One more House Party

Last weekend I hosted another House Party.  I've been doing House Parties for about 7 years and it had been awhile since my last event.  I love House Party because I get *free* goodies to share with my friends.  What's not to like about that?

This time it was the most expensive Prize Pack yet.  I was hosting a Clarisonic Mia 2 party and the company sent me 3 Clarisonic Mia 2s and a bunch of brush heads.  The Mia 2 costs around $169 and the brushes are $27-35 each so that alone was amazing!

The event said that I would get to keep one Mia 2 and to wait for instructions after the party of what to do with the other two.  I figured I would have to send them back but they ended up telling me to gift them!  Since I already had my own Mia 2 (two years and going strong) I was able to gift all 3 to ladies that came to my party.  Best. Party. Prize Pack. Ever. :)

So very fun!  It will be hard to top this House Party.

Unicorn Birthday Party Part II

I'm back with Part II of my daughter's 10th Unicorn Birthday Party!  Today I'll go over our activities, games and favors.

Unicorn Name Game

This was our only game and lasted during the whole party.  When the girls first arrived they looked up their unicorn names using our chart and wrote them on a name tag.  For the rest of the party the girls referred to each other by their unicorn names.  If they slipped and accidentally used their real names they got a line on their name tag.  Whoever had the least amount of lines at the end of the party was the winner!

My unicorn name was Perky Happy Feet by the way. Ha!

Note: Adults were exempt from the game!

Unicorn Photo Booth

Another fun activity appropriate for the tween set was a photo booth.  I ordered a (cheap) background and also Photo Props from Amazon and set them up in one of the rooms.  I had each girl take photos alone, with the birthday girl and in any other combinations they wanted.  So fun!

The grownups enjoyed the photos too. ;)

Unicorn Poop Eraser

Our first craft was creating "Unicorn Poop".  I'm telling you, this was a hit!  We used eraser clay and had the girls roll out colors, combine them and make a poop pile shape.  Ha!  Added a little glitter, baked them in the oven and voila - a poop eraser!

Eraser clay was a first for me, but it's pretty easy to use!  I ordered our clay from Amazon and found directions on YouTube for making the poop shape.  I had the girls watch the YouTube video first and then they were off (easier than explaining it myself).

Unicorn Pumpkin Decorating

We saw a few versions of pumpkin decorating on Pinterest and adapted them to fit our needs.  I bought little white pumpkins ($1 each!) rather than painting orange ones.  This project was appropriate for the party and the time of year, since my daughter's birthday is right before Halloween. 

For decorating we used:
-Crayola Model Magic to form the horns 
-Flowers from Hobby Lobby, separated so each girl could use some (about 4-5 each)
-Curling Ribbons for hair and tails.
-Sharpie pen to draw on faces 
-Pink and white foam sheets to cut out ear shapes

We attached their chosen items with hot glue and patience.  

Unicorn Pinata

The Unicorn Pinata from Target was a big hit (haha).  At only $15.49 and free shipping it was a great deal too! We filled it with tween goodies including:

-Tiny nail polish bottles (wrapped in bubble wrap so they wouldn't break)
-Pop Rocks
-Unicorn stretch toys
-Rainbow Skittles
-Rainbow Hair Ties

Favors

We used the homemade Unicorn Goodie Bags for the girls to place their pinata goodies inside.  

They also received:

-unicorn cookies
-unicorn headbands
-unicorn Poop eraser
-unicorn Pumpkin

A grand haul!

For more information on the cookies, snacks and decorations check out: Unicorn Birthday Party Part I

Here are some links for the products that I used for the party:

  

Unicorn Birthday Party! Part I

My big beautiful girl turned 10 last month and we celebrated with a Unicorn Birthday Party.  Now that she's older we had a fun time planning this party together. It was a small party but full of lots of Unicorns!

Today I'm going to show our decorations and food, then I'll be back for the games, activities and favors.

First up were the invitations.  We found these beauties at an Etsy shop called Visual6Graphics. They were a steal at only $.65 each (plus shipping) and the quality was fantastic too!

Next up were decorations.  We bought Unicorn Balloons from Party City and regular mylars from the Dollar Tree.

