Birthday Party Ideas

Hey there! Well I'm back from my fabulous Farm Chicks weekend and let me tell you it is now going to be an annual girls weekend. It was my kinda paradise. The booths were so beautiful, I could seriously have moved into a few of them! I haven't down loaded my pictures yet, but I'll be sure to share some when I do! :) SO.... anyway... today I thought I'd share some birthday ideas. I know things are so much tighter right now for everyone, so I thought I'd share some of my thrifty birthday party ideas. So get out your scrapbook supplies and here we go!

This is the birthday party I threw for my daughter Maddie last month. She loves tea parties and Strawberry Shortcake so she wanted a Strawberry Shortcake tea party. My mom made the adorable dress she's wearing and Maddie added her own favorite accessories. :) Quite the outfit isn't it!


I used a lot of balloons and curling ribbon to decorate. They are both really inexpensive and you can use the curling ribbon all year long for gifts/packages. I also found a package of Strawberry Shortcake activity pages that had a picture on one side and games on the other. They were supposed to be party favors or something, but I hung them up as decorations (see Strawberry Shortcake in the photo). Cute, easy, and a pkg. of 8 only cost around $2!


We had quite a few people coming, so I made mini cupcakes instead of regular ones. They were just perfect for a little girls tea party, and one batch of batter made a TON of cupcakes so it saved me from having to double the batch. I made my own cupcake picks to decorate them. They were really easy to make, cost next to nothing and Maddie loved them! I made little dotted circles with strawberries in the center on my computer, printed them out, and then punched them with a scallop circle punch. Then I hot glued 2 back to back with a toothpick stuck in between.

I used the same principal to make larger ones for the beautiful birthday cake my mom made for the adults. (oh yes, it tasted as wonderful as it looks!!! THANKS MOM!) For the large cake picks, I just used a larger scallop punch and layered on circles punched from stickers and patterned paper.

I made some more scallop circles for decoration. These are the same as the cake picks, only I made some with strawberries, some with 4's (she turned 4), and some with her initial M. Then I punched circles from pattern paper, layered, mixed and matched, inked the edges with red and pink inks and viola! Easy, inexpensive, adorable decorations that can be used as embellishments for your birthday scrapbook pages when the party is over! I hung some of them from the chandelier above the table, made a banner with them, and used the rest as confetti for the table.


Last I made some little goodie bags for the kids to take home. I filled the bags with candy, mini bubble bottles, some fun pencils, and glitter pens. (All great $1 finds at Target, and most things came in large pkgs for $1 that I could then split between the bags!) I used the same strawberry circles I had designed on the computer and added each child's name to the strawberry. Then I punched them out and tied them to the goodie bags with more curling ribbon.


I hope that gives you some ideas. Maddie loved her party and that is always my goal so I was thrilled. I really did not have to spend much $ to give her a nice party. It didn't take a ton of time either. Once I created the strawberry circles on the computer I just tweaked them a bit and used them to create a ton of decorations. I love that now that the party is done, I have bag of embellishments to use on Maddie's bday scrapbook pages and mini album. (I make a bday mini album for each of the kids each year so that way when they grow up I can send a "birthday box" with each of them. I thought it would be a great way to preserve how the grow and change each year, what the like, who their friends are etc. If only I wasn't so far behind...:))

Have a wonderful day! New goodies going in the shop this week so be sure to stop by and see!