Strawberry Shortcake Birthday Party

When you have a little daughter with long red hair, big red lips and perfect little freckles sprinkled across her nose, you just gotta have a Strawberry Shortcake birthday party for her.

This post is for Croft and any mom that googles Strawberry Shortcake Birthday party:

COLOR SCHEME:  I went with 4 main colors: red, lime green, light pink and berry pink.

And I weaved polka dots throughout the party as well– in the balloons, the cupcake liners, the scrapbook paper, the ribbon, etc.

INVITATION: My talented sister in law designed the invitation for us. Then she sent it to Costco to print in my home town.  You can check out her work at www.lindseyericksonphotography.com

DECOR:  My favorite piece of decor was the balloon banner.  It was cheap and had a big impact.  You just blow up balloons and thread a needle through the tie part of the balloon.  Then you can easily adjust the spacing of the balloons.

I also loved my table centerpiece made by another talented SIL.   It was springy, but also pink.

The blossoms are tissue paper hot glued onto to real branches.

FOOD:  The party was not during lunch or dinner so I just did a snack.  I served strawberry cupcakes with light pink frosting and added flags from scrapbook paper.

 

I dipped strawberries in white chocolate and added pink and red sprinkles.  (The kids probably would have preferred regular chocolate.)

We also served strawberry lemonade and Chad made strawberry shakes for those that wanted them.

GAMES:  You can never have too many games at a party.  It seems like time stands still and the kids just cruise through them.

Strawberry Pinata- This was the one thing Croft requested at her party- a pinata. I got it at Partyland for $9.99 and then filled it with various strawberry candies.

The girls swung away

and then collected the spraying candy in their personalized treat bags.

I got these bags at Target and Hobby Lobby and then embellished them with rick rack, ribbon and hot glue.

Corners- I had my kids color 4 pictures of Strawberry Shortcake characters from a coloring book. Then I mounted them on construction paper.

I hung one up in each corner of the room.  Then I had a girl in the middle close her eyes and count down from 10.  All the girls scrambled and had to be standing by one of the corners by the time the counter got to 0.  When the counter was done, she yelled out one of the corner names:  Strawberry, Blueberry, Raspberry or Lemon.  If you were at that corner you were out, so many girls would get eliminated at one time.  The last girl left got to be the counter in the middle.

Musical Strawberries- This is along the same lines as musical chairs except there are no chairs and you are not in a circle. I placed strawberry stickers around the room.  I put them on the fridge, the couch, the fireplace, etc.

There was one for each girl and they were spread out so the girls had room to move.  We played music and the girls walked around the room.  When the music stopped each girl had to run to one strawberry.  Then we took one strawberry off and played the music again.  The one who couldn’t find a strawberry was out.   I let the girl that got out remove one strawberry for the next round.

Make a Strawberry Pie– This game was a simple bean bag toss.  I had 4 strawberries (aka red bean bags) and the girls tried to throw them into the pie (a pie tin covered with brown Kraft paper).  The girls seemed to like this so we played it multiple times at different distances.

Keep the Strawberries in the Air– I pulled this game out of the air as I found that I had more time on my hands.  The girls each got a strawberry (red balloon) and they needed to keep it in the air and out off the ground.  This was actually really easy and fun.

Painted Fingernails- Grandma and Croft’s older friend painted the girls fingernails in either light pink, hot pink or red.

GIFT BAGS- My initial plan was give each girl a pint size jar of homemade strawberry freezer jam that I made this summer.  But once my family tasted it, we decided we wanted to keep it all for ourselves.  We figured little girls wouldn’t appreciate it as much as us anyway.

So in addition to the candy from the pinata, the guests got Strawberry Shortcake coloring books and crayons instead.  I covered the crayons with some scrapbook paper and ribbon.

Overall it was a fun party.  Croft loved it and that is all that matters, right?