When we first started talking about Charlotte’s birthday party months ago she said that she wanted to have a bouncy slide. We asked her if she wanted to have her party at the inflatable place in town and she told us that she wanted to have it at Memma and Papa’s house. After getting approval from them we moved on to a theme. At first Charlotte said that she wanted a cupcake party. But a week or two later she said that she wanted a Minnie Mouse party. So we rolled those together and added her favorite color and created a purple birthday party with Minnie and cupcakes!
We set up tables for the kids to eat cupcakes on the patio area. I got balloons from our local party store with purple weights to weigh them down. But it turned out that the day was too windy for the weights to keep them down so we cut some of Mom’s hydrangea’s and put them in cases to hold the balloons down.
From the beginning Charlotte requested cupcakes with purple icing. So that’s what she got! We served these purple cupcakes on Minnie plates with Minnie napkins and cups. Charlotte also requested cherry lemonade so we had some of that along with regular lemonade, water, and Arnold Palmer’s (half lemonade, half sweet tea).
When I was trying to decide if we should have a small cake with the cupcakes I looked up Minnie cakes on Pinterest. I was letting Charlotte look through them to see if she liked any (she didn’t, she stuck with purple cupcakes) she saw some cake pops and after asking what they were decided that she needed some cake pops at her birthday party. After that if you asked her what she wanted for her birthday all she said was “Cake Pops!”
I didn’t think it would be hard to find a bakery who makes them but I was wrong! I had gotten some recommendations from Facebook but the places I tried from those suggestions either didn’t make them anymore or there was some confusion. I finally found a bakery in our hometown to make them and KayKay and GrandDavid were nice enough to pick them up for us! Funnily enough, Charlotte didn’t even eat her cake pop (they were actually balls without sticks but that was the best I could do!) until two days after her party! But she did enjoy it then!
We decided instead of just getting a bouncy slide to get a bounce house with a slide. This was the perfect decision because the kids had so much fun! We used a local rental place and they were fantastic. They even brought it and set it up early that morning because they had free time so we got lots of extra play time!
For favors, I made play dough in fun colors (pink, purple, red, green, and blue) and put them in bags for the kids to take home. I used this recipe from How Does She. I hadn’t ever made play dough before but this was really easy (and gave me an arm workout stirring it on the stove!). The dough is still really soft and feels great. I will probably make this recipe again when I make more. I made a recipe of each color and found that I could get about 10 silver dollar sized balls from one recipe. So if you’re making it for favors keep that in mind.
I worked hard on these and stressed about them that I would have enough for the kids that hadn’t replied but might show up. And in the end I walked back inside after the party and realized that I forgot to hand them out at all! I didn’t want them to melt in the heat outside so I left them inside and they didn’t even cross my mind when people started leaving! Oh well! I’ve run some around to the neighborhood kids but if you leave out of our neighborhood and came to the party I owe you some play dough!
