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Archive | Party Ideas
Santa’s Workshop Party Ideas
Welcome to Santa’s Workshop! This year Annabelle and her friends kicked off the season with her 4th Annual Christmas Party. They were invited to the northpole! Each girl was given an “ELF” outfit prior to the party and they looked very adorable if I do say so myself! The North Pole, of course must have treats for the busy toy making elves. There was the Reindeer café, where the elves picked up cafeteria style soup, sandwiches and chips and also The North Pole Bakery, baked fresh daily by Mrs. Claus (well, actually my awesome sister made the sweet Christmas cookies, shhh).
We will start with everyone’s favorite….dessert! Welcome to the NORTH POLE BAKERY!
The reindeer café was a very casual cafeteria like set up featuring, Dasher’s Deli Sandwiches, Blitzen’s Broccoli Cheese Soup, Prancer’s Potato Chips and Rudoloph’s Rootbeer Soda.
Now for the fun! The girls, I mean, Elves, each painted a wooden toy. They wore “Official North Pole Toy Maker” aprons that I made by ironing my design onto red children sized aprons. They all were very creative and did a great job! Look at those serious faces! They took this job serious people.
Don’t forget the gift wrap station filled with lots of pretty paper and ribbons.
And when the party was all wrapped up, these girls were given a party gift of matching Chritmas PJs, because this was a sleepover! How cute are they! I actually got myself a matching pair, which you will not see pictured, but the girls LOVED it!
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
Photos by Maggie Russo Photo.
Click here to order the invite.
Halloween Party Ideas – A Villains Ball
This Halloween, host a Villain’s Ball in the Royal Evil Queen’s castle. Dusk is the perfect setting for this party on the dark side. Use ornate details and rich colors of black, burgandy and purple. No Villain’s Ball would be complete without Poison Apples. The rich dark red sets the tone with both candy apples and fresh apples with spooky tags. Add in a bit of black and white candy and creative treats such as “Lady Fingers” and vials of Blood for the vampires.
Classic games like Ghosts in the Graveyard and Ring around the Rosie are more fun and spooky as the sun goes down.
Have plenty of this Graveyard snack mix on hand for the little villains. An Easy mixture of puppy chow, mini oreos, chocolate chips and unwrapped Hershey hugs.
Dress up glasses with spooky eyeball skewers made of candy and marshmallows.
Stacks of Thrifted books with spooky titles and rich covers add height to the table settings.
Double, double, toil and trouble ….. try adding dry ice to your cauldron for a ghoulish effect on your vampire punch
Send guests home with DEATH BY CHOCOLATE candy bars to remember this fun night of mischief.
For recipes and free printable downloads see the full feature in the Fall issue of Yum for kids magazine.
Both invitation designs available in my shop here and here. Photography by Maggie Russo Photo
It’s Tailgate Time! Football Party Ideas | Andrew’s 11th Birthday
Are you ready for some Football? It’s just about that time of year! Kick off football season with a tailgate party, fun at any age!
This year Andrew chose to have a football party for his 11th Birthday. He invited friends to all wear their favorite team (can you tell we are in Chicago?!) and the boys played a little Madden in the Game truck and some nerf football in the front yard.
Here are a couple of my tips for throwing together a football party and adding that extra bit of attention to detail:
1. Astroturf. Inexpensive at home improvement stores. Use it to cover your table or your tailgate.
2) Printables. Pennant flags go a long way in a tailgate set up. Go Team!
3) Engineer Prints. Large chalkboard Backdrops and menu boards are very inexpensive when you print them as engineer prints.
4) Tissue paper. Easy to make poms poms on sticks and use as garland. Cheer on your team! We used basic football brown and turf green, but you can personalize the colors of your party to your favorite team too.
5) Wrapped food. Make it easy to grab and go with wrapped and labeled hot dogs and subs. Plastic cups with lids make great popcorn and other sideline snack containers.
We had a true tailgate party, setting up the food on my husband’s tailgate. Andrew requested his favorites….chili with all ) the fixins, hot dogs, Chili Cheese dogs, Chicago mix {cheese and carmel} popcorn, ham & cheese hoagies and salami subs.
