An Almost Sleepover Birthday Party!

Last weekend, we put together my youngest (she’s 6 now!!) daughter’s birthday party!  I LOOOOVE going completely bonkers with parties.  It is my entertainment – something for which to drag myself away from the computer.  Since my daughter is only six, and sleep is really important, we had an ‘almost’ sleepover party with all the girls going home at 8pm!

Here’s the invites, and printables (example).

The banner hung on the wall under the twinkle lights.  The circles were punched out with a scalloped 2″ square punch, glued on juice boxes with a tulle bow, and the left & right edges glued together to make an ‘envelope’ for the straws.  They can also be used for cupcake toppers if you have cupcakes.  Thank you tags were fixed to the white craft bags with teddy bear beads and ribbon.

The invites said, “Its an Almost Slumber Party”, Please bring your PJ’s, sleeping bag or comforter, and pillow.  Time: 5:30 – 8pm

From Etsy Store: Party So Perfect

It is ridiculously easy to coat anything with candy melts.  You just melt them in the microwave, add food coloring and drizzle or dip your sweet goodies.  We found sugar free candy melts from the Galloways.  The pretzels above are wheat pretzels, but this will work just as well with GF pretzels.  We used purchased pink sugar for coating.  Just never use bulk-baking goods if you’re party must be Gluten Free!

There are Gluten Free Teddy Graham crackers/cookies you can purchase from the grocery store. These ones are wheat based. We broke off the bodies of the teddy bears – the girls thought this was pretty fun because they got to eat the bodies. Then we dipped the crackers in candy melts. The salty cracker and sweet candy melts were YUMMMY.

Favors for the sleepover party included: mini flashlights with tulle bows, stickers, candies, assorted princess favors(bracelet, ring, activity sheet, pencil).

I couldn’t have asked for better flashlights! These were the kind that you have to hold down the button to keep them ON which worked great – the batteries lasted the whole night!

The party table is behind her and the birthday cake.  I didn’t get a good picture of the food table set up properly.

Food

• Make your own pizza (we used English muffins and pizza toppings).
• Yogurt tubes,
• fruit tray (with cream cheese dip)
• sweets & cake

Decor

It was super easy to decorate with lights everywhere! We put up twinkle lights, some pink streamers, and the birthday banner – thats it!  We added some balloons for play and it was beautiful!

Table

Set with 2 layers of table cloths.  DIY pizza was set up on the first layer.

TIP: cover your oven tray in tin foil and use a permanent marker to mark each girls pizzas to keep them organized.  

Once the pizzas were made and slipped into the oven, we removed the entire top layer – table cloth and all – and tossed it!

Second layer Table:  white tablecloth, purple napkin, white plate, utensils and yogurt tube were wrapped in a pink napkin.  Utensils were placed beside plate, with a tulle-wrapped juice box at the top of it.  Plate had the sleeping teddy bear cookies on each.   Center of the table was decorated with twinkle lights, and the fruit trays.  We had flower center pieces but they weren’t needed.

Activities

• The girls when they arrived, set up their sleeping bags and pillows and just had a great time hanging out on the carpets and pillows.  This was a first sleep-over for most of them.
• DIY Pizza
• Dinner – grabbed plates of fruit & yogurt and then ate pizzas when they came out of the oven
• Build a Bears – once we opened the packages we figured out that it would require more sewing than the girls were capable of. Thank goodness I had 2 pre-teen helpers!  So we sewed while the girls…
• had FAR MORE fun just letting loose and running around with flashlights.  They climbed under the table and had story time (all their own idea).  They took turns shining their flashlights at their faces and then telling “Once upon a time” stories.  It was absolutely adorable to listen to.  For the most part they retold their favorite disney stories.
• Opened presents – we tried the two chairs thing this year – it worked beautifully, the girl gifting Megan sat next to her and Megan said thank you before opening the present.
• We still sewed.
• Then they played balloon tag, and flashlight tag.  And squealed and screeched a LOT.  It was absolutely brilliant!
• And we sewed some more.
• Then the girls decided to play with Megan’s new presents.
• And we almost finished sewing in time to pack up the teddy bears and send them home!
• DIY Favor Bags – they chose items they wanted in their bags

 

IMPORTANT TIP: bring a camera that takes pictures in the dark really well!