Tinkerbell, Fairy Party

Age of Birthday Girl: 5 years old
Age Range of Guests: 3-9 years old
Gender of Guests: boys and girls

Potential Age Range of Theme: 2-10 years, depending on specific focus & activities

Invitations: We didn't get very creative with these this year and just bought some Tinkerbell Invitations from the party store.  (Doesn't happen often since part of the fun for the kids is to make their own invitations but this year just didn't come together in time).  The envelopes had related fairy stickers.

Cake:  The cake this year was fun and easy to make.  It was a regular round double layer cake covered in green frosting.  Blue frosting was used to create a small pond with flower sprinkles to act as lily pads.  We found a Tinkerbell cake topper which we placed next to the pond along with some candy flowers.  For a nice finishing touch we placed fake flowers around the base of the cake.

Activities: Fairy themed games were the theme of the day.  We had the kids do a relay race to place fairy flowers along the path.  One child placed a flower then the next would pick one up and run across the flowers that were already placed to put another one down.  They would then run back along the flower path to tag the next person in line and so on.  Once all the flowers were placed the entire team had to run across the flower path one at a time.  Meanwhile there were parents who were blowing bubbles along the path, just for fun!

We took the kids outside for a scavenger hunt of fairy items and locations.  They had to collect items to later create a fairy house.  We also provided fake flowers from the bunch we had used to decorate the cake.  Somehow we managed to not have any photos of the finished products (??!!) but the kids had great fun.  We had also placed hidden fairy messages in our garden which the kids had to find and decode - messages about where to find fairies and how to create great places for them to live.

Goodie bags: Green paper bags filled with Tinker-bell items such as pencils, stickers, notebooks, and jewelry.  We included some candy and chocolate as well.

Strawberry Shortcake

Age of Birthday Girl: 7 years old
Age Range of Guests: 5-10 years old
Gender of Guests: boys and girls

Potential Age Range of Theme: 3-10 years, depending on specific focus & activities

Invitations: We cut out strawberry shapes from red card stock and glued party information to the back with a "you are invited" sticker on the front.  SC stickers were added to decorate the card and the envelope.

Cake: Using a simple template we cut a round cake into the shape of a strawberry.  Red frosting (it turned out more of a deep shade of pink but still looked OK) covered the cake.  We used yellow jellybeans as the seeds and green fruit roll-ups for the stem and leaves.

Games & Activities: Our first activity was a simple craft.  We found some inexpensive small plastic storage containers in red, pink, and purple at a craft store (Michael's).  Using various stickers, ribbon, and markers the party guests decorated their containers.

Next we created a SC scavenger hunt.  Guests were divided into four teams based on SC characters.  Each team was required to find items both inside and outside
the house, such as the longest blade of grass, something yellow, etc.  After a set amount of time teams gathered to compare results and a winner was declared.


Finally, we did a musical chairs or relay sort of game with pictures of SC characters on paper plates scattered around the basement. Teams had to race to find matches for characters and freeze when the music stopped.  Anyone with a match kept their plates.  Left without a match and you went to the back of your line to try again.  The team who got all the matches first won the game.

Goodie bags:  These were simple pink or red paper bags filled with SC stickers, pencils, erasers, and costume jewelry.  The boys' bags has bug themed items instead of SC.  All bags also included a small assortment of candy.

Hello Kitty

Age of Birthday Girl: 4 years old
Age Range of Guests: 2-7 years old
Gender of Guests: boys and girls

Potential Age Range of Theme: 3-12 years, depending on specific focus & activities

Invitations: Invitations for this party used a simple cut-out of Hello Kitty glued onto pink card stock. The party information was included on the back.

Cake: We took a basic round cake and decorated it using the image of Hello Kitty that we found on some stickers as sort of a template. Frosting was used to make the face and whiskers, with jelly beans for the eyes, nose, and the flower in her hair. We added some sprinkles for extra color and had cupcakes with the candy in the flower shape. We also found some Hello Kitty candles which worked very well on the cake.

Games & Activities: We had a craft for the kids as they arrived. They each had a foam bookmark to decorate as they wished with stickers, markers, and ribbon.

Then we played a game of pin-the-bow-on-Hello-Kitty that we had created for the event. We drew a large Hello Kitty on poster board and then made bows with sticky tape to use in the game.

The other game was a version of Bingo using pictures of Hello Kitty doing various activities. We created the board games by cutting & pasting pictures on the computer into different sequences and combination on each card.

Goodie bags: It was easy to fill bags with all sorts of fun Hello Kitty items from stickers to pencils and erasers to jewelry, etc. We added a few candy treats as well.

Rapunzel

Age of Birthday Girl: 6 years old
Age Range of Guests: 4-9 years old
Gender of Guests: boys and girls

Potential Age Range of Theme: 3-10 years, depending on specific focus & activities

This was inspired by a wonderful twist on the Rapunzel story found in the book called "Falling For Rapunzel" by Leah Wilcox. If you have not yet read this book you really should. It continues to be a family favorite even though our kids have outgrown picture books.

Cake: We attached two cookie sheets and covered them with foil. Two 9x13 cakes (one chocolate, one vanilla) were placed end to end on the long cookie sheet and frosted to form the tower. One end had small sections cut out to form the top of the towers. For the turrets and balcony railing we used Lego castle pieces from our girls' collection. The long braid was designed using gummy peach rings (by Trolli), cut into thirds and then placed to look like interwoven hair. Frosting vines were graced with large flower candy sprinkles.

Games & Goodies: The kids were given long door handle foam pieces to decorate. We had a variety of stickers, markers, ribbon etc. for them to use. The original idea had been to make them look like Rapunzel's tower but really, they could do whatever they wanted with their craft. It was fun to see the various designs develop.

The main event was the acting out of the book for the party guests. Our three children played the roles of Rapunzel (played by the birthday girl), her maid (little sister), and the handsome prince (big brother) as it was narrated. It is a delightful story of Rapunzel misunderstanding the prince's request to let down her hair resulting in hilarious responses, much to the frustration of the prince.

Following the short skit the kids formed teams and had to unscramble and decode mixed up messages to figure out the target sentence which was "Are you ready for cake?". They were!

Goodie bags included princess and prince stickers, sparkly pencils and notepads, bracelets for the girls and bouncy balls for the boys, gummy candies, and various other candies and chocolates.

Finding Nemo

Age of Birthday Girl: 1 year old
Age Range of Guests: 0-5 years old
Gender of Guests: boys and girls

Potential Age Range of Theme: 0-10 years, depending on specific focus & activities (who doesn't love Nemo?!)

This was a fun party for our 1-year-old and her guests that ranged in age from infants to 5 years old.

The Cake: We found a picture of Nemo and printed it out on the computer to use as a stencil. After the 9x13 cake was cut into the correct shape the frosting was added, again using the picture as a guide. We also made cupcakes and decorated them with blue frosting, frosting or gummi fish, and sprinkles.

Games & Goodies: We had kids fishing for prizes, crawling through tunnels of "water", and playing matching games with Nemo cards. Goodie bags included Nemo stickers, ocean/fish toys, and candy appropriate for the child's age.