Aside from all of the cake orders I have received over the past couple of weeks (awesome stuff!!), I am also in the throes of party planning for my own two kids.

Their birthdays are three weeks apart, one near the end of February and one on St. Patrick’s Day, and normally they would each have their own party. The two of them live and breathe anything Harry Potter – my son reads the books, they listen to the books, watch some of the movies, have most of the Lego and of course they both have wands. My daughter even does a great impression of Hermione complete with British accent. So this year they decided they wanted to have a joint Harry Potter themed birthday party. Plan one party instead of two, I can do that.

I am also a huge Harry Potter fan, so I am having a great time planning this party and have scoured the Internet for inspiring ideas. In fact, the other night I was so overwhelmed with all that I want to accomplish for this party, that I actually sat down and typed everything out on a spreadsheet! I just don’t want to over look anything.

The party is slated for March 10th, so over the next few weeks, I am going to share the planning and ideas with you. First up will be the invitations.

But for now let me leave you with one of the banners I created for their shared bedroom, which is slowly being turned into the Gryffindor Common Room.  This will give you a hint as to what I am doing with the invites.

Thanks for taking a look.

My nephew T is now a six year old. Six!!! I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around that since my daughter’s six birthday is not far behind.

Anyway, this year he decided he wanted Lego Ninjago to be the theme of his party. Now if you know my sister at all, you know that she loves to buy paper goods, particularly those found in a party store. So just imagine how she felt when she discovered you could not buy Lego Ninjago themed party goods. The horror!

What do you do when you can’t buy what you want? You make it. We scoured the Internet for ideas, although there weren’t many and managed to come up with some ideas that made the birthday boy very happy.

It was my job to create the birthday banner and cake. First I found a good template of a Ninjago Mini figure and used the head for the banner. This is what I came up with:

For the cake we decided to do a cake / cupcake tower combo.  T’s favourite Ninjago character is Kai, so I based the cake portion on him and my husband created a Japanese Torii to go on top.  The cupcakes were simple with the faces of Kai, Jay and Cole. I was very happy with the way the icing colours turned out, especially the black!

My sister also got crafty and created some Ninjago balloons using yellow balloons, tissue paper and photocopies of their eyes. Awesome aren’t they!

Last but not least, she also created some themed cups and loot bags.

The kids had a great time, the birthday boy was extremely happy and maybe, just maybe I may have cured my sister’s addiction to party good stores. Well a girl can dream can’t she.

My daughter is a huge Strawberry Shortcake fan, so it was no surprise when she requested this as the theme for her last birthday party.  Only problem is, unless you live in the United States, it is very hard to find party supplies with Strawberry Shortcake on them.

Instead I decided to make my own Strawberry Shortcake inspired decorations and I am super happy with the way they turned out.

Invitation

Pom Poms before

I went with a pink, lime green and white colour scheme and wanted to do something other than balloons and streamers.  My little girl is no longer a baby, this was her fifth birthday, so I thought it was time to do something a little more grown up. I absolutely love the look of these pom poms and they were super easy to make too.

Birthday Banner before

And what’s a party without a birthday banner. I even managed to find some images of Strawberry Shortcake online, to include on the banner. Love how this turned out.

Pom Poms and Birthday Banner after

Sign welcoming guests to the party

The details of the invitation had been about inviting everyone to the Berry Cafe, so had to have a sign.

Pin the stem on the Strawberry

There were eight kids at the party, all cousins (ages 8 months to 7 years), so I came up with a couple of activities to keep them entertained, including Pinning the Stem on the Strawberry.  Had the husband cut out a large strawberry from poster board and then just cut stems out of construction paper. Was a huge hit with the kids.

Loot bag stuff

We also had them do a colouring craft. I found flower pots at Michael’s that had a colouring page insert, so they had a great being creative and then had a nice keepsake to take home with them. I also included a pack of flower seeds, along with a book and colouring book in the loot bags. I, for one, am tired of the dollar store crap my kids bring home from parties, so I wanted to make sure the kids took something home that was actually useful.

Cake and candy

And no birthday is complete without cake. Again I used the same colours and designed the cake to represent new Strawberry Shortcake’s dress, with pink polka dots on the bottom and the diamond / strawberry pattern on top. My daughter loved it which is what it was all about.

It was a great party and I loved how everything came together and put a big smile on my daughter’s face.  Now if only I could deal with the fact that she is now 5!!!!