Strawberry Shortcake Festival Birthday Party

Saturday morning, we hosted Ayla's 6th birthday party in our front lawn. 

She had requested a "Strawberry Shortcake Festival" birthday party.  Can't say no to that!  We turned it into a summer fun festival, and planned a morning of water sports and "fair food".  Here's how the party went down:

Invitations:

I ordered these "Strawberry Sweet Berry Birthday Party" invitations from Zazzle and just change the wording to fit our party. 

Tip: I always like to include a drop off and pick up time and mention whether a meal will be served at the party on the invitation.  Helps answer a few questions parents are likely to have in this strange inbetween age where parents are often expected to stay at parties with their kids.  I got several comments from moms that were SO glad to see that information on the invitation!

Decorations:

Decorations were pretty simple for this party. We borrowed some pop up tents from our neighbors for a festival-like atmosphere, set up a few tables for food & gifts, and put out lots of water toys spread across the lawn.

I made a chalk sign on the driveway for a great "welcome" sign and photo backdrop.

For one of the tents, I made a quick "Happy Birthday Ayla" banner (tutorial here) with some colored cardstock, ribbon and my Silhouette to cut the letters.  The kids layed their towels under this tent to eat lunch and open presents.

Under the other tent, I added some red and turquoise fringe that I ordered from ShopSweetLulu.com.  We had two tables set up in an L-shape with an adorable strawberry tablecloth (from Target) and a plain pink plastic table cloth on the other.  One table was for food, the other held gifts and party favors. 

Speaking of party favors...

Each kid went home with a bubble wand. I snagged all the pink and green ones from our local Dollar Tree.  We added a strawberry candy with a tulle baggie and a cute (and free!) chevron printable "thank you" card.  Then Ayla added a Strawberry Shortcake sticker to each wand.

Food:

We tried to keep it simple, but feature "fair food" for our festival.  So our menu looked like this:

• Popcorn in green chevron bags
• Corndogs (from Sams)
• Strawberries in Berry Baskets
• Watermelon
• Strawberry Fanta with red & white paper straws
• Cupcakes with pink & white icing (Target)

I bought plain cupcakes with sprinkles and added a slice of strawberry to the top to fit the theme:

Activities & Games:

As everyone arrived they played in the yard with all the water toys.  We set up three baby pools full of water with sponge balls, water shooters, a sprinkler and a slip-n-slide for the kids to run wild -- which they did!

The night before, Ben and I filled about 200 water balloons.  I bought pink & green ones from Dollar Tree to match the Strawberry Shortcake colors.

The water balloon toss was a little chaotic, and I had to do lots of shouting to try and get them to (hear) and follow the instructions. 

Next we played a relay race game where the kids ran to a kid-sized camping chair and sat on a water balloon to pop it and then ran back.  They liked that game a lot - and got plenty wet in the process.

After a few rounds of that, we just let them loose on the big bucket of balloons.  Pure FUN!

The only other formal game we played was with some really cool sponge balls that my neighbor had made and let us borrow.  Each team had to carry a wet sponge ball down to the bucket and try to squeeze out the water with their neck into the bucket.  

They started cheating quickly.  But it was still lots of fun.

And that was pretty much it!  Two hours of glorious weather (thank goodness!), lunch and lots of running around the yard.  I think it was successful and fun for all the kids.  Hard to say...I was running around like crazy the whole time! :) I'm not sure I'm meant for party hostessing....but the planning sure is fun!