An Ice Cream Sundae Birthday Theme

It’s that time of year when I start mentally prepping for my children’s birthday bash. Which. Is in September. Yes, I know what you are thinking. And, the answer is Yes. I am nuts. But I am a girl who loves parties, party ideas (thank you Pinterest!), to obsess about her children and a girl who LOVES to entertain. The Ice Cream Birthday Party was from 2012. My two cute girls came up with their own theme for their birthday party. A ‘shabby chic Hello Kitty Ice Cream Sundae’ themed birthday party.

Uhm. OK.

These crazy girls are definitely like their Mamma. I started by choosing a color theme, which was vibrant rainbow colors. Then decided on how to make it ice cream sundae, hello kitty AND shabby chic.

First I started with the goody bags. I wanted to keep it simple yet give the kids something fun to take home. I used paper brown lunch bags and filled them each with a Hello Kitty tin (from Target’s dollar spot!), inside the tin was a mini Hersey bar, two Iwako themed puzzle erasers (ice cream & cake themed for girls and fast food themed for the boys), a colored pencil that was stamped to say Thank you from the girls and a colorful mini ice cream foam ball shooter. Everything in the goody bags came from sets or prepacked bags/wholesale savings, so each bag cost about $4 and change each. Awesome right?! S0 there was the shabby chic, ice cream and HK all in one!

The Goody Bags! How cute! They are paper lunch bags filled with Hello Kitty themed toys and then sealed with a white doilie on top. loved these!

The decor. Used a lot of bright table clothes in two colors all around. For example, one of the kids’ tables had lime green as the base tablecloth then I cut a square of electric blue and placed in on top. Saving the other part of the electric blue tablecloth for the drink table or wherever else we needed it. Then another table had bright pink as the base color and a square of bright orange on top. Each table had birthday themed colorful table confetti and each chair had a colorful lei. Utensils were bright pink and blue with matching Hello Kitty paper napkins. A few ice cream shaped streamers were strung along the fences. I had made a few balloon ice cream cones, photo below, and put them up at the entrance to the yard and all over the interior of the house. A dozen helium balloons were all scattered around, some tied to seats and some on weights. The backyard looked great.

Window decorations. On the inside it's the balloon ice cream decor, but the outside it's a cute disc I made for the sundae part of the day. — Window decorations. On the inside it’s the balloon ice cream decor, but the outside it’s a cute disc I made for the sundae part of the day.

Ice Cream cone decorations I made. The photo is blurry sorry. But this is a vibrant colored balloon inflated and glued into a piece of paper printed and rolled to look like a waffle cone. I hung them all around the yard and inside the house.

The craft. The kids craft for the day was a throw back to last year. Last year we went nutso with the Cake Boss theme, which I will share some time on here, the kids decorated chef hats and aprons. It was a fun messy time and figured this year it would work too. Each child received a white paper soda jerk hat to decorate ..with doilies, pom poms, self sticking shapes, Halloween themed stickers, markers, glitter; you name it. They all had a great time and the craft lasted a long while too! We had a face painter, which it was the first time we had one for a party of ours. Loved it. She did an amazing job, as you can see below. The kids walked away so happy cause she would do whatever they wanted, full face or not. Then the kids spent the rest of the time playing on the swings.

I got soda jerk hats for the kids to decorate with peel n stick foam stickers, pom poms, doilies and decorations.

The girls outfits. The one thing I was certain of was that these two girls were going to wear dresses and be twins like. It’s a thing of mine to dress them similarly. I am so sorry girls! Their dresses were found on Zulily. Price was right and from a great designer, Jelly the Pug. Got them two of the cutest vintage inspired dresses on the planet. I wanted one in my size! In black of course! They had fun vintage inspired headbands on too, which I got at Nest of Andover.

My two girls pre-bash in their Jelly the Pug dresses. Super cute right?

The headbands were made locally and bought at Nest of Andover. She got a bunny, and the youngest got a bear.

The food. We decided not to cater it this year, thought to keep it simple with our own food. It was all a big hit. We made about 6 quarts of chili along with all the fixings, a massive tray of homemade mac n’cheese with the crunchiest toasted bread crumb top, corn bread, and a simple salad. It all disappeared, and my goodness it was sooooo good! For the sundae bar we tried to accommodate everyone, we are a family of food allergies and friends as well! For ice creams we offered vanilla, chocolate, mint choc chip and lemon sorbet. With the food allergies, unfortunately, this sundae bar had no nuts. Which stunk for about a second, but my daughter’s life was at stake, and a few of our family friends’ and their children, so we just couldn’t risk that. But we had so many other great toppings, like, hot fudge (still hot in our mini crock pot), caramel sauce, whipped cream, oreo cookies, gummy bears, cinnamon graham crackers, maraschino cherries, chocolate covered raisins, peppermint patties, and strawberries and blueberries.

The food table. We made chili and mac n'cheese, then a salad and corn bread too. Everything disappeared in minutes!! — The food table. We made chili and mac n’cheese, then a salad and corn bread too. Everything disappeared in minutes!!

The Sundae Bar Labels. On decorated Popsicle sticks.

The Sundae Table! Everything with a sign. We served vanilla, chocolate, mint choc chip and sorbet (for those with allergies). Everyone could have a cup of yumminess! the decor fell behind there, ooops!

Closer up. The labels on Popsicle sticks.

The cake. The cake this year came out spectacular. Really, it did. We ordered the cake through Tripoli Bakery in North Andover, that is our go to bakery and they have been making the children’s cakes since 2009. Working with them was almost too easy. My two major requests for the cake were the decor to be ice cream themed with cones and that it was a vanilla cake with a ricotta filling, like you’d get in a cannoli. The girls favorite colors are purple and pink, so I asked them to incorporate that into the cake somehow. The idea was to have some ice cream cones around it, maybe one in the middle, using the colors for the ice cream. But when I swung by the bakery to drop off the cones I spoke to the master decorator, and she just had so many ideas. Then when she heard it was a sundae theme, she spouted off a thousand things to do and the cake below is what she came up with. The cake wasn’t just beautiful, it was so delicious that I seriously cannot wait for the next birthday to come up!