A French Themed Birthday Party

The good thing about going through all my photos finally is that I find all these photos for blog posts I have meaning to write for a good while now! So I thought I would share these photos of the french themed birthday party I did for Amelie back in April. I wanted to keep her party small this year as I had just had Jack's first birthday party- well he turned 4 but it was his first actual party and is 3 days before Amelie's.  So it was just three friends plus her sister Stella and a friend of Stella's. So here are the details and a few ideas if you have a little francophile in your house!

Invitations

I made these boarding pass invitations on my mac computer using the 'Pages' programme. I love these as I think they actually look pretty close to real ones but in a fun way with the Eiffel Tower on them :) 

Decorations

I made some red, white and blue bunting by cutting out rectangles and stitching them onto some white binding.

I bought the antique looking zinc bucket and filled it with flowers from our local florist to make it look like a french florist.

The Eiffel tower decal was only $10 from Trademe and is now in Amelie's bedroom. The 'Avignon' wooden crate was from a kitchen store here in Tauranga 'Gourmet Trader'.

The Eiffel towers we already had (the pen was a cute one from Typo). I bought the little Eiffel tower place card holders from Trademe.

We played some french accordion music using Spotify.

Food

As seen below...

'Croque monsieur'- ham and cheese toasties

Macarons

Chocolate eiffel tower cupcakes- I found a mold for these and just poured in melted choclate to make the Eiffel Towers.

'frites'

We were going to do croissants and pain au chocolat's too but it was Anzac Day so the supermarkets were shut for the morning!

Cake

I bought this cake from New World and just added the jaffa's and the mini bunting I made using straws and wash tape. The sparkly '8' decoration was from Gourmet Trader.

Activities

I had a few colouring sheets for the girls to do when they arrived

Seeing as french women love perfume the girls made our own using water and essential oils.

And they made a little posy of flowers each as well just like a french florist. I bought a piece of oasis for $5 which was enough for all of them to have a piece to stick their flowers into and then we wrapped them in brown paper.

We played the chocolate game seeing as the french love their chocolate. This was heaps of fun, love this classic party game! For the dress ups we used a beret, scarf and gloves.

We even had french plaits at the party!

So there you go- a few ideas for you- it was a nice easy and fun party for my lovely french loving 8 year old :)

Thanks for reading, 

Megan

Easy Kids Party Ideas

I always like thinking of ideas for kids parties, things that are quick and easy to prepare, which will keep everyone entertained.  'Pass-the-parcel' can take a while to wrap up, and a DIY piñata can take a lot of effort too! Then some new Allen’s lollies arrived at my door just at the right time (the kids are really loving me having a blog at the moment).  In my bumper pack I received the new Allen's Tangy Tots and Jelly Tots, and the popular Snakes Alive - how much do kids love jelly snakes? Here’s a few of my activity ideas that I’d love to share with you...

1. Lolly Bracelets 

This idea is my favourite as it's so easy and kids love making them- it makes for a nice quiet party activity, or something to make before the party as a treat for all the party goers. All you need is some thin elastic, a tapestry needle (these have a big eye to threaad the elastic and are much blunter than normal needles for little hands), and the Jelly Tots. Thread the elastic, tie a knot in one end and thread on the lollies. I used 12-14 for these bracelets which is about a serving size (again this is a good way to control portions!). Tie a knot when you've threaded all of the lollies and cut off excess elastic.

2. Lolly Kebabs 

Whenever we got to Taupo we love going to the awesome Cafe L'Arte in Acacia Bay- they have lolly sticks there which is the kids big treat. So that gave me the idea to make some using the Allen's lollies- they are so easy to make and for some reason kids love things on sticks! And it's better than a bowl of lollies on the table too as you can control the portions of lollies for each guest. These would make a fun 'take home' treat too. Just get a wooden skewer, the lollies and some washi tape, thread them on and tape a bit of washi tape to the top of the stick- easy! 

