Spring Has Sprung! Birthday Party Theme

My daughter has a January birthday which is smack dab in the middle of our harsh Manitoba winter. So, when we decided to do a “spring theme” for her 6th birthday party, it was much more about creating optimism in the middle of a cold winter than actually about celebrating the onset of spring. Having said that, it was a really fun party to plan and pull together.

Invitations:

I made this invitation long before I was into card making, so it was done on the computer using a really cute “spring/flower” font and some free clip art. I tried to find the one I used, but can’t find it. If you go to dafont or font space you will be able to find something adorable to work with the theme. I actually tried to make the invitation Rebus style by embedding both a butterfly and a bee into the text. (I had a total mind cramp trying to remember the word Rebus for this post and it almost drove me mad!) The photos below are taken of the extra invitation I printed for Eden’s scrapbook. Sometimes when I did this, I would shrink the original so that I could fit it into my layout. These aren’t the best pictures, but it gives you an idea. I made the invitation post card style, so the two photos represent each side of it.

Decorations:

I can’t say that the decorations for this party were anything too fabulous. I painted our “picture window” in our dining room with a spring theme and had made some grass/flowers along the half walls between the living room and the dining room. I also painted black stripes on yellow balloons and then attached antennae and yellow cellophane wings. I also hung up several hand painted butterflies that I had kept from Eden’s second birthday party. To add to the theme, the birthday girl was also dressed up like a butterfly!

Decorated half walls. You can actually see the loot baskets with handmade flower cookies peeking out above the grass.

Painted window

Activities and Games:

It is funny how each party has its highlight. Sometimes it is the decorations, other times it’s the cake, but for this party I thought the activities were the big hit. I can’t take credit for most of these ideas as I know I would have relied on party planning sites to get me started. Here are some of the fun things we did:

Butterfly Bowling ~ I filled 6 empty water bottles with tap water and food colouring to make them nice and bright. I then secured tissue paper “wings to them” and they became the bowling pins.
Pin the Spot on the Lady Bug ~ I made a large poster board sized lady bug on red tag board. The kids were blind folded and given an open Oreo half (with the icing). Their job was to lick the icing and attempt to “stick the spot” on the lady bug while blind folded. They got to eat the other half.
Fly Swatter Relay ~ This was so fun and hilarious to watch. The kids were divided into teams and given a fly swatter with plastic flies on it. They had to walk across the room balancing the flies and then turn around and come back without spilling the flies! When the reached the starting line, they had to carefully pass the fly swatter full of flies on to the next person in line, so the relay could continue until everyone had a turn.
The kids used homemade whoopie pie cookies, licorice and icing to make their own insect cookies by adding legs and spots. Of course, they got to eat these.
The girls also had their faces painted with insects and/or flowers when they arrived.
I pre-printed on foam door hangers before the party. They could choose “Buzz off” or “Don’t BUG me!” and then proceed to decorate their hanger.
Pass the Present ~ I got this idea from my friend Michelle. Basically, you wrap a little gift/surprise item in a box. You then proceed to add layers of wrapping paper on the outside equal to the number of kids, so that each child will get a turn to unwrap the present. You pass the present around the circle to music and when the music stops, the person holding the present gets to unwrap a layer. The person to unwrap the final layer gets to keep the prize inside. The kids love this! I can’t remember what the present was, but I am sure it was probably theme related.

Here are the girls making their door hangers.

Pin the Spot on the Lady Bug

Here is Shay getting ready to put his Oreo on the lady bug.

Here are the pins for butterfly bowling.

Here is Eden having her turn in the fly swatter relay.

Food/Snacks:

I always plan my parties for no more than 2 hours and keep a pretty tight schedule. It is because of this that food is not ever a huge part of the party. For this party, I put out a store bought “spring” table-cloth, plates and napkins. I also used my butterfly serving tray for snacks. For the most part the food was not theme related, but I did make small “caterpillar” fruit skewers using purple grapes and those fancy puffy toothpicks for the head. I added florist wire to the puffy head for antennae.

Here is Shay at the snack table. If you look closely you can see the caterpillar grape skewers.

Cupcakes and Ice Cream:

For this party, I decide to create a flower pot of cupcakes as well as an extra plate of cupcakes with a variety of embellishments on them. I loved the little birds ~ an idea from Martha Stewart.

I used fondant for the flowers and added chocolate cookie crumbs for the soil.

The butterflies were made with chocolate covered pretzels.

I don’t seem to have a photo of this, but for the ice cream, I bought a carton of vanilla ice cream and made slices that were about 3/4″ thick. I used a butterfly cookie cutter to pre-cut butterfly ice cream shapes. I then sprinkled them with coloured sugar crystals and re-froze them on a cookie sheet lined with plastic wrap, so that they were ready to serve.

