A Star Wars Ice Cream Social

On August 19, we hosted our second annual ice cream social for all our friends in our cul de sac. It was an idea I came up with last year to get to know our new neighbors, and it went over so well that it will hopefully be an annual tradition for many years to come.

For a bit of fun, I decided give it a Star Wars twist this year and themed all the decorations and food items accordingly. My son had just attended a Star Wars camp and has been on a bit of a Star Wars kick, plus I knew it was a theme most adults could easily identify with.

We ended up having a few Angry Birds Star Wars items already at home so I took it more in that direction, using the Angry birds characters for on my invitation, labels and banner.

For decorations, I used a simple black plastic tablecloth as my backdrop and created a galaxy by hanging a few 3D gold stars made from star shaped paper plates I found at Dollar Tree. For my hanging Death Star, I picked up some silver spray paint and repurposed a paper lantern I had from a previous party. Shine On provided great instructions and inspiration for this.

Another quick DIY project was my Yoda bowls. I found these great green plastic bowls at Party City and stapled on matching green paper ears to look like Yoda. The pop of green looked great on the party table and the bowls were a good size for the kids to be able to fit all the toppings they wanted on their sundaes.

For ice cream, guests could choose to go to the Dark Side (chocolate) or the Light Side (vanilla). I believe most people chose a combination of both!

Our Star Wars themed toppings included:

Darth Maullows – mini marshmallows
Han’s Rolos – mini Rolo’s
Thermal Detonators – maraschino cherries
C3P-Oreo’s – mini Oreo’s
Death Star-Berries – fresh strawberries
Mint Asteroids – mint Aero balls
Ewoks – mini gummy bears
Galaxy sprinkles – star shaped sprinkles
Moon Rocks/Meteors – chocolate covered rock candy
Wookie Whip – Whipped Cream
Caram-Oil – Caramel Sauce
Thermo Fudge – Hot Fudge Sauce

I already owned most of the glassware and the small label holders, so this party was pretty easy to pull together. I especially like the star shaped glass dishes and, even though I had a couple to use from a previous party, I ended up buying two more from Dollar Tree because they worked so well with the theme.

For the Wookie Whip Cream, I created a sleeve of faux fur to fit over the whipped cream bottle and accented it with some ribbon that looked very similar to the straps of Chewbacca’s satchel. It was a bit quirky and silly, but it was one of my favorite touches on the table.

I also decided to make up some quick water bottles after coming across these great free printable R2D2 labels from Pink Peppermint Paper. These were labelled as R2-H2O.

The great ceramic R2D2 decoration is something my mom painted many years ago for my dad and has been passed down to me. It worked perfect for this party and I was so happy to be able to incorporate it in.

And, as one final touch, I also spray painted the handles of some bubbles wand to create light saber favors for the kids.

It was great evening and despite a bit of rain, everyone stayed out and enjoyed visiting long after the ice cream had been put away. I will admit that I kind of waffled on whether to host the ice cream social again, so I was very happy to get comments about how excited people were to receive their invitation and to attend. Now I just need to come up with an equally awesome theme for next year!