3. Don't Eat Pete! 

I came across this party game idea when I was getting ideas for Stella's lego party- basically you put a lolly on each monster (search 'lego don't eat pete' for a lego man version), then one child leaves the room, the rest of the kids decide who is going to be Pete, then the child comes back in and gets to pick one lolly at a time to eat from each monster…but if they land on Pete they have to stop and it's a new child's turn. It's sort of similar to another party favourite 'The Chocolate Game'- my favourite when I was a kid!  Here is the blog I got the free template from for the game... http://www.theteacherwife.com/2012/09/dont-eat-pete.html 

So there you go, three easy ideas for your next kids birthday party. Let me know what you think of them! 

Thanks for reading, 

Megan

A Lego Party

Hi everyone, here are the details of my daughter Stella's 6th birthday Lego Party we had last week. I chose to do an after school party as her birthday was on a Wednesday so we could do the whole birthday on the one day, rather than every other year where the party has been on a different day to the birthday. We had 12 guests plus our three kids so there were a lot of kids running around, I don't normally have this many kids but Stella has a lot of boy and girl friends so this bumps up the numbers quite a bit! So here are the details below if you are thinking of doing a lego party yourself- I tried to keep it as simple as possible...kids birthday parties are a lot of work and I have my other two kids birthdays in a few weeks. They aren't having parties like this though…Jack (nearly 4) is going to have one at an indoor playground place where they do everything (it'll be his first party). And Amelie (nearly 8) is going to have a French themed party but it will be small and 8 year old girls are a dream so I'm actually looking forward to that one!!

Invite: I got a lego base board and we spelt out Stella's name and arranged all of her favourite lego mini figures on it, then I took a photo of it and typed up the party info at the bottom (I found a free lego logo looking font 'Lego Thick' as I was going to do a different invite at first so I used this on part of the invite). 

Decorations:  I hung the birthday bunting that I made a few weeks ago (will share that soon)- I've been meaning to make some birthday bunting for ages that we can hang up for each of our birthdays- a fun tradition. Then I got photos of Stella right from newborn to now and used washi tape to make a line of them (they all loved this). And my friend lent me the cool lego storage head.  I also hung a few bright yellow balloons outside.

Food: Because there were so many kids coming I decided to use these Homebrand reusable containers (less than $1 each) and just put the food in them so they could eat outside.

 In each one I put a lego cookie that I'd made. I couldn't find a lego mini figure head cookie cutter from an NZ online store so I bought this one from Etsy). I used yellow fondant to ice them and a black edible icing pen for the face. 

I added fairy bread, grapes, rice crackers, some lego lollies from Crazy Candies, 

popcorn, and a few other sweets. Approximately one quarter of this food was actually eaten which I was surprised about as I though they'd all be starving after school!

Cake: I asked the amazing Shannon from TuiRose Cupcakes (Check out her Facebook Page at http://www.facebook.com/TuiRoseCupcakes) to make me some lego mini figures cake toppers after seeing some on Pinterest- isn't the detail on them incredible! Stella loved these :) I just ordered a birthday cake from New World this year as I wanted to make the party as easy as possible for me, so I added some lego lollies and the awesome toppers to my store bought cake.

Activities:  I organised two games to play- Pass the Parcel (Stella's favourite) and 'pin the head on the mini figure'. 

For each layer of pass the parcel I put one of these lego lollipops- I used yellow washi tape to cover the lollipop wrapper and drew a mini figure face on each one.

For the prize I found these lego pencil sharpeners on clearance at Warehouse Stationery (less than $3, and added a lego minifugure from the Warehouse, and a lego pen (I split a pack of 4). 

 

For the 'pin the head on the mini figure' game I was going to print out a free printable but that was going to cost a lot to print poster size, plus printing out the lego heads, especially as I needed two so I could split my big group into girls and boys, so I just bought some A0 size white card and some A0 yellow card instead, drew and painted the mini figures (in a bit of a rush!) and cut out the heads from he yellow card.

Goody bags: I love doing goody bags but I wanted to keep them simple and budget friendly this year so I found these bags for $1 each at a local dollar value type store and added the dots using the free paint chip cards from Bunnings (luckily I already had a circle hole punch)

In the bags I put another lego cookie, a balloon, a lego movie colouring sheet, and some lego lollies.

So there you go, some ideas for your own lego party…I have some more ideas on my Pinterest page here if you want to take a look…http://www.pinterest.com/megsmousehouse/lego/

Thanks for reading and have a great week :)

Megan