Mom on the Move: Party On

I started coming up with themed party ideas when my oldest daughter had her 2nd birthday. I really thought it would be fun to have everything match and to come up with fun themed ideas. We do parties for our family for each child so it is a variety of adults and children at each birthday party.
So here's some of the themes I've done:

This was a JUNGLE theme. The cake was a chocolate monkey mold sitting on a square cake. I cut the balloons and hat out of paper. They could have been made out of fondant too. I had just started making cakes and the paper seemed easier! The bananas on the cake are candy runts.

Decorations: Hanging bananas. Green crepe paper like vines hanging from the ceiling. Jungle animal print balloons. Tiki torches around the lawn if party is outside.

Food: -Green leafy Salads

-Bananas

-Banana shaped sandwiches

-Jungle mix: dried bananas, dried mixed fruit, granola, nuts, animal crackers

-Jungle Juice with some plastic bugs or little snakes floating in the middle!

Other: -Jungle Animal face painting

-Have jungle sounds playing from a CD. Many can be found at the library.

-Play some jungle themed games. Banana relay race, Jungle Freeze (play a fun jungle song and then have the kids freeze when the music stops), Hot Potato with a stuffed jungle animal or banana

-Make binoculars out of two toliet paper rolls. Tape them together and punch a hole on the side of each and add string so they can hang them around their necks. They can decorate however they wish!

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This was a LADYBUG themed party.

I made a rectangle cake and used green frosting for grass. First I frosted it and then I used the Wilton grass tip #233 to make the grass on the top. I added a few flowers and wrote Happy Birthday on it. The ladybug was made out of a small bowl and a larger bowl. I baked the cakes in them and decorated them with red and black frosting.

Decorations: We found polka dotted balloons. I tied polka dotted ribbons around red and black napkins with silverware in them. The tables had centerpieces with flower pots filled with candy and ribbons tied around them.

Other ideas: I made my daughter's shirt for the day with iron on lady bug transfers. I also took a picture of her in a ladybug outfit and made a ladybug antennae out of a headband, red pipe cleaners and two black pom poms. I used this picture to put on her invitation.

Food: -Red and black fruit salad (strawberries, watermelon, blueberries, blackberries)

-Red and Black veggies (red peppers, black olives)

-Make cute ladybug appetizers

These are Ritz crackers with a cheese cut into a circle and then pepperoni sliced in two and a black olive to top it off.

Ladybug snack - add a leaf to base - or skip cracker completely

These are Ritz Crackers with cherry tomatoes sliced in 1/4 with an olive and two sprigs of parsley over a cream cheese spread.

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This is a HORSE theme. My daughter loves horses so we did a horse racing sort of mini Kentucky Derby style party. The other option would be to have a cowboy/cowgirls style party. I started with a cupcake horse cake. Decorated 25 cupcakes and arranged them as you see below. I also decorated a few other cupcakes to look like horses. Using white circus peanuts for heads and chocolate wafer cookies for necks and cut toosie rolls for tails. The faces and the mane were made out of chocolate frosting. They turned out pretty cute.

When everyone arrived the children made their own horse. We used long wrapping paper rolls. I didn't have enough so I substituted a few with just long brown paper rolled up. They decorated a head that was precut and stapled together. We used brown and black yarn pieces and stapled those on for a mane. Then they named their horse. Later the kids would race their horses around the field. For a little adult fun, we placed "bets" on which horse they thought would win the race. Some of the adults even brought their Derby hats to wear for the occasion!

Here is a few of the adults placing bets

Here the children are racing their horse around the track we made using colored cones.

Decorations: Hang a long ribbon with colored triangles hanging down, decorate with horse pictures or stickers, Large horse picture that could be used for pin the tail on the horse later

Food: -Derby Pie

-Mint Juleps (for the adults)

-Kentucky Hot Brown sandwiches

-a big bowl of apples for the kids and their horse

Other: Play horseshoes (plastic for the kids, real for the adults), Have a photo shoot area with a saddle set up and bandanas, riding hats, or cowboy hats for them to wear, Have a ring of fake flowers to place on the winner of the horse race.

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TANGLED PRINCESS Party

I have three girls so we've done a few of these with various princess themes.

