What’s this? An adult birthday party for once?!
Tag: Party Food
An Equestria Girls Dance Party
My daughter turned 6 at the end of May and we celebrated at home with an Equestria Girls themed dance party. Keira had a My Little Pony themed party for her 4th birthday, so I will admit I was a bit disappointed when she asked me to plan another Pony themed party. Luckily I am not good at getting rid of things so I still had all the decorations from that party and was able to re-vamp a lot of the same ideas to make things feel new and exciting.
Keira loves singing and dancing, and a big part of why she loves the Equestria Girls is the music. I have downloaded a couple of the soundtracks and even find myself singing along to the catchy tunes when I am alone in the car. It only seemed natural to give the party theme and decorations a music themed spin.
A Princess Garden Party
I am so excited to share with you my daughter’s Princess Garden Party themed 3rd birthday party. For the second year in a row, we were very fortunate to have wonderful weather for her birthday party which meant I was able to have everything out in our backyard as planned.
Rudolph Holiday Party
I am so excited to share my all the details from my Rudolph party with you today! I love bringing my ideas to life and seeing a party vision come together.
For this party, I had hoped to do something in the weeks leading up to Christmas but found it incredibly hard to plan something with all the other parties and obligations people have at this time of year. As Christmas day approached, I still really wanted to execute some of the ideas I had come up with in my Rudolph Treats inspiration post and decided to put some snacks and treats together to enjoy with my family on Christmas Day. My niece had also just turned one just a few days before Christmas, so I thought it was the perfect excuse to subject my family members to my party planning craziness.
For Christmas day, I had already planned to put out some light snacks to munch on in the afternoon and tide everyone over until it was time for turkey dinner. Putting a Rudolph spin on everything wasn’t that much extra effort and the little details really helped add to the excitement of the day.
The turkey pinwheels were made the day before and simply had to be sliced and arranged on the plate. Using green tortilla’s and finishing the stack off with a star cut from a yellow bell pepper made for a cute little Christmas tree next to my stuffed abominable toy.
Then, with the help of some pre-made tart shells, my Bumble-Berry Tarts were another clever tribute to everyone’s favorite abominable monster.
We also enjoyed a variety of sliced cheese, meat and Christmas shaped crackers to snack on. The Santa belts around the Babybel cheese were a little over the top, but they were a huge hit with the kids.
My maraschino cherry “dirt covered red noses” and reindeer hooves went over well, but one of the most popular items was the cranberry baked brie. You can’t go wrong with melted, gooey cheese and the touch of cranberry and pecans gave it that festive touch.
My fruit and vegetable platters got a holiday spin by arranging them into a Christmas tree and a wreath. The tree shaped pan for the fruit was a foil cake pan I came across at the Dollar Store and filled with red and green fruits.
These meringue hats were my second attempt at meringue cookies and they are surprisingly easy thanks to the help of my KitchenAid stand mixer to effortlessly whip the egg whites. My first batch were labelled as dwarf hats for my Snow White Picnic Party and these ones were layered in red and blue as an ode to Hermey the elf’s iconic hat.
I had planned to bake and decorate a cake, but ended up cutting it out for the sake of my own sanity. Between everything shown here, and an entire turkey dinner to cook Christmas day, it just ended up being too much.
Since we were celebrating my niece’s birthday I still wanted some type of cake, which luckily cake in the form of the Rudolph themed cupcake decorating kit I had tucked away after getting it on clearance after last Christmas.
My punch ended up a lot less white/clear then I was hoping, but it still worked as Sam the Snowman. My original plan was to use a plain round glass vase, but I found this great glass cookie jar that couldn’t have been more perfect to add the mustached face to – the lid even works as his hat!
I also was happy with the way my tissue paper wrapped glass vase turned out looking like a Santa sack to hold Yukon Cornelius’ silver and gold wrapped chocolates.
And, if all this wasn’t enough of my favorite red-nosed Reindeer for one day, I also had the joy of unwrapping a Build-A-Bear Rudolph from my son and a stuffed Clarice from my daughter on Christmas morning. My son was so excited to give the gift to me and I love that my husband took the effort to go to the mall with the kids and have them each build a reindeer for me. |He let them pick out the clothing and I think they really show each of the kids personalities. I look forward to having these guys out on all our Christmases to come.
I hoped you have enjoyed looking! This food table was a lot of fun to plan and hopefully I have given you some easy ideas for your party planning next holiday season.
And, to host your own Rudolph the Red Nosed themed Christmas or Holiday party, I have made things easy by providing all the free printables. Just click on the link below to take you to the goodies!
Around the Year in 100 Posts!
Today marks one year since I decided to start sharing my ideas with the world through Dolled Up Design and what better way to share then in my 100th post!
I started this blog as an outlet for my creative ideas. I love reading other blogs and seeing their great parties, interior decorating and creative food ideas. I waste way too much time on Pinterest and decided I needed to start sharing back some of my own ideas rather then just creating board upon board of other people’s ideas.
This is a creative outlet for me. I enjoyed my previous job as a graphic designer, but when I made the switch to being at home with the kids I felt my skills starting to fall to the wayside. I began this blog as a way to try and establish myself as more then just “Camden and Keira’s mom” and am hoping in the process I might inspire other people to bring out their creative side.
I am surprised to see my post count as high as it is because it honestly doesn’t feel like I am able to spend as much time on my blog as I would like. Between keeping up with the kids and moving this past year, this is definitely an accomplishment for me. I am also proud and excited to have been chosen to join Moms & Munchkins as a Party Tip contributor so hopefully that gives me the push to come up with even more great ideas in the year ahead. I have tons of projects floating around in my head, but it is always a matter of finding the time to execute and document these great ideas!