Loot Bags:

This party was 6 years ago and I actually am a little miffed that I can’t find a picture of the loot baskets or an outline of my party plans. I am basically piecing this post together from memory and photos. The loot baskets were small “purse” like bags with two handles and some flowers stitched on the side. They were lined with hot pink fabric and very cute. I don’t remember exactly what I put in the bags, but I do remember that I made each of the girls a bug jar with a screen inserted in the top and a handle added. I made these for each of the girls, but don’t seem to have a picture of the jars either. I also made them each a large homemade sugar cookie on a stick. All that I can remember is the basket, a bug jar, a large cookie and a door hanger, but I really don’t remember what else was in them.

The only picture of the loot I could find!

This was a really fun party and could be tweaked for girls or boys. For more great party ideas, visit my other posts:

Birthday Party Planning

Birthday Cake Montage

Super Easy Glow Bowling Party

Sleepover Party Invitation

Winter/Snowflake Birthday

Birthday Cake Pancakes

Snowman Birthday Party

Disco Birthday Party

Winnipeg Jets Birthday Party

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

Hawaiian Birthday Bash

Pirate Birthday Party

Simple Party Pennant Banner

Snowman Birthday Party

Well, it’s January and with it brings Eden’s 12th birthday. I can’t believe it….she is already booked for her first babysitting job. Now that the kids are getting older, they aren’t very interested in the “over-the-top” theme parties that I used to do. I still like to make a nice invitation and cake, but the theme related games, decorations and activities seem like they are becoming nothing more than a distant memory. How sad! I used to love pulling those parties together ~ maybe I’ll be a Party Planner in my next stage of life? We hope to finalize some plans and pull things together for finalizing her plans for this year, but I know that my role is progressively becoming less significant as the girls are quite happy just to hang-out and amuse themselves, but in honour of her January birthday I thought I would share some ideas from one of her past parties.

Snowman Birthday Party

I need to begin by saying that this was early on in my birthday party planning craze and I was not yet adept at making sure every single detail was taken care of. She didn’t have a birthday party with friends until she started pre-school. Because the party was primarily adults, there weren’t any games, activities or loot bags. I have included some of the ideas I used for Eden’s party, but have also included several others that I either thought of or found on the web. This party was back in the “olden days”, pre-digital camera and I couldn’t find the negatives anywhere. I am embarrassed to say that the pictures I am sharing are photos of photos. How tacky! Anyway, no other choice. I was also quite surprised to learn that I don’t even have a full picture of the birthday banner. I think I got better at taking photos of everything, as I did more parties.

As shared in my previous post on the basics of planning a birthday party, I always consider 6 main areas when pulling a party together:

invitations
decorations
activities/games
food/snacks
cake(s) ~ plan, design and bake a cake/cupcakes (or save the hassle and order one)
loot bags

Snowman Party Invitations:

There really is nothing fabulous about the invitations I did for Eden’s party. I was not yet into card making and thought I was brilliant because I scanned the napkin so that the invitations matched the napkins. They were fine, but nothing special. I would do something totally different now that I am into scrapbooking and card making. If you simply google “snowman birthday invitations” under images, you will see hundreds of great ideas. You can also refine your search to “homemade snowman birthday invitations” for even more ideas. I often search the web for ideas before coming up with my own.

Snowman Party Decorations:

Again, I don’t seem to have great pictures from the party, but below are a few of my favourite party ideas from her snowman themed party. I always make a huge hand-painted birthday banner that is theme related. This might have been the first year I started this tradition! I don’t have a picture of the whole banner, but I remember it was on black with both light blue and white paint. My favourite part was the snowman family in the bottom left corner. Each member of our family made a footprint and then I added the details to make them into snowmen for the banner. Of course, there were snowflakes painted on the banner as well. After the party, I cut-out Eden’s footprint and included it in the scrapbook layout from her 3rd birthday party. The foot print is a great memory in itself. I did something similar for Shay’s pirate birthday with a hand print parrot on his banner.

For this party, I wanted to have an indoor snowman for photo opps. I purchased a large white Christmas tree bag over the holidays and then we stuffed it with shredded paper. It worked fine, but it was quite a bit of work collecting enough paper and you really had to have white or it showed through. If I were doing it again, I would use some of the other great ideas I found on Pinterest for making indoor snowmen. When I think back to the planning of her party 9 years ago, I realize how much has changed in terms of technology. I did find some ideas on line back then, but the ideas (especially the images) were quite limited. Social media sites like Pinterest have made it so much easier to share great ideas.

For the centrepiece on the table, I made a snowman ice sculpture. I froze water in balloons (with varying amounts of water in each) and then melted the flat side slightly so that the balls would adhere to one another. This worked perfectly. I added the embellishments the same way…..I slightly melted the area I wanted to adhere the eyes and then attached them. I did prepare the snowman ahead and re-froze him on my steps. Very cute!

I really don’t have a picture of them, but I had also used plain white balloons that I decorated with a face and hat so that they all looked like snowmen. They also turned out well.

Here are a few pictures from Eden’s Snowman Party.

You can see Eden’s birthday banner in the background of this picture.