Powerade and Root Beer Bottles were the tailgate drinks of choice. The porch had a drink station and desserts too.
Found these inexpensive drink koozies at oriental trading company.
Desserts included the best brownie cake pops and sugar cookies made by my sister, Double chocolate football cupcakes, Chocolate taffy, rootbeer candies and more.
A long chalkboard with football plays held the vanilla cream cheese cupcakes.
HAPPY 11TH BIRTHDAY ANDREW!!
Photos by Maggie Russo Photo | Printables Available in my shop | Best Game Truck in Chicagoland & NWI
My Little Pony Party Ideas
My Little Pony Party for Annabelle’s 7th Birthday
Hooray! Annabelle is 7! She is currently obsessed with My Little Pony. She loves all of the cheerful colors, the adorable cutie marks and the magical unicorns. My goal was to create a party that had the feeling of My Little Pony without putting to much emphasis on actual characters.
The dessert table was focused mainly on on bright colors. I did purchase sugar sheets of cutie marks to add to the top of our sugar cookies. All of the girls recognized the cutie marks and loved them. My sister made the colorful cake pops, unicorn cookies, rainbow drizzled oreos and gorgeous rainbow cake. She did an amazing job on all of it!
For this party we set up activity stations. We had Cutie Mark Face painting, Create your own Magical pony, The Beauty Spot, a unicorn craft table and a visit from a very magical guest, a pony with pink hair. We also had a boxed lunch for each guest complete with Apple Jack’s apple sauce.
Our first station was cutie mark face painting. If you are in the Chicago or NWI area, Fun Faces by Denise is wonderful! She has been at Annabelle’s last two parties and does a fabulous job.
Next we had the Magical Unicorn Beauty Spot. This is where you got to choose your {handmade} unicorn horn, rainbow nail painting, a pony necklace, bracelets, pony tattoo, colored hair chalk and more! We had the help of our friend Lily at this booth. Thanks a million Lil!
The girls had fun doing the crafts as well. I found look a like my little ponies at the dollar store and the girls had fun creating their own Magical Ponies with sharpies. Some of the cutie marks were very creative!
But the best surprise was the magical guest that arrived! The girls had fun petting and feeding treats to pink shadow, the majestic white pony with pink hair. The initial reactions were priceless!
A HUGE thank you to Maggie Russo for being there to capture all the magic!
The printables are available in my shop!
Girl Scout Bridging Ceremony – Brownies here we come!
Girl Scout Bridging Ceremony
Attention Girl Scout Troop Leaders! This one is for you. We hosted a Mother-Daughter luncheon as our girl scout daisies bridged to brownies. The style of the party was a little bit glam with pink, green and gold, a little bit wilderness girl and a whole lot of fun. This is a fun group of girls. We try to instill that girls can do anything and these free spirits most certainly can!
FUTURE LEADERS!
We used gold foiled empowering quotes as part of the table centerpieces. This was one of my favorites….
“What if I fall? Oh, but my darling, what if you FLY?”
Do-Si-Does were covered in chocolate with the girl scout logo (mold from amazon). My talented baker sister made truffles out of our leftover trefoil cookies. YUM!
It’s Cookie Time!
A sweet little luncheon just for moms and girls.
Stacks of vintage girl scout handbooks and a circa 1957 official girl scout camera added a bit of fun nostalgia to our party.
Brownies here we come! Watch out world, Troop 10125 is turning dreams into plans!
Photos by Maggie Russo Photo
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You can order the invite and bridging certificate from my shop!
Retro Soda Pop Party Ideas
Host an Ice Cream Soda Party! You can host an adorable mid-day Ice cream soda party and not break the bank. If you would rather not have the party at home, check out your local burger and ice cream joints. Call ahead and reserve tables during the shops slow time. Add assorted sodas in fun retro looking bottles or tall glasses with soda poured over ice cream. Don’t forget the cherry on top!
You can find my soda pop cupcake recipe, a free menu printable and even more cute party pictures in the current issue of Yum {food and fun for kids} Magazine! All Photos by Maggie Russo Photo.
You’re Invited! This invite and the other printables that you see are all available in my shop.
