pictures from the party:

Got the cute unicorn party supplies from birthdayexpress
Extra large mylar
For the individual popcorn cups: I printed the names on white cardstock and stapled them on the backside to form a cylinder, cut a circle for the bottom about a half inch larger diameter than the cylinder, then pushed and bent it up into the bottom and stapled it around the base. 

For the larger popcorn bowls, I have a set of green mixing bowls that are different sizes and all fit into each other.  I thought, what if I just make “covers” for them and set the bowl inside.  So, I measured each bowl from table to just under the rim and the diameter, printed the striped design and label I made on the computer (had to glue a few sheets together to make the diameter large enough), and just set the bowl into them (unlike the individual cups, there is no paper bottom, they just go around the bowl).  I loved how it turned out and will definitely use that idea for future parties!
cupcakes from whole foods and we just added some sprinkles
Mini pillow pets as party favors (only worked because we had a small enough party for it to be do-able)
We happened to have a stuffed unicorn which came in handy for the centerpiece
pizza time
Happy birthday to you….
the theater is all ready … where did that teapot come from?
Movie time
Happy birthday Elise!  Love you!!!

4 year old Princess party

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A few weeks ago, my daughter turned 4 and after changing her mind quite a few times, she decided on a princess party.  So the first thing I did was hire a “real” princess to come out to our house.  I had been to another birthday party and saw her there and she was amazing with the kids and told them a story with puppets for probably 20-30 minutes long and the kids were so engaged … boys and girls!  She was great and had to much energy.  So, I requested her to come.  Then, the night before the party, the company called and said our princess threw her back out and wouldn’t be able to come the following morning and they don’t have any backups!  Thankfully this all happened while I was out and my awesome husband, called another company and was lucky to find another princess with time to come out to our party!  Whew!  I was thankful I didn’t need to come up with other activities to do for the party or dress as a princess myself!  Eeek.  (Turned out she was great also, so another bonus.)  The party was so cute and my daughter had a lot of fun. 
Here are some pictures from the party:

I made the princesses and other decorations on my cricut.. very time consuming, but love how they turned out!

last minute decision to add some princesses to the table!

was happy to find a non-disney princess at birthdayexpress.com

wands and swords to decorate while the princess did face-painting

Storytime!

cake from Fred Meyer

homemade jewel candy for favors

favors
HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAYLEY!!!

Around the World birthday party

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A couple nights ago, we celebrated Elise’s 7th birthday with an Around-the-World birthday party.  We had 12 girls here and we boarded Birthday Airlines and visited 7 different locations on 7 different continents.  It was a fun party to plan and she and the other girls had a great time.  Here are the details!
When each girl arrived, we welcomed them and I took their picture (to put it their passports later), then they went over to see Agent Elise at the US Customs and Immigration table where they were given a passport with their name inside.  I got these cute little passports from Oriental Trading.

Then the girls were given these itineraries to color while we waited for the other guests to arrive:
So, we then all loaded the “airplane” (and all the kids grabbed onto a rope).  We (my husband and I) introduced ourselves as the pilot and flight attendant and we described briefly that we will be visiting different countries and getting souvenirs from each place we visit. 
our name tags

1st stop:  North America – USA – Minnesota – Mall of America
We made a stop at the Mall of America in Minnesota (upstairs in our room) as our USA stop.  There, the girls took turns “shopping” for their luggage to take on the trip.  They also received a USA glitter tattoo and a red, white and blue sucker.  Then we “stamped” their passports for the next stop.

forgot to take a picture before the party, but all the purses were lined up top.
the “luggage” they each picked one

2nd stop: South America – Peru
We flew back downstairs to Peru (the dining room) where all the kids were able to decorate maracas with wood markers. The maracas were the souvenir.

For each country, I printed out their flag, map and a few pictures from the country.
the inside of the passports… there was a country stamp and I printed an animal or icon on sticker paper to stick in there.

3rd stop: Africa – Kenya
Next up was Kenya (the living room).  Here we played Safari bingo.  I made bingo cards with a lot of different safari animals.  There was no prize for the winner, but the girls had a fun time.  I didn’t have bingo markers, so I used cut up post it notes… worked ok, but they really stuck together, so it was a little difficult for the girls to use, but the good thing was that they stayed in place if they moved or bumped their cards.  
The souvenir for Kenya were safari animal charms (2 per child) in a little package I made out of ziplock snack bags (because I forgot to buy tinsy jewelry type ziplock bags… these would have been much better.)  They also got to keep their bingo cards (which they were surprisingly excited about).  🙂
Oh.. and we played African music in the background during the game.

4th stop:  Europe – France
After “stamping their passports”, we headed over to France in the family room.  Here, thanks to Instant Netflix, we watched an episode of Madeline (was supposed to be the one about the Eiffel Tower, but there was a technical issue and they watched the one about the Louvre).  Madeline is a cartoon about a girl from France.  While they were watching the 20 minute show, it gave me time to set out the food and cook the pizza.  After the show, they collected their Eiffel Tower charms (ordered from Etsy and shipped from China… he he) and their Euro chocolates (from World Market) and they took a quick train ride to Italy for some pizza, breadsticks, salad, fruit and juice boxes.

