70's Retro Birthday Party

I'm in the planning process for this party still. My daughter is turning 7, and trying to come up with a theme that we agreed on was not so easy. She's at the stage where she does not like princesses anymore, but she's still a bit too young for a party where we go someplace for the party. We compromised on a 1970's theme. She is really into tie dye, hearts and peace signs so it seemed like a good fit. For the invitations I got standard size white cards and envelopes, 8 1/2" x 11" tie dye paper that I cut into 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" pieces. I had a stamp that said, "It's party time!" that I stamped with a rainbow colored ink pad on white cardstock. I rubbed the edges of that paper with a red ink pad, then cut out ribbon, charms and assembled the card. This is what the card looks like on the outside. On the inside it says,
"Far out! It's a birthday party! We're boogieing on down for (name)'s birthday (date and time) at the (last name) crib. We're flashing back to the 70's to celebrate (name)'s special day. We're making groovy crafts like tie dye t-shirts. Your threads might get dirty so dress accordingly. RSVP right away so we can get the right size shirt. Call (name and number). Can you dig it? Be there or be square!"
As the girls (aged 6-9) arrived I gave each girl a blank page from a sketch pad and had markers in the center of the table. I let the girls draw pictures, and it kept them busy for at least 20 minutes as everyone streamed in. Then we had lunch. I served homemade sliders, chips and Capri Sun drinks. When we were done eating we divided the girls into two groups and had 2 stations. The first station was with me and my husband. We were in charge of the tie dye shirts. My good friend Jennifer came to the party and she was in charge of station 2. I bought white t-shirts in varying sizes from Joann and Michael's. I let the girls choose from 2 different designs that came with the tie dye kit. I gave each girl a gallon size baggie, had them write their name on it and also on the tag of the shirt. I washed the shirts in the sink, wrung them out and arranged them according to design instructions. I had my husband as the dye assistant.
The second station was really fun. I got small canvas bags, iron on appliques, a peace sign stencil (it came with 1 large and 1 small), fabric paint and felt peace sign buttons. Each girl wrote her name with a Sharpie marker on the inside of the bag, then chose one applique, one felt button and started painting the peace signs.
As everyone was finishing I got out the headbands that I had started the night before. I custom fit a retro style headband on each girl and sewed the elastic to the other end.
I made a tie dye cake and when we were done with the stations we had cake and ice cream. Every single kid had cake (which never happened at any of our previous parties). After everyone was done eating my daughter opened gifts. Everyone had a great time, and my daughter told me it was the best party she's ever had. Yay!

Rainbow Cupcakes

I got this idea from one of my girlfriends who did this for her daughter's birthday. First make a white cake mix as directed. You may want to use two boxes. One only yielded 15 cupcakes for me. Divide the mix evenly to bowls. Drop in food coloring. About 6 drops per bowl. It looks best the brighter it is in my opinion.

Teaspoon the different colors into the baking cups. Fill only to about 2/3 full. And cook in oven as directed from cake box.

Frost the completely cooled cupcakes.

Pour sprinkles into bowl and after frosting each cupcakes, turn over cupcakes to collect sprinkles.
Voila - end product

Here is what the cupcakes that I made looked like inside. The kindergartners who had these said they were the best cupcakes ever.

Note - you can do this as a cake as well

Little Girls Luau Birthday Party

Food:

Pigs in a blanket with ketchup and mustard

Mangoes

Pineapple

Kiwi

Strawberries

Cake- 1 9" round white cake with white frosting. We frosted the entire thing white, then dyed some of the frosting pink to make a flower. Then instead of making it a double layer cake we made a dozen cupcakes. We used vanilla frosting dyed green to frost the tops. Then we used a kitchen knife to make the veins like a leaf with yellow sprinkles to make it shine a little.

Drink- punch made with pineapple sherbet and Sierra Mist. Water with lemon slices.

Even though these were all 5-7 year old girls, they ate almost everything. It was relatively healthy too.

Decorations:

Glass stem vases with bright silk flowers

Large glass jars with sand and seashells
Palm trees (in our yard) and plastic blow-up trees

Cut-outs of flowers and tropical birds

Activities:

I cut out hundreds of flowers with bright colored cardstock with my Cricut machine. Then I got straws and cut them in 1" sections. I cut yard, and the girls made their own leis.