When you host a party mid-day you can save money by not serving a full meal. This party consisted of retro bottles of soda, ice cream and soda pop cupcakes and fun! I used inexpensive engineer prints to make oversized black and white signs and chalkboard menus. Big impact, small dollars! The soda bottles double as party décor. You don’t need much with this theme. If you were hosting the party at home you could add some thrift shop records and chrome accessories to pull the them in.
You can find fun glass bottles sodas at most super markets, world market and even amazon. Personalize the party with toppings and signs.
Vintage Tea Party Ideas as seen in Yum for Kids magazine
Tea Party Ideas! Every little girl loves a tea party, so when Yum for Kids magazine asked me to create a Garden Tea Party, my daughter Annabelle and I were up for it! It just happened to be her friend Shaylan’s birthday on this day so the tea party was a fun little celebration for her.
Victorian is not my favorite. I tend to gravitate more towards vintage, even a little modern in style. I started by creating a sweet garden style invite inspired by vintage linens. I then took my invite and hit the local antique stores in town. Keeping budget in mind, I just grabbed just a few things that I knew would make my party stand out. I started with inexpensive kitschy vintage linens in florals to keep with the garden theme. I found an aged scale with the perfect lemon yellow on it. I found a few mismatched tea cups and saucers and a solid color tea pot to keep it more on the modern side. I used a vintage soda crate (taken from my home décor) and cement plant stands that I already owned to bring the garden inside. To really bring in the garden element, my friend Jen from Monarch Florist made the most gorgeous floral arrangements. In my opinon, that is where you want to splurge! It was just the pop of spring that we needed!
The food was kept traditional and simple for the little girls. They enjoyed tea and crumpets with an assortment of jams, tea sandwiches and cookies. We had both iced sweet tea and a fruit flavored hot tea for the girls to sip. My sister made the adorable TEA cookies dipped in pink chocolate . Aren’t they great!?
Be sure to grab your spring 2015 copy of Yum for Kids magazine for recipes, tips and free printables from this party!
The favors were simple “Sweet Tea” kits…..A mason jar filled with a small lemon and fancy tea bags. The jar is finished off with a printed floral circle that matches the invitations, a SWEET TEA tag and a honey stick.
Tea Tins make great floral containers for your garden tea party!
How cute are these girls?!
Little ladies drinking tea! Love them!
Happy Birthday Shaylan! It was a lovely day for Tea.
Deck the Halls! A Cozy Tree Trimming Party
This tree trimming party was a cozy get together for Annabelle and her buddies (and a bonus for the moms because we love to get together too…more on that later). The girls had a fun time learning how to make garland the old fashioned way by stringing popcorn, berries and cinnamon cookies. I will be sharing the DIY on the cookie garland later this week. It is so easy and fun! Any reason to get together and spread holiday cheer!
These are some of my favorite photos captured by Maggie Russo. The adorable hot cocoa and plaid heart cookies were made by my sister, Little Miss Sweet Tooth.
We kept it simple and festive by having the party on a Sunday morning and serving just Hot Cocoa, Egg Nog and Christmas Cookies.
The favors were handmade snowglobes for the little girls with a Deer on one side and “let is snow” on the otherside all wrapped up in a kraft box with twine. The moms all went home with a Winter Balsam Shea butter bar from Madison Avenue Soaps.
Stay Cozy!
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Thanksgiving Leftover Packaging Freebie
I always make WAY too much food on Thanksgiving because I can not narrow down my menu. Nobody minds taking home boxes of leftovers though! I love to make them fun and different every year and this year I am sharing my design with you as a free download.
First, I bought these 3 packs of foil tins at the dollar store. I used the lid as a template to cut out the rounded corners of my two wood designs. I will glue my design onto the lid because the one it comes with is food proof. Excuse the quickie photos….you can imagine how fun these would be to hand out to your guests.
Next I printed these stickers on 4×3 labels for the pie….because this year we will have ALOT of pie! I will put them on my kraft brown boxes that will fit about 2 slices per box. I also included (not pictured) midnight snack stickers to print on these labels as well. I figured midnight snack works for all of it!
