Ice Cream Birthday Party

Today we had an Ice Cream Social Birthday party for Jaycee.  I got the idea off of Pinterest.  About a couple of months ago I started thinking of what kinds of things to do for her birthday.  I was really wanting something laid back and fun for both the kids and for their parents.  Hopefully that was the case.

I began by researching different games and ideas that involved ice cream.  Once I had that theme ideas in my head, I was able to find a lot of things to go along with it.  I found a sticker scene game/ placemat and a bean bag toss game on Oriental Trading.  This was a site that I used a lot for things for school for my class, but I typed in ice cream party and found some neat ideas. 

I started by sending out evite invitations to our family and some of Jaycee's closest friends that she plays with.  I liked using the evite invitations because it was less paper and I was able to give updates as to the location change.  We were originally going to be at a park near our house, but the weather was a little colder than I had expected, so we ended up having it at our house.  You can view the invitations here.  After that, I started checking into some ideas for ice cream toppings.  I also began to think of some cheap ways to decorate.  So being the bargain hunter that I am, I found some really neat table decor at Wal Mart that had some bright colors and designs that I liked.  I kind of based the rest of my decorations on that.  My awesome friend Meagan let me borrow some of her dishes that were ice cream cones, I used those to hold the toppings in.  I also got an idea from my friend Jenn to prescoop the ice cream into muffin pans and just set them out when I serve it.  That was a huge time saver and made it a little easier for people to just get what they wanted.


Here is the table with the ice cream buffet.  I had a lot of balloons that I had bought for school a while back, but have just been sitting in my basement.  I decided that I would blow them up and use as cheap decorations. 

As you can see there were a lot of toppings to choose from.

The first activity for the kids to do was to create their own bakery.  They each got a placemat empty bakeshop and a sheet of stickers.  Their job was to use the stickers to create their own bake shop.

 

 

They are all so hard at work.

So glad that we ended up getting our basement finised just in time.  Since the weather turned out to be so cold today, we had time to test out the basement Jaycee's new playroom.  It seemed to be a hit, and this was a great way to see if it could stand the test of lots of kiddos.

Jaycee and her cousin Everett

 

 

 

 

Cone Races
As I was researching game ideas for an ice cream themed party, I ran across this game.  It's called an ice cream cone races.  Tom got some extra butcher paper from work, and I turned them into ice cream cones.  Then each child got a balloon and they ran across our front room floor to race each other to the other end of the room. 

 

 

 

Then it was time to open presents.  Jaycee posed for her cousin Kelsey who was taking some pictures for me.  I think she was just so glad to get some new toys.  Tom and I don't buy her too many toys other than special occasions.  Our gift to her this year was to go see Veggie Tales Live which our church is having a concert later in the month.  If anyone wants to join us let me know I would be glad to get some tickets for you through our church.  Check with me if you want to do that.

She is really into Toy Story this year

 

 

 

 

Leapfrog Laptop

Uncle Caleb, Aunt Casey and cousins Everett and Eloise know that she is a big Jayhawk fan.  Such a big hit.

 

 

 

Then it was finally time to eat.  We made up a brownie with some ice cream and toppings of her choice for her.  Then we lit a #3 candle and sang to her. 

 



 

The day turned out great!!!  Jaycee had a fun time playing with her friends and cousins.  We were all so glad to everyone who came to help Jaycee celebrate her birthday. 



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