Like a lot of my projects, my blog is a work in progress. The overall look of the blog still leaves something to be desired and the linking up to all the different avenues of social media makes my head spin! There is definite room for improvement and I hope as I move forward and my blog continues to grow that it only continues to become better.
So, in celebration of One year and 100 posts, here are my top 10 favorite Dolled Up projects from the past year. Click on the links to view the full posts!
And, because it is Thursday, it only seems fitting that I throwback and link to my very first blog post – my Love is Sweet personal candy buffet.
I would like to finish this post with a big thank you to all my readers old and new!
You are the main motivation for this blog and I can’t wait to share more projects and ideas with you in the year ahead.
Treats for the Beach
This week we hosted another playdate at the private beach in our subdivision with a bunch of our friends from playgroup. The kids and I spend so much time together that it is nice to plan dates that give them a chance to play with other kids and me a chance to actually get some adult interaction in.
I seem to be going into a little bit of party planning withdrawal because I felt the need to whip up a few last minute treats for the occasion. I always find recipes I would like to try, so it is nice to make them when I have a crowd and won’t end up consuming the majority all on my own.
Summer Sand Pudding
Not long ago my sister posted this adorable Summer Sand Pudding from Ma Nouvelle Mode on my Facebook timeline and I have been wanting to put my own spin on it and make it into individual beach buckets. What better place to serve it then on a beach playdate?
Ingredients
- 1 package Golden Oreo cookies
- 2 or 3 regular Oreo cookies
- 8 ounces cream cheese (1 block)
- 1/4 cup butter
- 2/3 cup icing (powdered) sugar
- 2 boxes of white chocolate instant pudding (or vanilla)
- 2 3/4 cups of milk
- 1/2 of a large tub of Whipped topping (Cool Whip), thawed
Pudding Directions
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Cream together softened cream cheese, butter, and powdered sugar in stand mixer.
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In another bowl, whish together the pudding powder and milk.
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Slowly add pudding to cream cheese mixture to combine.
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Fold in the whipped topping.
To make the sand, use a food processor to finely crush the entire package of Golden Oreo’s with 2 or 3 of the regular chocolate Oreo’s. The original recipe calls for Vanilla wafers so those can also be substituted for the Golden Oreo’s.
(I discovered Ariel tucked into my pantry when I went to take out the food processor and thought it was quite fitting for the task at hand!)
To assemble the sand pails, I layered the pudding and cookie crumb mixture in Dixie cups – pudding, cookie crumbs, pudding, cookie crumbs. I found some blue candy twists for the handle and simply inserted those in, forming an arch. I was planning to finish them off with a candy fish but ended up going with some star shaped sprinkles instead.
If you can’t find Dixie cups, any small cup will work. I have seen shot glass sized red solo cups that would be cute with a red licorice handle.
Both the kids and adults really seemed to enjoy the pudding – the kids were happy because of the sprinkles and sour candy handles, and I think the addition of the cream cheese made it a rich, decadent dessert for us grown-ups.
Watermelon Salsa
I also got around to making The Scent of Orange’s Watermelon Salsa I included in my Refreshing Watermelon Ideas post a few weeks back and it did not disappoint! There was some tedious chopping involved, but it came together fairly quick and was something you could easily make a day or two ahead of time. I was a little skeptical of the ingredients, and even bought some tomatoes as backup, but the watermelon pairs so perfectly with the cilantro, onion, cucumber and lime juice that it is all you really need to create a refreshing salsa. As a bonus, I also found the watermelon is far easier to dice up then a bunch of tomatoes would be and you still get the nice traditional red color of salsa from the watermelon. For our playdate it was served with tortilla chips, but I think it would also be a good summer meal on top of grilled chicken.
Fruit Skewers
Who doesn’t love a fruit skewer? I believe I have a few different versions of these pinned on my various pinterest boards, but I have never actually made them for any of my parties. I love the idea, but always get to thinking that sharp skewers and children would not be a good combination. I had some Dollar store wooden coffee stir sticks in the pantry leftover from creating cupcake toppers, so I decided to try using those and they worked perfect! No one stabbed themselves and the kids all seemed pretty excited to eat their fruit off a stick.
My skewers included honeydew, watermelon, pineapple and strawberries but you could do just about any fruit you want. To make it even easier, you could even buy the Costco fruit tray and just skewer the pre-cut fruit pieces!
Corndog Muffins
One other item I made were some corndog muffins. They ended up sticking to the pan and weren’t really picture worthy, but they did taste good and I think they are worth attempting again with a different cornbread muffin recipe and some better non-stick spray. I like that they are easily portable and can be served at any temperature, making them an easy picnic item. I was short on time so I used a cornbread mix and simply inserted one inch pieces of hot dog into each mini muffin well, then baked as directed.
All in all it was a great day. I can’t say enough good things about our lake and I am so happy we are able to invite our friends to share in the fun on hot days. There wasn’t much time for adult interaction with the young kids going in ever which direction, but they all enjoyed the beach so that is what really counts. And it did lead to talk of planning a kid-free mommy’s night out so hopefully we can make that happen!
Keira’s Snow White Picnic Party
This party was so much fun to plan and execute! I love planning parties for my son, but there’s just something about the opportunity to use ruffles and bows that is that much more exciting for me.
The inspiration for her second birthday party came from some of Keira’s favorite toys – her Fisher Price Disney Princesses and Playsets. I am not a huge fan of a lot of the Disney Princess merchandise out there, but I love the Little People versions because they are just so cute! Santa brought her the Disney Little People Castle for her first Christmas and her auntie Erin ended up buying her the adorable set of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to go with it. This past Christmas they came out with a Dwarves cottage and Ariel playset so she ended up getting the cottage for Christmas and she was excited to get the Ariel set from her brother for her 2nd birthday.
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