Most little boys are big fans of the video game Minecraft. I put together this Minecraft birthday party for my 8-year-old this year and it was a big hit! I created free printables as well so you can recreate this party easily!
2020 Balloon column Decor & Balloons prop, tower, stand, pillar, post or pole are available in two, three and four colors of your choice in kit & assembled
Explore Sugar Dreams is now...Inspired Sugar!!!'s 723 photos on Flickr!
If you are anything like my mommies group, we wanted something inside for our kids this past week. We combed the Internet, trying to come ...
Are you throwing a Halloween party, but not sure where to start? Check out these 25 Halloween party ideas to get you started!
Ready, Aim, Party! This Foam Dart Cake Topper set makes it so easy to turn your plain cake into a party ready cake! Your cake will be personalized and ready for battle!
Throw a super-fun Lankybox birthday party using our Lankybox birthday party printables kit! The printable template bundle includes all the essentials to put together an awesome themed party that everyone will love.
This isn't your run-of-the-mill Woodland Fairy Party! Get fresh ideas here at Kara's Party Ideas to help you plan your party! See it here.
"OCTONAUTS, Report to your stations" Well, with a little boy obsessed by Kwazii Kitten and Dashie Dog, there was no guessing what theme he would choose for his 5th Birthday Party.
Get ready for picture overload :) Last Saturday we celebrated a really big day...Blake's second birthday! Can't believe that our baby is really 2. I need him to slow down! He is so full of life and turns evry person I know into his number one fan. He knows he is funny and he is such a little actor. His independence and fiery personality test us every day as parents, but we wouldn't have it any other way. He really did complete our family. We were going to the do the Monster theme that is so big right now for his birthday, cause he loves to talk in this monster voice and growl all the time, but it was just too popular for me. So we made some slight variations and went with an outerspace theme that was all about aliens, spaceships and bright, fun, summer colors. I think it turned out perfect and the kids seemed to have fun! The weather was perfect! It was HOT and sunny and our backyard was the best setting. Spring and Summer in the Tacoma area is a little cold this year and I was nervous. We had a dessert area (above) which held some Funfetti cupcakes frosted by my amazing sister-in-law, some "Marsh"ian pops that the kids love and are so much easier than cake pops (thanks Ashley for teaching me your secrets), and with the leftover white chocolate from the pops we made some chocolate covered pretzels. Pinwheel Lane (http://pinwheellane.etsy.com) party flair was EVERYWHERE, of course! So our favor tags and cupcake toppers were a great addition to the table. My favorite part....the Blake Astronaut cupcake tower topper. He's so cute in that little blue helmet! My mom, mother-in-law and sister-in-law were so helpful in pulling together our Snack Space Station. We had Orange and Green food everywhere. The guests may not notice, but I do. We had Doritos, Cheetos, Blue Corn Tortilla Chips, Veggies (only orange and green ones), fruit (only orange and green ones and some blueberries), some pasta salad with orange and green noodles and some Saturn Rings (or Ding Dongs, Powdered Donuts in cute baking cups, and peach-mango applesauce). There was a green juice drink for the kids, a blue/green drink for the adults and some Liquid Hydrogen (H2O) with limes and oranges in it to drink. My oldest son Caden insists on crafts at birthday parties. So we had a Comet Craft Corner. We had Moon Dough to play with, Rockets on paper straws to launch, UFOs (made from ashtrays) to run around with, bubbles to blow, and space themed coloring pages. I hung a blow-up solar system, some silver stars and a UFO that says "Blake is 2" from the roof of our porch cover. A little carnival section was the great setting for our favors. Prize Planet had two games. A Crater Crunch, made from cans wrapped in scrapbook space paper, and a UFO toss. After playing the games the kids got to make their own goodie bag. Each Pinwheel Lane Favor Bag had the child's initial on it and they got to pick from all of our colorful, space-themed goodies. There were ray guns (squirt guns), Moon Pies, Orbit Gum, Astronaut and Alien Rubber Ducks, little alien looking balls, colored licorice, suckers and asteroids (or taffy), milky ways and starbursts. Caden and Blake and some of their friends playing games! Caden's worth much more than 10 points! All Blake wanted from the Prize Table was licorice! Time for some crafts! The playground and Basketball court always keep the kids busy! We also put out our Anti-Gravity House or Bounce House! The Marshians were a hit! Time to sing Happy Birthday! Although Blake didn't love the singing, he did love the cupcake and so did his buddies. When the squirt guns were filled with water Blake was so happy to play with the big boys! Caden and I! My little guy getting me with his gun....SURPRISE! Sorry Mommy! Pat and I! We love seeing so much fun happening in our backyard! After everyone left he got to open a couple presents from family. He loved the Mariner Moose that he got from Grandma, Papa and Auntie Meagan and his fishing pole from Uncle Joel. These two boys had a great day! Happy Birthday Blakey Boy!
