Wednesday, November 30, 2011

A Fall Kid's Birthday Party

Note: Sorry for the formatting issues- I wrote this last night when blogger was having issues and it will not fix for some reason. :(

My daughter's birthday always falls right around Thanksgiving so trying to figure out when we are going to do a birthday party is often very tricky. She has never had a friend party- but her big brother did at 5, so we decided she should to and it would be best to do it before Thanksgiving- so I threw together a birthday party in three days!
The party's theme all started because of the cake. We kept seeing fall cake ideas- all of which seemed crazy and very time consuming. But then in a moment of inspiration- I created The Apple Basket Cake.

CakeI used three cake mixes- most of which went into the 12x12 cake pan. After the cake was fully cooled I cut skinny triangles from both bottom sides- they were about 1" at the bottom then came to a point to angle the square to make it more basket like. I used Wilton's brown food dye, making sure to put a crumb coat (or lots of frosting) on where I had cut the cake. I then just added a little extra brown dye making it darker and drew the lines and rims on the basket.
For the apple cupcakes I used NO TASTE red dye. You need a lot of red dye to make something truly red so you need the no taste red other wise it will have a bitter taste. I broke pretzel sticks into thirds approximately and stuck the pretzel into the top for the stems. The leaves are those crescent shaped gummies. I cut each gummy in half as otherwise it was too thick and also trimmed the ends to make them a little more leaf shaped. And of course there was the bonus worm.

Games
  • Q-tip Tree Painting- I drew the outline of a tree and gave the kids a plate with a bit of red, green, yellow, and orange paint and a q-tip. The kids were then supposed to dip their q-tips and just dab circle leaves on the tree. My son (who's tree is shown) did a little extra painting
  • Pin The Apple on the Tree- Like Pin the Tale on the donkey. I bought a large poster board sized board at the dollar store and drew and then painted a tree. I then cut apples out of construction paper.
  • Pine Cone Races- like an egg race just with pine-cones (acorns would have been even better) to go along with the fall theme
  • Pine Cone Relay- divided kids into two teams and gave a pile of pine cones that they had to get into the cup on the other side of the room by carrying it down on their spoon
  • Balloon Races- race with a balloon between the legs
  • Pinata- Not fall related but a party tradition here
Goodie- BagsWe searched the dollar bins at Target and the Dollar store to fill the goodie bags. I bought a piece of gold sparkly paper and printed some leaf shapes onto the paper.I cut roughly around the leaf shape and then glued (just used a glue stick) each leaf to a piece of ribbon. I then taped the ribbon to the back side of the goodie bag (lunch sack)

Decorations and Food<The great thing about having a fall party near the end of fall is all of the fall decor is 50% off. I bought the pompom and leaf garlands that we simply taped to the ceiling at Party City.

I cut the pumpkins out of construction paper and then folded them accordion style. I glued the green stem onto the back and the clipped each pumpkin onto a piece of yarn. I taped the yarn to the counter.

On the counter I had a garland of leaves from some of my fall decor and a bag of fake gourds and vegetables scattered on the counter. The fall plates I later filled with vegetables.We also served pizza and pop.
It was a great birthday party. All of the kids had fun and there were no tears involved...well except when the birthday girl realized her brother helped with the candles.
I am linking this post up at the following crafting blogs this week or next.
PhotobucketTodays Creative Blog
P.S. There is still time to link up your Ten Things to Smile About lists- go to yesterday's post here. And don't forget tomorrow is Proud Mommy Moments! So get your post ready to link up.

27 comments:

  1. What a cute idea for a party. I love it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Emmy that is so awesome!! I am so not crafty. I wish I could hire you to do my kids parties!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ummmm, you put this party together in THREE days!??! Thanks for making the rest of us feel bad about ourselves now. ;o)

    Seriously, awesome party. I love the cake and decoration and game ideas! Wanna plan my daughter's 10th birthday for me?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Super cute!! I love it all.

    I just realized, you still haven't posted pics of your new house yet, have you?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great fun and I LOVED seeing all the pics! That apple barrel cake rocked!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wow you really did an amazing job! Way to go mom!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Pop? That's funny! Haven't heard someone call drinks Pop in a long time! Seriously lady! What an awesome party!! Everything was amazing!! 3 days! You are a miracle worker!! Love the cake deco!!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Love the idea of the cake - seriously I love it! And what an awesome party you put together in only three days!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Oh goodness, that is a gorgeous party! I love the cake, and you are so stinking creative, it makes me envious, and admire you, and a little bit jealous. All at the same time. Wow!

    ReplyDelete
  10. You are amazing!!!! That was so creative. She'll never forget it.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Love the apple basket cake!! So cute!~

    ReplyDelete
  12. Ok, since my birthday is Fall too, I'm totally tipping Champ off to this post... maybe he'll make me that cool apple basket cake for next year's birthday ;)

    HAppy Happy Birthday Alex!!!

    ReplyDelete
  13. What a lovely party! I love parties and I love decorating them. Thank you for sharing. Don't worry about the blogger issue. Same happened with my post that I published last night before I went to bed except I didn't notice it was messed up until 12 hours later when I finally had sometime to get on my computer. Now that I finally fixed it, it's like "great:" my followers alredy read it before I fixed it...lame

    ReplyDelete
  14. You're just way too cool for me! Wowy! I am feeling less than inspired over Ethan's coming-to-soon dinosaur birthday party. If I can pull off even half this cute, I'll be set!

    ReplyDelete
  15. So much fun...and the really cool thing is it was unique! And you pulled that off in what...three days??? You rock.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Seriously, can you help me plan Donut's party?

    ReplyDelete
  17. I love the cake--such a cute idea!!! I didn't even realize there was such a thing a no-taste food coloring! And I think I'll have to try the q-tip painting with my kids.

    ReplyDelete
  18. You did an awesome job on that cake!! And decorations too!!

    ReplyDelete
  19. Looks like an amazing party - especially put together on short notice! Love the decorations and theme!

    ReplyDelete
  20. I'm in awe! We're having our first friend birthday party tomorrow and not only have I not made anything from scratch, we're having it at a museum so I don't have to clean the house. I love those loot bags!

    ReplyDelete
  21. I'm in awe! We're having our first friend birthday party tomorrow and not only have I not made anything from scratch, we're having it at a museum so I don't have to clean the house. I love those loot bags!

    ReplyDelete
  22. that cake was adorable. I wish I could bake. My maiden name is Crocker, so it's almost sinful that I can't bake. My foremothers are rolling in their graves.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Fantastic party - You went all out!
    The cake is Sooo dang cute. Love it love it love it!!

    ReplyDelete
  24. Such fun ideas here. I love that apple basket cake, way cool!

    ReplyDelete
  25. tooooooo cute! Love it! So next year when my step-daughter has a birthday again (since we missed this years by a day) will you throw her a birthday party please :)

    ReplyDelete

ShareThis