Home-Made Birthday Party

This year my little girl turned 5, and she wanted to play her favorite game pretending to be a cat or a dog with her friends. After a few weeks searching for the perfect party supplies and invitations, I gave up on the big stores and decided to make my own. With a little construction paper and a dash of creativity I am convinced that ANY birthday party theme can be done best when it is home-made. Getting to choose the exact set of colors and design style for the favors made for a super-customezed birthday party experience that matched my little Anna’s style to a tee!

Starting with construction paper for the favors and birthday pennant banners to decorate the house, I set the color theme for the party. The next step was making a quick design plan and choosing foods, napkins, plates and balloons that matched. I’ve found that a growing number of party supply stores will carry a good selection of the basics in a wide variety of colors.

For this party, I chose to have favor bags that looked like cats and dogs, a mask and tail station for kids to decorate and dress-up as their favorite animal, and snack foods labeled as “doggy treats” and “kitty food”.

These kitty and doggy tags  are made from the same paper that I used for the banners and all of the other party supplies. It made for a very coordinated presentation. Making your own birthday party supplies is a guaranteed strategy to have a perfectly coordinated birthday party, no matter what you choose to create with them!

Some of you might be wondering where the designs come from for these party goodies. I spend a few days getting inspired online. I searched Pinterest and did some general Google image searches for cat and dog clip art until I gathered a handful of samples that looked cute. With the inspiration in front of me, I grabbed my pencil and paper and started to draw out my ideas. The next step was cutting paper templates to trace. I have to admit that this step took the better part of an afternoon experimenting with shapes and designs that did’t quite look right. But, a little persistence saw it through. The rest of the process was really fun, tracing cutting and gluing everything together. My kids even got to help along the way, which added to their anticipation of the party.

The end result was worth the hands-on effort. Paper, glue, scissors and tape came together to make a birthday party experience that was really fun! The whole littler of cats and dogs celebrated in masks, tails, and collars while parents and kids alike enjoyed an afternoon of games and birthday treats among the balloons and banners of Anna’s birthday party.