A birthday party for a certain 10 year old....

With all of the craziness of the holidays in December....I forgot to post some pictures from my daughter's birthday party.  Her actual party was in early December, but we decided to have her party a week after to give us more time to prepare.

She didn't give me too many specifics to work on except - sleepover, zebra and blue.    Oh and a request for a certain cake, but we'll get to that later.  Unlike my son who gives me exact specifics on what he'd like, she really gave me a lot of freedom to plan this extravaganza.   I take birthday partying quite seriously around here because I feel like it's 1 day to truly celebrate them and how special it is to have them!

So....the planning began.  We worked together on the invitations and consulted pinterest to get some great ideas.  Pinterest never disappoints.   While she didn't have specifics do's for this upcoming celebration, she definitely had some don't do's for me when I started making suggestions.  Ok....so her 10 year oldness (if I may create a new word) definitely started showing.

We settled on these fancy invites....

I just now noticed a typo on her invites.   The first line should be a "too"  and not "to".  I hate that.
We had fun making them.  She picked the zebra paper that was textured so the black part felt like velvet.   They were a bit over-sized though, so we ended up hand delivering the invites.

Compared to my son's superhero party, I really didn't do a whole lot for this one since her expectations weren't too high.  I did make a few decorations in her favorite combo of blue/aqua and zebra and since she had her room re-done for her 9th birthday last year in these exact colors, they were able to be re-purposed as room decor after.

I made these tissue paper pom poms that I'd been eyeing up on pinterest forever.  Here was my inspiration...

(source)

And a simple tutorial...they really are so stinkin' easy to make.

(source)

And here's how ours turned out....

We hung them over our kitchen table with clear command strip hooks.  This was my 1st time using them and I'd definitely use them again.  Simple and easy to remove!

I also used these few photos for inspiration for our banner and table decor.   My daughter made it crystal clear that she didn't want me to go overboard on the decorations.  I can't imagine why she would think I would ever do that...lol  So...it's much simpler than usual for me, but fit her taste just the same.

Inspiration...

from 'Thoughtfully simple'

from 'Hostess with the Mostess'

Gorgeous, huh?  She would have killed me if I had gone this crazy.  She thinks it's so uncool to have a party with too much decoration.   Maybe so...but I loved this one.

And here's what our party looked like before the madness, I mean fun began :)

On the kitchen table where the girls ate dinner and dessert...oh and breakfast the next day too.

I found these cute bells at Michael's on sale the week prior and they matched the theme perfectly and added a little color to the otherwise zebra'd out table.

 Our mantle.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I switch my mantle decor a LOT and at least twice for Christmas.  My daughter's birthday each year gives me a good excuse to change it up and this is what we did for the big soiree.

And Isabella's favorite candy just happened to be zebra striped...coincidental?  

Next was the game plan for the activities.   We talked about a bunch of ideas and she finally decided she liked the idea of lots games throughout the night.

When the girls arrived, we had pizza for dinner and the girls did mad libs.   That alone was tons of laughter and the start of the night's silliness ahead.

Ms. Serious writing it all down....










Apparently the bells make great earrings too.

After dinner the girls took part in a mystery.   We got this great idea from a friend and it ended up being one of the party highlights.     Dramaticfanatic is a great website where you can purchase interactive mysteries that the kids get to act out and try to solve that are written by an Emmy-award winning writer.  They are totally reasonable and can be the whole party theme if you want, but we just incorporated in into our whole party.  We chose to do the Slumber Party Mystery and the girls had soooo much fun with it.  I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.  They REALLY got into their parts too.

Here are a few highlights...

You need a minimum of 8 kids and up to 14 I think for each mystery plus a host.  I had to play the host and since we had only 7 girls (which was plenty for a sleepover), my daughter was two different parts.

Next was the cake....oh the cake.   I mentioned early that the only other request my daughter had was for a cake that she found a picture of.  Note to self, DO NOT under any circumstances let your daughter or son search pinterest for ideas.  There are some super crafty people out there that I'll never top.

Needless to say, I said yes before seeing the picture of what I had signed up for.  Here is all she wanted...

Oh, that's it...really?   I'd never even worked with fondant before this.

So....I put it off until the day of the party.  And let's just say I have a great appreciation for the Cake Boss, Cake Wars, Duff and any other cake MASTERS out there now.   Yikes that was a lot of work.  Here is what I created...

These are a little grainy because they're from my phone.  So....outcome...she went crazy...but

after about an hour, the cake sort of started falling apart.  Apparently I didn't use the right kind of icing.  Oh well.  Hopefully I won't EVER have to make one of these beauties again.

See the side caving....oops!

After cake the girls played a game we play every year at my daughter's birthday.  I forgot to get pictures, but basically I buy enough $5 gifts to match the number of attendees...for instance, this year I bought 7 $5 gifts.  The smallest gift gets wrapped inside the next biggest box and so on.  Each gift is wrapped individually and at the end there is only 1 big box to start the game.   And this year, it was a big box.

Then we play musical gift and when the music stops, the person holding the box opens the gift.  When they unwrap they will reveal their prize and then there will be a box left wrapped that contains the other gifts inside.  I hope this is making sense....pictures would have helped.  That person is now out and the gift box continues to circulate and get unwrapped until the last person is holding the last gift.  This year we added the steal the gift game at the end...hopefully you all know what that is!  That was their prize since my daughter said they are too old for "goody bags"!

We then moved on to TWISTER....oh my how they laughed.   I couldn't get them to stop this one.  Thankfully, I had them change into pj's prior to playing.  They played for ever it felt like.   Here are some funny pictures....

And these two...a battle to the end.  Ryan had to get in on the action and try to lift his sister's hand so someone else could win.  Little stinker!

We took a break to calm the girls back down and get ready to attempt a movie and sleep with a hot chocolate bar..a big hit.  Here was my inspiration...

from 'The Actor's Wife'

Here is what we had at ours... plus the whipped cream that's not out.

 I bought cheap mugs at the Dollar Store in black and white (zebra theme remember) and put their names on each so we wouldn't have any mix ups.  Here they are before....

And the toppings bar...

Apparently 10 year olds are not into peppermint.  Who knew?  I thought everyone loved it as much as me!

We then finally calmed down and had a movie and lights out...not sure what time, but all in all...it was a GREAT TIME!

And last but not least...here is her room now with the party decorations...I'm all into re-purposing and upcycling!

Happy 10 years to a little girl I couldn't love more.  She is such a great joy and brings so much sunshine to my life.  I am so proud of her and the little lady she's turning into.   As I said when you were a baby...

'You are and will always be my sunshine!!!'

Poshed Up