Those beautiful cookies were made by Kim's Cookie Cottage here in Phoenix.  She is an amazing cookie artist who can make anything!  We used the cookies as decorations and each girl got to take a unicorn cookie home. The gold charger was from Dollar Tree. 

See those adorable unicorn bags?  We made those to use as decorations and also treat bags.  It was an easy and fun project we just cut out ear and horn shapes (from foam sheets) and colored them with pink or gold markers.  Simple sharpe drawn eyes and that's all we needed!

The girls and I matched the theme by wearing Unicorn leggings!  The girls's leggings are from Target and mine are from Lularoe. The birthday girl had a matching Unicorn t-shirt from Target and see those Unicorn headbands?  Those were from Target too, only $3 each ($2 if you do store p/u)!  The biggest steal was the pink "Full time Unicorn" tank tops that I found for me and my BFF.  They were on clearance at Charming Charlie and ended up only costing $2 each!  

Most of the other decorations were from Target including the tablecloth, plates, napkins and rainbow Unicorn straws! The rainbow tray is from Ikea.

Those pretty rainbow floats were made out of rainbow sorbet and sprite.  Our other snacks included popcorn and of course cupcakes!

Thankfully here in Phoenix late October is still nice and warm so the girls enjoyed cupcakes on the back patio.  In fact my daughter was almost too hot in her long-sleeved T. :)

I'll be back later with the games, activities and favors. 

Rubber Ducky Party Part 2: Food and Games

We're into the school year but not so long ago (last month) we celebrated two special 6 year olds with a Ducky Themed birthday party.  I already shared our invitations and decorations and now I'm back to show off our food and games.  All with a rubber ducky theme of course!

First up the refreshments.  We had beverages just for the adults, a must have at a hot hot and humid outdoor kid's party. 😉  

• Cold Brew - Made by my Toddy maker.  I used IKEA organic ground coffee.  I also made simple syrup and provided half and half.
• Mimosa/Bellini - My BFF had orange juice and champagne.  Very refreshing!  And I added a bottle of Bellini from Trader Joe's.

For kids we had a bucket of bottled waters on ice.  We figured they had enough sugar from the rest of the party so they didn't need more.

For food we had a spread of:

• Popcorn: An easy crowd favorite.  We served it in cups.
• Strawberry: Cut up for easy serving.
• Hard Boiled Eggs: This may seem like an unusual choice but kids love them and hey, they matched our Duck theme.  
• Frozen Yogurt: Tubes of yogurt were crowd favorites and perfect for a hot morning.

Naturally we also served cupcakes, ours were decorated with blue sprinkles (to look like water) and had rubber duckies on top.  If you're not afraid of a little more food dye you could ask for blue frosting.

 

Now onto games; the party was a pool party so games weren't required, but we had to have a couple!  

• Relay Races: We split the kids into two teams and had them go back and forth with plastic eggs on spoons.  A party classic and the kids had a hoot.  You could add more challenges but our kids were content with just that.

• Pin the beak on the duck.  You can't have a birthday party without a pin-the-something-on-the-something!  In this case my daughter thought up the beak on the duck version, although a wing could work too.  My sweet girl actually created her own duck weeks before the party, but we made a bigger one the night before instead.

 

• Last but not least, a beautiful pinata!  Another classic game that doubles as a decoration!  Our kids had the best time whacking at it and it took a few rounds before it finally busted open.  The pinata was filled with (natural) candy and quarters stuffed into eggs.  Eggs! Get it? Duck eggs!  That was my friend's idea, she's brilliant!  She provided gift bags for each child to keep their pinata treasures and also party favors at the end.

The handmade pinata was from an Etsy shop called TheKidCorner.  It was perfect!

The party was a success and a good time was had by all!  Rubber Ducky might be an unusual theme for a 6 year old party but it worked swimmingly for us. 

Note about the party favors.  We let each child pick a big (normal size) rubber duck, duck key chain and a few tiny ducks to take home.  Prizes for the games were other duck toys.

Rubber Ducky Birthday Part 1 (decorations & invitations)

Rubber Ducky Birthday Party - Invites & Decorations

My youngest daughter is a creative little girl that moves to her own drummer.  Months before her birthday she came up with idea after idea for a party theme.  Then she had the idea to do a Rubber Ducky party and that was it, she didn't change her mind again.