This is my Rapuzel tower. I made it from a cake baked in a bowl for the base. Decorated that with green frosting and used the Wilton grass tip #233. Then I stacked 7 donuts on top of each other. That was about as a many as I could stack without them tipping over. Then there were two cupcakes stack end to end on top of each other with a frosting covered sugar cone for the top. I added vines and flowers along the sides to make it look like a tower instead of just a tower of donuts. There were decorated cupcakes for the "cake" part since the tower itself didn't provide much for the kids to eat!

Food: Princess sandwiches: small bite size mini sandwiches

Fruit kabobs on sticks (you can cut out hearts from watermelon using cookie cutters)

Royal Drumsticks

Dipped pretzels or fruit in white chocolate with sprinkles

Here the kids are bobbing for apples but the apples are tied to strings hanging from the tree!

Hilarious to watch!

These are simple Paschal party blowers. I made the Paschals out of fun foam. You make two triangles and cut off the ends to get the face. Glue them together with the party blower inbetween, coming out of his mouth. Very fun for the kids!

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SOFIA the FIRST/PRINCESS party

This is the Sofia ice cream cake I made for my daughter. I used two layers of a rectangle cake. I froze a layer of ice cream in a rectangle cake pan and then put the layers together. I used a coolwhip frosting recipe to make the "frosting" on the outside of the cake. I also added a few pearl like sprinkles to decorate the cake. Then I just added a few plastic Sofia characters to the top.

Here's how to make the frosting: Mix equal parts of thawed cool whip and ice cream together.

After you frost the entire cake make sure you return the cake to the freezer until you serve!

This is my purple princess cake I made for a different princess party. It is a square cake with a small circle cake on top of it. The towers on the sides were cardboard tubes with frosting piped on them and sugar cones for the top. I used a few princess cutouts and laminated them so they wouldn't get too soggy and gross on the cake. I piped some green vines to make it look like there was flowers growing up the towers.

I poked toothpicks in the end of the sugar cones and added triangle flags to the other ends of the toothpicks!

Decorations: Purple tulle to decorate the chairs the ceiling, anything! It's so pretty and princess like! 4. #Tulle Wrapped #Balloons: If you want a more elegant look then wrap it in a glitter or gold tulle!

4. #Tulle Wrapped #Balloons: If you want a more elegant look then wrap it in a glitter or gold tulle!

Cover a balloon with tulle and add a little flower! Beautiful! You could add fresh flowers in little mason jars with ribbons around them. Take a purple and pink plastic tablecloth and cut it the lengthwise into strips leaving a foot at the top. Knot the strips to make a fun entranceway. Just take 3 plastic tablecloths that you can buy VERY cheap at discount stores. Just layer the tablecloths and cut strips and plait a few times and knot it.

Just take 3 plastic tablecloths that you can buy VERY cheap at discount stores. Just layer the tablecloths and cut strips and plait a few times and knot it.

Food: Purple coated popcorn (use Wilton candy melts to coat the popcorn, then sprinkle with sprinkles), Purple popcorn

-Have princess punch poured into plastic wine glasses. The kids can decorate these with gems too!

Games: Pass the amulet,

Other: Make your own amulet using fun foam or other craft items, Play Sofia music (you can find a lot of the songs from her show online) Make tiarras using foam, or paper, or you can buy pre-cut crowns. Add sequins or gems. Buy ring pops as party favors and princess fruit snacks. Make a sparkle station for the girls to add plastic necklaces, rings, and bracelets. Have a nail painting area where they can do manicures. Play pin the jewel on the crown.

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STAR WARS theme

I realize this doesn't really fit in but my daughter celebrates her birthday every year with my nephew. So she takes turns with the themes! She loved the party!

This is my R2-D2 cake. It took a while. I used three small round cake pans to make the middle of him. The side arms and the top round part are rice krispies. I shaped the rice krispies into a bowl for the top. The arms I just cut the right shape. I used fondant to cover the entire cake. The details on it took awhile but I was pretty happy with how close it turned out! I also made cut-out cookies with my Star Wars cookie cutters. They were fairly easy to decorate using the tips on the directions. The cutters were from William Sonoma.