Ronny couldn't wait to take the kids to the Lego Store in St.Jacobs. Evie and Elijah both LOVE lego. The store has all sorts of life- size figures made out of Lego... very cool! The kids were most excited about the stations where you can build your own race cars and then race them down the ramp. Ronny spent forever making his Ferrari. The kids waited for him patiently and finally got to race. The Ferrari came in last nearly every time, lol!
Army Cake Only Butter Cream.
Don't all things begin with a desperate need to buy themed vintage stamps from an etsy shop???? How could I ever resist? :) It's taken a while to blog Charlie's ninth birthday party because I was waiting until it was featured on Hostess with the Mostess which finally posted on the same day I flew to Boston WITHOUT my laptop! They had told me it would feature at the end of the month so I was not ready or prepared at all for a mid-June feature! And of course, I had to wait an additional five days to get home from B-town to even access my images! Crazy times! :) I started planning Charlie's party back in November. The second Henry's Monster Party wrapped, my talented party-styling girlfriend, Rachel, wanted to know what was next. We asked Charlie to give us a theme to start working on -- and he said "LEGOS!!". That didn't really work for us. There are too many lego parties already out there. It might've taken a little persuasion to get him to decide that what he reeeally wanted was a chemistry party. :) Rachel runs RV Parties with her BFF and partner, Victoria. They design the most adorable printables for pretty much any party theme. You can buy the science printables from this party as well the monster printables from Henry's party -- or a variety of many other themes - HERE at their etsy shop! You'll also see lots of my photography there. I'm their favorite professional photographer. I was seriously & intensely proud of the large chalkboard that we used for our backdrop at the dessert table. I knew two things: 1., there was NO WAY that I could handwrite anything on any chalkboard and have it look adorable - not to mention, I'm way to OCD to have the font on a backdrop not completely match with the party design/font, and 2., I did NOT want to buy a new, giant chalkboard and then have no idea what to do with it when the party wrapped. But, thats why engineering prints from Staples are the greatest thing in the whole wide world. Yes. You heard me. The greatest. If you need something printed in a very large size (this one was 36x48) but don't want to pay your child's college tuition for it - and it happens to be a black and white image - then head to Staples. I had Rachel design a large print to look like a fake chalkboard and had it printed for $6. Then I tacked it to a corkboard that I already had hanging over my desk in my office. Perfect. We had so many amazing treats on our dessert table! Miss Lulu's Sweet Treats sent us the cake pops atoms on a stick. They are the best cake pops I've ever had in my entire life. No joke. I *might* have lied to a couple of the children who asked if they could have one and said they were for display only so there'd be a few leftover. And the chocolate-dipped Oreo Molecules were her idea and I looove how creative and perfectly themed they are! And the amazing Jessica of J&J Bakeshop - local here in VA - provided us with the perfect cookies decorated to look like the element of Charlie!! She is so talented, y'all. I ordered specialty cookies from her for Christmas gifts last year and I encourage you all to find a reason to need cookies just to see what she can do! And I made the cupcakes because I'm a cupcake snob now and can only eat the cake that my BFF, Mandie, makes or the cake my BFF, Mandie, taught me how to make. I was also really proud of my party favor idea! Last summer, I taught Charlie the Mentos + Diet Soda reaction - read about it here - (so many links in this post!!). He loved it so much that I figured it should either be an experiment at the party or the favor! Since it's pretty messy and doesn't take very long to react, I figured, favor it is! I think it's always best to send the messy stuff home to the parents. Just like it's always best to serve the guests all the sugar RIGHT before the end of the party. :) Did you know