I decided to go with it and when my best friend suggested a joint birthday party with her son (who happens to be my daughter's bestie) he thought Rubber Ducky was cool too.  They are such a sweet pair of friends, born only 8 days apart to best friends; they've been close since before birth!

Once we agreed on the theme and that it should be a pool party we got to planning.  I have to say that it was MUCH more fun this year planning with my bestie.  Also less work/stress!





Invitations

Finding birthday themed Ducky invites for older kids was a challenge, they were mostly designed for 1st birthdays.  I did find this one from Etsy that would have worked, but we thought outside the box and made our own.


We had cookies made by a fantastic local cookie artist, Kim's Cookie Cottage.  She can make anything!  Originally we planned on ordering cookies to use for the goodie bags, but she was unavailable in July.  So we changed plans and had her make invitation cookies instead.  

I took photos of the cookies and made copies (on shutterfly).  My BFF added paper and voila, cute invites!

Bonus is we got to eat the cookies! :)  I froze the ones we didn't eat and used them as decorations later at the party.




Keep Calm and Rubber Ducky Tanks

We know a local talented woman who makes graphic shirts. She has a shop called Cuts & Creations on Etsy and is able to make custom designs.  I told her my idea and these adorable tank tops arrived.   

Ducky Skirt 

My daughter requested a ducky fabric dress or skirt.  I had intended on making a dress but I waited until the last minute (night before) and a skirt is all I could pull off.  I didn't have a pattern so I chose a Pinterest skirt called "20 minute easy skirt" described as so easy her 5 year old had made one.  

Well....I'm not very good at sewing.  I had some lessons a few years back but since then I only occasionally wing it on making things.  So that "20 minute" skirt took around 2 hours and looks best far away. Ha!  But my daughter was thrilled and it worked for the party.

Ducky Necklace

Last but not least I found my daughter a cute little Rubber Ducky Necklace.  A sweet gift and souvenir from the party theme!  She was thrilled.  

Moving on to the....

Party Decorations

This was probably my favorite part, there are so many ducky items out there!  I was on a budget so I focused on these 4 ducky items.

1. Teeny Tiny Rubber Duckies (1.5 inches)  I ordered 100 of these cuties and scattered them around the party.  I put them on tables, in with the water bottles and of course in the pool!  The kids loved playing with the duckies: throwing, sorting, gathering.  I saved out enough to put them on the cupcakes as well.

2. Yellow Ducky Beach Balls  A pool party has to have balls and these cuties looked great in the pool and were fun to play with too.

3. Really Big Rubber Ducks  (8.5 inches).  We had two of these ducks, used for table decorations/balloon holders.  The birthday boy and girl each got to keep one.  They are super fun in the pool too!

4. Duck Pool Float Naturally this pool party needed a huge duck float.  This beauty had handles and easily fit 3-5 kids!  It doubled as a photo prop. 

5. Balloons: I bought a bunch of green/blue/white stars to decorate but our big winners were these huge ducky mylar beauties.  I bought 3 of them (they were on sale!) and had two weighted for the ground and one in the air. They were fun for photos although one of them (a weighted one!) took to flight like a kite and was never seen again.   

6. Plates/table Cloths/Etc: We had yellow and blue tablecloths, plates and cups.

Many of our decorations were used as party favors, there were plenty to go around!

I'll be back soon with details on the food and games.  For more details on the ducky decorations check out the links below.

   

Lego Friends Themed Birthday Party

For my daughter's 9th birthday party this year she selected a Lego Friends theme.  Lego and especially Lego Friends are big in our house so this wasn't a surprise and was a relatively easy party to plan for.  I'd love to share our details with you today.

INVITATION

The Shop Sample

I selected a personalized invitation from an Etsy store named DesiDesigns7 (image file only) and made copies on Shutterfly.  My daughter especially loved this invitation because it looked like a Lego box with the "2-99" listed on it.  Our copy looked very similar to this one, and even happened to also be a 9th birthday!

DECORATIONS

For decorations we purchased pink, teal and purple mylar balloons from the dollar store.