I made simple Jedi costumes for the kids using brown and white material. I basically folded a piece of material in half and cut a hole along the folded edge for their heads. Then tied a string at their waist for a belt. Easy and quick Jedi costumes! My daughter of course also had the Princess Leia hair buns!
Food: For the other food I was able to find some cute Star Wars themed printables for food ideas.
Decorations: Hang any Star Wars themed pictures or posters, toys or collectables. We had two cutouts at our house that worked great for photo ops. My husband is a big fan and collector.
Other: We made light sabers out of foam pool noodles. Just cut them in half and add silver duct tape around the end for a handle. Then add a few details with black duct tape for buttons and designs on the end.Playing Star Wars music of course is a must!
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COLOR/ART Theme
My daughter is very creative and loves art so we made it into a birthday party!
I made a cake that looked like a paint palette. It is in the back of this picture with the paintbrush sticking out. I made a regular rectangle cake and cut it to make it round. Then I cut a hole in the corner. I frosted the entire cake and added circles of different colored frosting to look like paint. It was so fun to make! I also made cupcakes with white frosting and then added rainbow colored sprinkles to each one to make very colorful.

Decorations: You can go crazy with rainbow colored decorations. I used paint samples from the hardware store to label the different food items. I used different colored plates, napkins, and silverware to add lots of colors. I had different colored tableclothes to add even more color to the party! Balloons of a variety of color would be super fun too! You could decorate the tables with different colored flowers. The brighter the better! You could put skittles and M&M's in class containers on the tables for centerpieces.

Food: Rainbow colored fruit (Strawberries, raspberries, oranges, pineapple, green grapes,kiwi, blueberries, purple grapes) You could try to find a food from every color of the rainbow. We had a brunch theme so there was a lot of breakfast foods.

Other: We painted on cheap, small canvas painting boards. They were given a picture of a famous painting to try to replicate. We did Starry Night by Van Gough. It was fun to watch them work and concentrate on it.

We used all sorts of rainbow themed things for treat bags that we found at the party store.

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MINNIE MOUSE theme
The year my daughter chose Minnie Mouse was the year we went to Disney World.

Here is my Minnie Mouse cake. I used a large 9" circle cake pan and a small one. The head is a half of a Styrofoam ball. I used fondant to cover the entire cake and the Styrofoam half. The ears were also cardboard covered with fondant. There are polka dots, buttons, and a collar all made from white fondant. Then I tied a ribbon around the "waist" between the two cakes.

Food: A "mini" theme is great! I made mini hot dogs on buns. For this I used Lil' Smokies and used crecent rolls that I cut to fit around the smokies for buns. Ketchup and mustard to top of course. Then I made mini taco bowls. I made taco meat with hamburger and then added shredded lettuce and cheese. We also had mini blueberry pies. They were tarts with pie filling. There was "Minnie" shaped cheese. This you can buy cut this way at the grocery store in the cheese section. There was Jello cut in mini squares. I also made Minnie Mouse Oreos on sticks. I took regular Oreos and mini oreos and glued them together with frosting and added a red frosting bow. Then I stuck a cake pop stick into each one. These can be found in any candy decorating area at a craft store. I found sugar cookies at the store with Minnie's head on them.You just pull them apart and bake them.

Decorations: Balloons with polka dots. Minnie ears made out of Styrofoam, painted black for centerpieces.

Other: You can download the Disney font and print out your own invitiations, labels, and posters using the Disney font. it really looks cool. Cut or punch out black circles and put Minnie "ears" on everything, bowls, cups, treat bags, anything you want to decorate!

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FROZEN theme
We like every other little girl, had a Frozen themed birthday party last year.In preparation for this party I made this cape for my daughter. I basically looked at a few different patterns online and free handed a pattern for it. The top shawl part was almost a circle with a slit cut to the middle. In the middle I cut a hole that was big enough to fit around my daughter's neck. I rounded the edges of the front. The cape part was almost a triangle shape with rounded edges. I measured how tall my daughter was from neck to floor and made the cape equally as long. I was so fortunate to find lace that looked just like the one in the movie. So I cut the lace apart so the scallops were separated. I sewed those on around the edges and also sewed on the black ball fringe. I was super delighted to find a clasp that looks almost exactly like the one in the movie! It and the lace were in the clasp section of Jo-Ann Fabric. Everything went together so smoothly and my daughter treasures it and wears it all the time!

For the invitation I made "tickets" for coming to the party. They looked like a ticket to a show with a price and a seat on the side. Then I found images on-line of the different characters and placed them in the middle. I think I made three different varieties. It turned out cute for something different than a regular invitation.

DECORATIONS: I decorated with snowflake decorations and snowflake picks that i found at a craft store
They are reusable for winter in my house now! I had little vases filled with blue and white candies and kisses. The table clothes were from the dollar store. I love dressing up the tables but I don't like to spend a lot of money on things that will be thrown away after a few hours! We used light blue napkins and light blue plates. You could stamp snowflakes on the napkins for an extra frozen touch! Twinkling blue and white Christmas lights would be especially pretty inside or outside.

