Girlhood-themed Birthday Party

My girly girls’ turned 4 and 6 this past month, and we partied in the most GIRLY GIRL way!

Somehow it’s that time of year again! LEO SEASON!!! Every single being in my house, aside from my husband (yes, animals too) are all Leo’s! We love to party like Leo’s, and birthday parties are what we love to celebrate most!! Scarlett and Violett’s birthdays are only 4 days apart, and at this age they mostly have the same friends, so we still do a combined party for them! Although, now Scarlett is in school, and Violett will be going soon- so we may eventually have to split up the parties simply just so we have the room to host everyone! But for now, we LOVE a big combined celebration!

Since we have combined birthday parties, that means we always have to have a combined theme. This was one of the first years where the girls’ birthday theme wasn’t immediately obvious to me! I truly thought all year that their birthday would be Hello Kitty themed- because they have been obsessed for SO long! But it seemed as soon as Summer hit, they had so many new interests! They still like Hello Kitty, don’t get me wrong, but lately they have been obsessed with Lilo and Stitch, Minions, Barbies, princesses, playing dress up, makeup, glitter, stickers, rainbows and absolutely anything under the sun! So, I had to rack my brain to try to combine all of these elements!

I was thinking about how they are really becoming their own people, starting to have their own interests and just generally in their prime “girlhood” era, and then it came to me- let’s have a girlhood party! A party filled with all the things they love and will remember in their childhood!

A girlhood party to me means lots of sparkle, lots of rainbows, lots of crafting, lots of trinkets and rhinestones galore! So, I really leaned into all of that! Basically anything that makes little girls squeal in excitement- I had to have it at the party!

IT’S ALL GOOD IN GIRLHOOD!

Is there anything as girly or iconic as a barbie cake?! I don’t think so! While planning this party I knew I had to have a barbie cake for each of my girls! The only issue was, I was having a hard time finding someone to make one for me. I know back in the day you could order one from a grocery bakery, but I couldn’t find one near me that offered them anymore! So, I decided to just make them myself! I am no baker, so I used a box mix, but I DID make my own frosting! So I was pretty proud of that! haha

I wanted to make sure each of my girls had their own birthday cake, so I let them pick the color and flavor! Scarlett’s was funfetti with pink frosting, and Violett’s strawberry cake with purple frosting! I also wanted each cake to be extra personalized to each of them, so I found a barbie that looked the most like them (brown hair, brown eyes for Scarlett and brown hair, blue eyes for Violett) and used that for their cake! I could not be more happy with how they turned out! It def added more stress to the whole party planning aspect of the party, but I am happy that it worked out in the end! More than happy to order a cake next birthday though! haha

I absolutely love the rhinestone/gemstone trend resurgence, and I thought it was perfectly on theme to use for this party, so I put them everywhere I could! I placed rhinestones all over the cakes, and thought it would be so fun to add some cute little rhinestone plastic rings as cupcake toppers!

I knew there had to be some friendship bracelets included in our girlhood theme! So, I put together a garland made with ball pit balls and styrofoam to look like a giant friendship bracelet for decor! The bracelets over the cake table said “Long Live Girlhood” and I also put a bracelet on our fireplace mantle that said “GRL PWR”!

One of the most fun, most cost-effective yet most time-consuming decorations was our rainbow streamer ceiling! I remember having streamer decorations JUST like this at my birthday parties when I was growing up and it was super fun to get to do it for my kids! Such a great, simple decoration to add a lot of personality to any celebration!

We actually ended up leaving the streamers up for about a month after the party because they were so fun!

A fun theme means there are lots of opportunities for little punches of fun all throughout! One of the ways I added a little more fun was creating “Lovely Lemonade” and “Girly Pop Punch” drinks for our guests to enjoy! Who wouldn’t want to drink some girly pop punch through a rhinestone straw?!

I didn’t get any close up pictures, but I brought out some of the girls’ favorite stuffies and added some party hats to them to help celebrate! After all, their stuffies are some of the most important things in their girlhood!

I saw a hack on Instagram where instead of filing balloons with helium, you can save money by taping the balloons to the ceiling to make it look like they are floating! Obsessed! I added some cute little star garland as the “string” and I think they turned out so cute!

I always love to have a photo opportunity and decided to DIY a fun “polaroid” frame that our guests could stand behind to take a pic!

We invited lots of kiddos this year, so that means lots of goodie bags! I always love putting goodie bags together, and always try to stick to the theme of the party! So this year, we had friendship bracelets, rings, bubbles, stickers, notebooks and all things girly!

Do you even understand how funny I thought I was for coming up with “Get your bag, diva” when I planned up this goodie bag wall? lol It was one of my favorite details from the whole day lol

After looking through pictures, I realized I didn’t take enough of the outside set up (where the party actually happened!) We had a large rainbow waterslide, a long slip-n-slide going down our hill in the backyard, a small ball pit and a piñata to entertain the kiddos!

The “Bedazzle Bar” was a station set up where the kids could decorate a crown and/or wand with as many sticker rhinestones as they would like. Across from the bedazzle bar was the “Tattoo Station”, filled to the brim with lots of girly temporary tattoos and body glitter! The kids had an absolute blast getting all glammed up!

We had the absolute best time celebrating with everyone! Parties are a lot of effort to put together and pull off, but I will always do all that it takes to make these sweet girls smile! They both have told me that their birthday parties are the things they look forward to the most every year, so I take that seriously! Their childhood birthday memories are in my hands- so I am going to continue to give them the best birthdays I can (afford) to do! lol

My girls are growing way too fast. I get so excited to celebrate their birthdays, but it is always bittersweet looking back to see just how fast the years go by! They had the absolute best birthday party (their favorite yet) and I am just so grateful that they have so many friends and family that love them and want to show up to celebrate them each and every year! ❤ Until next year!