that lab coats are RIDICULOUSLY expensive?? And that even the costume ones for kids to play doctor and dress up with on Halloween don't even dip below $10 each?? As much as I wanted real lab coats that I'd have embroidered with guest names for the party, that's just plain insane and I could not encourage the market to continue to charge those prices! Harumph!! Instead, I bought the 5-pack of two-sizes-too-large white undershirt tees from Target and cut them up the middle! Voila! Lab coats on the cheap! I did splurge on party color lab goggles for about $3 each. Totally worth it. So cute. And Charlie's adorable science shirt was a custom design by Ella Mella who rocks my world with their awesome kid's fashions. And Henry's shirt was sent to us from Periodically Inspired! I just love how she smooshed periodic table elements together to form geeky-chic words. Henry's my precious little GeNiUS!! And a bit of a camera ham, too! Once the house was decorated and the kids dressed, it was time to paaaaartay! An amazing woman, Calsin, runs a business of bringing science, technology, engineering and mathemathics to parties and playdates and schools, oh my! She. Is. Awesome. She told me that if she didn't have her business, she'd set up a lab in her garage and experiment anyway! I loved it. That's how I feel about my photography. If there wasn't work, there'd STILL be pictures. Her business, STEM-KIDS, is such a great concept. Learning can be a BLAST (literally!) and parties don't have to lack brain power, either! Calsin can tailor the experiments for any party. I didn't want the party to cross sciences (OCD, much?) so everything had to stay in a "chemistry" theme. Duh. And, the experiments also needed to entertain eight very active nine year olds. Calsin knew just what to do -- MESSY, hands-on chemical reactions that would result in slime, exploding "elephant toothpaste" and a giant bowl full of smoky, bubbly dry ice! EXPERIMENT #1: SLIME The kids loved this. Calsin set up a table full of the necessary ingredients and as the kids started to mix everything together, it started forming ooey-gooey slime! After they finished squishing it in their fingers, we packed up their custom-colored slime in take home bags! EXPERIMENT #2: ELEPHANT TOOTHPASTE Whats better than seeing foamy goo grow and grow and grow, so much so that it spills up and out of a bottle and into a tray for you to play with it!? NOTHING! Birthday boy was the first one to pour in the special ingredient to make the chemical reaction activate! He was SO excited!! And, um, he's also incredibly cute. EXPERIMENT #3: SUBLIMATION DEMONSTRATION I'm a creative. I photograph things. I can write fairly well. And I daydream great things. I enjoy and am awed by science but, I am no scientist. So, I have to admit that when Calsin said we'd do a "sublimation demonstration", I just blindly nodded my head like I had a clue what she was talking about. Google and Wikipedia say that sublimation is "the transition of a substance directly from the solid to the gas phase without passing through an intermediate liquid phase." So, why the dry ice turned into a smoky gas without any water sneaking in between those phases, all makes sense now. (Can you tell I was concentrating on proper exposure and focus while she was explaining all of this to the kiddos???) Oy. Adding in some dish washing liquid will create a giant bubble that will enclose the smoke inside of it and when it pops, the smoke explodes out! It's really fun and the kids obviously LOVED getting the chance to be the one to pop the bubble! And then it was time to blow out the candles and for me to cry the weepy mama-cry because my baaaaaaby is NINE!!! See the party with all our vendor info plus more of my wit and charm in describing the details (and more pictures!!) on the fabulous and well-followed Hostess with the Mostess blog HERE.
Beyblade Birthday Cake
I've gotten several emails lately with requests to use my invitations and really hate it that I don't have time to personalize them for ea...
If your child loves adventure and treasure hunting, this Indiana Jones birthday party will be right up their alley!
Each invitation is custom made and personalized for you! Printed on heavy weight card stock or high grade photo paper they are designed fro...