Here are the cupcakes I made for the party. They were frosted in white frosting using a 1M tip. I added some clear sparkly sprinkles and then I used the Wilton candy melts and piped out snowflakes on wax paper. I froze those and they hardened. Then I carefully propped them into the tops of the cupcakes. We ordered a frozen ice cream cake for this birthday party. My nephew really wanted a Dairy Queen cake. So I settled for just making cupcakes!

FOOD: This is my fun Olaf floating in Jell-o! He was made out of fondant and pretzels. I put him in the Jell-o just before the party so he wouldn't get too melty. He did start to mush a bit after being in the Jell-o for awhile, so I wouldn't suggest putting him in too far in advance!
There are so many ideas for food. We put out carrots for Sven, water that was labled "Melted Olaf", you could do blue jell-o cubes for ice,

GAMES: Some of the games we played were: Pin the nose on Olaf. I drew a huge Olaf on paper with my kids help. He turned out pretty cute. Then we cut out some quick orange noses for him.
We also played a few marshmallow games. One game they had to see how many marshmallows they could throw in their partner's bucket. One game they had to use chopsticks to see how many they could pick up in a certain amount of time.
You could get chunks of ice and have the kids race pulling them across the lawn in a sled or some other form of a "sled" container.

Activities: The kids were given the "supplies" to make an Olaf. They were given an orange circus peanut, pretzel sticks, a super large marshmallow, two regular marshmallows, two mini marshmallows, two eyes, and three chocolate chips. This is what they created! It was a really fun activity to see their creative minds at work!

A work in progress...

LOONEY TUNES theme:

MERMAID Theme

Here's my mermaid cake. Is a variation of a princess doll cake. I baked a cake in a bowl and added the barbie after it baked. I carefully made a narrow hole for her to sit in since I didn't have a "cake doll" with just the upper half of the doll. Then I frosted around the cake water and added her green mermaid tail. The "sand" is graham cracker crumbs and the seashells are candy molds I made with Wilton candy melts. If you add two colors you will get that swirly effect! It's pretty cool and really easy to do! The other animals I made by smooshing Starbursts until they were pliable and clay like. Then I shaped them into whatever sea animals I could think of, lobster, crab, fish.

BEACH Theme

Here is a really simple beach cake you can make! I made a 9 X 13 cake and frosted it blue. Then I added graham cracker crumbs at the bottom for sand. I frosted white at the edge of it and then added a few waves with white frosting. I made a little crab and a bucket with a shovel out of Starbursts again.(See Mermaid cake) Then I added a drink umbrella! Finally I put Jelly Beans all around to border the bottom. Very short prep time!

This is a really easy Sand Castle cake. It is also utilizing ice cream cones! It uses five sugar cones and one wafer cone. This cake was made out of a 9x13 cake pan for the base. Then I cut squares out of another 9x13 cake and two layers for the rectangle in the middle. I added some colored circle sprinkles for decorations. Then there was graham crackers sprinkled on for "sand". The sea shells were also candy molds made from Wilton candy melts. Then I added flags at the top for the finishing touch.

Pictured here is our Beach Tiki Bar we made out of an old workbench from our garage. We added the green paper and cut it up into strips to make it look like grass. We used two chalkboards to list drinks and "specials".

THOMAS the TRAIN Theme

These cakes are coloring sheet transfers! This is one of the best ideas I've ever come across. A friend of mine taught me how to do it. You pick out a picture from a coloring book. Lay it on a hard cutting board or baking sheet and put wax paper over it. Then you pipe black around all the outlines. You go over the black a few layers to make it really tall and think. Then you fill in the other colors. You will need a toothpick to fill in any corners that didn't fill. You go over the colors twice also so the frosting is very thick. Then you cover the entire picture with white frosting. You freeze the whole thing. Then you make your cake. Frost the cake. Take the coloring sheet transfer out of the freezer and carefully flip it over and center it on your cake. Carefully peel off the wax paper and ta-da, super cool frosting picture is now on your cake!
The most important part of these directions is to make sure your frosting layers are thick so they don't break when you transfer it to the cake. Also make sure you transfer it right away after you take it out of the freezer. It gets mushier and harder to transfer as it starts to warm up!

Here are a few other coloring sheet transfers! The Elmo cake is the first cake I made for my daughter's first birthday!