Painting pineapples. My daughter LOVES crafts and painting so the girls painted little wooden pineapple ornaments.

Slip-n-slide.

Pinata... a recurring theme, I know. My kids love them.

Coloring the driveway with sidewalk chalks... a big hit with the girls.
Photo shoot. After the girls made their leis, we had them put them on, put on a grass skirt and stand by the little palm trees. They got a copy of the picture with their thank you card.The last thing was flower hair barrettes that I made for everyone to take home. I made about 25 in just an hour and a half.

Little Boys Jungle Theme Party

For my 5 year old son's birthday he wants to have a jungle theme for his party.

Decorations:
Blue plastic tablecloth coming down the stairs to look like a waterfall.
Stuffed animals placed around the house.
Plastic figurines to decorate the table with the food.
Sound machine with jungle sounds.
Animal pictures. Calendars are on sale right now, so I got a Safari calendar with beautiful pictures of jungle animals.
Jungle leaves cut out with my Cricut

Activities:
Jungle Safari story- As the kids come in we're going to tell a story about jungle animals and they will all earn their own zebra print bandanna. I got zebra print material from Joann, and cut out 18" squares with my pinking edge. When these are on we'll take a head shot of each of them for a passport picture. These will be the thank you cards. Paint plaster of Paris jungle animals. I found them in the craft section of my local Wal-Mart. They were pretty inexpensive ($2.49 for 6).

Jungle search. Wal-Mart had their plastic animal toys on sale so I got plastic snakes really cheap. Everyone will search for their own snake. We might also search for alligator eggs (Easter eggs filled with various goodies.) Pin the nose on the lion- I found a cheap lion puzzle that I put together with puzzle glue. When I was done I cut out noses. Pinata- we went to our local party store, and they had lion pinatas. We may have the Jungle Book DVD or the Tarzan CD playing for those who arrive early or leave late.

Animal memory game- I used my cricut Animal Kingdom cartridge and cut out several different animals. I glued them to cardstock (and that was backed with giraffe print paper) and laminated them. The kids LOVED this.

For older children you could paint their faces to look like zebras or tigers. Make your own memory game where the kids have to match the animal picture to the animal sound or the footprint.

Food:
Funky monkey banana splits
Sandwiches- trying to come up with a fun name... any suggestions?
Jungle juice- apple cranberry juice mixed with Sprite

Tiger cake- I found the directions here.

Homemade cars birthday party decorations

We had a Cars themed birthday party for my youngest son. I was unable to find all of the decorations we wanted so I made my own. It was pretty easy to do, and they turned out pretty well. (The pictures didn't turn out as well as I hoped, but you can get the gist from them I think!)

I wanted to have some race flags so I got 1 1/2 yards of black and white checked fabric from Wal-Mart. I cut the fabric into 16" squares, which I cut diagonally corner to corner to make triangles. I sewed hems on the two angled lines. Next I got 1/4" white rope that we had in the garage and sewed the last hem around the rope. I made a total of 16 flags.

Here are two views of the flags that I had hanging from the canopy. It was a bit breezy so I couldn't get a better shot... sorry!

I used my Cricut machine to cut out blue ribbons for everyone. I used them as the thank you notes that I put in the treat bags that all the kids took home. You could also use them as awards for any games that you play.

I cut the tops and bottoms off 2 boxes and then cut holes on 2 sides as handles.

I covered the "cars" with aluminum foil and taped around the edges to make sure that it would stay put.

I cut out 2 different sizes of circles using my Cricut machine to make headlights.

These are the headlights on the box cars.

Here are the numbers on the side of the box cars.

For the activity you have the kids step into the center of the "car" and hold it up by the handles on either side. Then they do a relay race going around a "race track." For our race track my husband used blue painters' tape and made 2 lanes so both teams would have their own lanes. It was inexpensive, quick and easy to set up and clean up, and effective.

I used the lids from the box cars to make license plates that all the kids got to decorate. Here's a picture of the birthday boy with his license plate. (He was in a funny mood and all of his pictures are cheesy smiles with his eyes closed. Silly boy!) I let them all decorate their plates with foamie stickers that had pictures and letters. Then I wrote their names on the side because most of them wanted to cover as much as they could before I could write their names in the center. One idea is when they get thank you cards you can edit these photos to make them look like driver's licenses.