After lunch we headed to our 5th stop:  Asia – China
China needed to be in the entryway (I was running out of rooms).  In China, we played pin the tail on the dragon with a dragon I printed out and taped together to make a large dragon and I printed out extra tails.  (it was hard to find a dragon that wasn’t too scary looking!)  I had also purchased supplies for making a ribbon dragon craft, but the kids were getting a little restless at this point, so I just sent that home to make with their mommies.  It would have been a lot of glueing anyway.  They also got these gorgeous wood fans and a fortune cookie for their souvenirs.

Next, off to the 6th place: Australia
Australia was in Elise’s bedroom and here we played a fun game with the girls.  We formed 2 teams and had a kangaroo hop race (with a globe between their knees).  🙂  Good to get a little of that energy out.  The souvenir was a pink or purple boomerang and an inflatable globe) 

Last stop (bet you can guess): Antarctica
Antarctica was in the kitchen, but we needed tables, so it was more of a fly by Antarctica (too cold to stop there anyway, right?)  The activity for here was melting their ice to find the prize inside.  We gave each girl a cup of hot water to melt their ice cube and inside was a chain (so they could put their charms on it)

I also printed out pictures of the kids I took in the beginning onto sticker paper and they put them in their passports above their name. 
The plan was to fly back to the US for cake, but we technically never did fly back.  We just stayed where we were, sang Happy Birthday for ice cream cake.  Then, opened presents and the girls had time to free play a little before their parents came to pick them up.  It was a really fun party, I think!  Happy birthday Elise!!

Cayley’s Max and Ruby party

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Yesterday was Cayley’s 3-year old birthday party.  Since she loves Max and Ruby, we wanted to make that the party theme.  Thankfully I started planning this over a month ago because there are no licenced Max and Ruby party supplies.  So, I had to get creative and come up with my own ideas.  So … I started with these websites that I found:
A blog from someone else who did a Max and Ruby party, the author (Rosemary Wells) website, and Nick, Jr.

So, I worked on printing out coloring activities for the tables, printing out most of the “bunny party” ideas from the authors website, bought a homemade Max and Ruby pinata from ebay (super cute), made lilypads and a grass poster for to decorate the bathtub for one of the games, printed out stickers, ordered mostly solid colored plates/cups, books and windup toys for party favors, etc…

So here was my party schedule:

11am – Kids arrive — color on tables and eat lunch
11:30 – Ring toss game/Pin the tail on Max
11:45 – Watch Max and Ruby – cake episode (momma hides frogs)
12:00 – Game – Find Max’s frogs and put them back into the pond
12:15 – Pinata
12:30 – Sing Happy Birthday and Cake


Now I will just let you follow along with the party pictures.  Let me know if you want to learn more about something!

Setting up:

The spread:
The cakes:
Max’s cake
Ruby’s cake
The guests arrive:
Games – part 1 (ring toss and pin the tail on Max):
Watching a Max and Ruby episode:
Game – part 2 (find Max’s frogs hidden in the living room and return to the pond):
Pinata:
Cake:
Party favors (minus the candy necklace… didn’t get the pic quick enough):
Happy Birthday Cayley!!!

Planning kids parties – Littlest Pet Shop

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They are still over 1 1/2 months away, but I am already starting to plan birthday parties for my soon to be one year old and soon to be three year old.  I LOVE planning parties.  I often spend way too much time planning them (that’s why I am starting so early).  I just love getting into the theme and finding cute games or cute crafts to do at the party.  I think my last one… a Littlest pet shop party for Elise’s 6 birthday was my favorite (at home) so far!  I think it turned out so cute.  Here is a little snippet from it: 
We started out with a bit of lunch:  for the kids I made either PB and J or cheese sandwiches cut out into animal shapes, the adults got subway sandwiches, then there was “my” infamous fruit salad, fishy crackers, animal crackers, carrots … I think that was it.

Then, we moved on to the craft:  Littlest pet shop masks.  In the weeks before, I had spent (again way too much) time finding pictures of petshop characters online, printing them out, then cutting shapes of the individual colors, tracing and cutting them out of that foam paper stuff, putting all the pieces into ziplock bags along with a picture of what the petshop character should look like when it is done… then the kids glued the pieces onto the mask and we punched holes on the sides and put an elastic string to make it a mask.  They turned out SUPER cute and I think the kids all liked them!  They were all different and I think I made at least 15 or 16 of them.
 After the craft, we did a pull-the-string pinata (which was a dud… so we ended up just ripping it open and dumping it out.)

 

And cake!

Lastly, we set up a little pet shop for Elise.  She was the pet shop owner and each kid was given some play money and they all waited in line to buy a pet from the pet shop.  (their party favor)… it was so cute.  I drew a cage onto some clearish-white favor bags, so they could put their pets in their cages to take them home. 


It was so cute and fun.  I will blog soon about my plans for the next couple of parties!  🙂