Footprint snowman

Snowman Ice Sculpture

Stuffed snowman

This “handprint” parrot was on a Pirate Party Birthday Banner that I made for Shay. Click the image to see the Pirate Party post.

When preparing for this post, I found so many other great ideas. If I were doing another Snowman party, I might consider including some of these great ideas.

For more creative indoor snowman ideas, visit Amazing Interior Design.

Snowman Party Activities and Games:

As mentioned earlier in the post, I didn’t plan anything for our party as Eden was only 3 and it consisted primarily of adults and older kids. However, being a teacher, I can tell you that there are many great ideas based on a winter/snow/snowman theme. Pinterest is always a great source, but here are a few that I came up with quite quickly. Of course, you would need to pick activities that are age appropriate.

pin the carrot on the snowman (you could even use the refrigerator for this as shown in the pictures above)
make your own snowman using cornstarch and shaving cream
snowman bowling
Snowman Game using toilet paper and accessories to dress each other up like snowmen. Check this and other great snowmen ideas out at Fun on a Dime!
make snow globes
go sledding
in a perfect world you could actually go outside and build a snowman with the freshly fallen sticky snow (Ha! Ha!)
marshmallow snowman (lick and stick the marshmallows on paper to make a snowman picture)

Snowman Bowling

Make your own snowman.

Snow globes.

There are so many fabulous ideas for this theme, I could go on forever, but I am becoming deeply saddened that I will probably never get to plan another snowman party again. Rats! I would do it SOOOO much better if I had another chance.

Snowman Party Foods:

Snowman Marshmallow Pops

Snowman Milk Bottles

Snowman Popcorn Cups

Snowman Cheese Strings

Snowman Cake and Cupcakes:

For Eden’s party, I opted for a 3D snowman cake. I wanted a really bright white icing and so I used my mom’s recipe for 7-Minute Frosting. I find it a bit sweet now, but it was my favourite when I was a kid. Again, you can search for all kinds of great cake and cupcake ideas, but here is a picture of Eden’s cake. I actually can’t totally remember what I made the hat out of, but I want to say a “wagon wheel” with chocolate cookies stacked on top?? The hat is very dark in all of the pictures and I made this cake 9 years ago, so I don’t exactly remember. I still have the print out of the recipe and directions, but I know I did a bit of my own thing as well. I tried to find the link, but the page is no longer there. Sorry! Again, this is certainly not one of my better cakes, but I guess it illustrates my growth and development….let’s celebrate that! What drives me the most crazy is that I actually left the finished snowman displayed on a messy plate. I can’t believe I wouldn’t have cleaned-up the icing drips and crumbs ~ what was I thinking?

Eden’s Snowman Cake

Loot Bags:

I didn’t hand-out any loot bags at the family party we had, but here are a few ideas:

a snowman cookie in a cellophane bag (I have made those melted snowman cookies before and they are so cute!)
snowman kit (I’ve included the link to mine, but you could make a much simpler version if you had lots to make.)
crazy carpet
snowman or winter book
snowman soup (hot chocolate, marshmallows, candy stick (candy cane), chocolate kisses). There is a little poem to go with this, but it is a bit more geared to Christmas. I am sure it could be modified. I have sometimes made these as little Christmas gifts.
the crafts the kids make at the party will be taken home as well (example – a snow globe)
you could even put all of the loot in a “snowman’s” hat in lieu of a bag

This is theme is so much fun and the ideas are literally endless. So, if you have a winter birthday party to plan why not plan your own snowman party?

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Disco Birthday Party

I haven’t posted a birthday party theme for a while, so I thought I would toss one out today. This is based on Eden’s 10th birthday.

Invitations:

I made this invitation and envelope for the party. The invitation was made by printing the actual invitation in a white font on black cardstock. The words are on the back of the DISCO invitation. I downloaded a font called “bell bottom”. I tried to use 60 jargon (very lame, I know). I honestly don’t remember why there is green in the center, but I am pretty sure I just printed the white font directly onto black paper.
For the outside of the invitation, I actually used some left over fabric from Eden’s 60’s Halloween costume and some old denim. for jeans. The background was already black, but I gently used a embossing tool to make some little circular grooves in the “record”. The grooves are a bit hard to see, but I have a circle template in my scrapbooking arsenal, so they were easy to trace out. The word DISCO was typed in another free font I downloaded called Akka. I printed the word in black ink on purple cardstock and then cut out all of the letters by hand. I often use funky fonts in my scrapbooking and card making. One of my favourite websites for free fonts is www.dafont.com. I think that both of these were from there. The envelopes were made from plain cardstock and I embellished them with the shoe and peace sign which were both made on my Cricut. (Have I told you that I could not survive without my Cricut?)

Decorations:

I made my standard birthday banner, but didn’t do much more than that. Eden is getting older and isn’t as interested in a whole party theme.

I made the silhouette of the disco dancers with my overhead projector at school. I simply traced the images onto black paper and then cut them out.