I wrapped some of her family gifts in boxes to look like Lego blocks.  I used solid color paper (leftovers from Christmas) and also tissue paper.  Then I cut out a few coordinating colors and glued them onto the boxes.  This worked perfectly because we didn't open the family presents during the party, so they worked double duty!  I also made one gift bag block as seen in the photo.  This one had triple duty on the day of the party because I tied the balloons to it too.

I repurposed the same dollar store pink plastic tray from my youngest's summer Hot Wheels party to use for this party.  I simply cut out an extra bingo card and taped it onto the tray.  I used this tray to hold the favor bags.

Other decorations included Lego Friend's blocks that my daughter put together, purple table clothes (dollar store) and of course a Happy Birthday banner!

GAMES

Games were especially fun to plan for this age group as there were SO many options!  I pinned item after item on Pinterest and had to narrow down to just a few.  Here are the ones we chose:

1. Cooperative Build: This activity required a big Lego plate, a box of blocks and one die.  The girls took turns rolling the die and they would add that many pieces to the plate.  There was no winner of course, just a nice team building activity to get the party started.

2. Lego Drop: A variation of the old-school clothespin drop game it required a jar, Legos and a stool.  The girls took turns dropping 3 Legos (we chose long ones) into the jar while looking over and having the Lego touch their nose.  We had a small jar and long Lego to increase the challenge.   You could use a regular mason jar with younger kids. The winner of this game got a prize.

3. Tallest Tower: This game required enough medium Lego plates for each girl and a box of Legos.  The task was simple, to build the tallest tower in the amount of time allotted.  In our case we gave them 5 minutes.  The winner of this game got a prize.

4. Lego Friends Bingo:  I think this was the favorite game of the day.  I found this colorful and fun (FREE) game download from the blog Artsy Fartsy Mama.  It was simple and only required the board copies and pieces. We used Lego blocks as markers naturally.  The winner received a prize.  If we had had more time we could have played a few times.

This game was so popular with my youngest that we've played it regularly since the party!   

Now, last but not least.

5. Lego Friends Word Search: This themed word search was perfect for our (mostly) 8-9 year olds and took them a few minutes to complete.  The (FREE) download was also available from the Artsy Fartsy Mama blog.

ACTIVITIES

Although not a game we had Lego Friends coloring pages that I found online (for FREE). I had them out at the beginning of the party for the girls to color before things got started.  

Coloring Pages
Coloring Pages 2

I purchased two packages of photo props (dollar store again) for the girls to pose with.  They had the best time!  I did group shots and also individual photos with the birthday girl.

REFRESHMENTS

My daughter selected cupcakes at the grocery store and we used candy blocks to decorate them.  I purchased the blocks from Amazon and also used them on the cupcakes and in the favor bags.

 

For beverages we had sparkling lemonade (from Trader Joe's) served in pink paper cups.  We added paper straws with Lego Friend's flags on them.  The flags were party-bag toppers (another FREE download from the fabulous Artsy-Fartsy Mama blog) that worked perfectly as a flag.  I simply cut them out, glued them together then punched holes for the straw to fit through.  

We kept utensils in a Lego block holder that my daughter made for the party.  Cute and easy!

Since it was late October in Arizona we had our refreshments outside.  Ah, the perks of desert life. 

FAVORS

We had clear favor bags with soaps we made (that had a Lego Friend figure inside) and more candy blocks tied with a lego block ribbon.  For more information on the favors see my entry here.

To get your own Candy Blox on Amazon go here. 

THANK YOUs

We completed the party by sending personalized thank-you photo collage cards (39 cents at Walgreens).  I took the photos of the girls at the party and my daughter added the text.  Simple and a fun and of course manageable since the party was on the small size.

It was a great party and a fun time was had by all!  

For more of our birthday parties check out:

Pottery Painting (Age 8)

Rainbow Theme (4 yr old)

Minnie & Mickey Birthday Party (3 yr old)

Butterfly Birthday Party (6 yr old)

Vintage Fisher Price Little People Party (2 yr old)

Baby Girl - Sweet Pink 1st Birthday Party

Fairy Princess Birthday Party Games

Fairy Princess Party Decorations and Food

Hot Wheels Pool Party - Age 5