Our Sweet Caroline is 4! Where oh where has the time gone?
Now that she’s old enough to have true friends and she understands the whole birthday thing we decided that it was finally time to throw her a little birthday party. I’m not a big party thrower and have never thrown Caroline a party before (other than cake and gifts with family), so this was new territory for us and it was so much fun! My goal was to keep it low-key because I’m kind of a lazy party planner and the theme Caroline chose was unicorns, so I ordered this party kit from Amazon and it had pretty much everything we needed for only $19.99. The kit included a “happy birthday” banner, balloons, cake topper, cupcake accessories (we didn’t use them so will save for next time), a headband and jewelry, utensils, plates, napkins, cups, and a tablecloth, and then I pulled out some additional paper plates, napkins and utensils just in case. I didn’t get any great pictures of the set up, but the party with 5 other families went so well and Caroline had the best day ever. Caroline wore a new unicorn dress from Amazon and she exclaimed to me “I wuve it!” as soon as she saw it. It was the perfect golden birthday (she turned 4 on the 4th) for our golden girl.
The party was from 10:30AM to 1PM, and since it ran from late morning to afternoon we included some breakfast and lunch type foods. For snacks we just did a store bought fruit platter, mini donuts (I saw a box of pumpkin spice donut holes that called my name while shopping so grabbed those and some powdered and chocolate covered mini donuts too), individual bags of cheez-its and cookies, then we served Papa John’s pizza a little later on. The cake and cupcakes were made by Bakeshop here in Arlington and then I just added the unicorn accessories to the cake. The tall iridescent candles were from Target.
The tablecloth on the main table is from Madison-Mathews, and the dress I wore is the Juliette dress in Pink Geranium. Code KATIE will always save you 10% on their site and my blog post on sizing can be found here.
For the kids we just served bottles of water, juice boxes, and Yoo-hoos (a drink I haven’t thought about since childhood that I saw while shopping and randomly grabbed…definitely a blast from the past!) and for the adults we had a mimosa bar with both pineapple juice and orange juice, and Kona Brewing Company beer (Caroline is a Hawaii baby, after all). I’m friends with all of the moms that were there, and some of the dads came too, so we figured we’d make it a fun time for all, even if it was a kid’s birthday party! We just used red solo cups (with a sharpie to label) to make clean up and keeping track of drinks easy.
I didn’t plan any games or anything, we just had the backyard set up for the kids to play in the playhouse and jump on the trampoline. I also pulled out the baby strollers we have and staged those on the driveway. I set up a painting craft on our kids’ table (I folded the tablecloth that came with the party kit to cover the table since I knew I could just throw it away at the end) and let them paint wooden unicorns and rainbows and then the kids were able to take them home, along with the plastic paint palettes and paint brushes. The girls LOVED this activity. If you do this make sure to have plates for them to work on and a marker to write their names on the marker or the cut-out. I also had old t-shirts for them to wear to protect their clothing from acrylic paint. I also put chalk out for them to use on the driveway.
For displaying the food I think it’s nice to always have white serving pieces on hand. I like to buy white Portuguese pottery at Homegoods because it’s simple, affordable, and goes with everything. The cake stand and all of the serving pieces we used were all sourced at Homegoods.
The birthday present Tom and I gave her was this doll house I remember seeing last Christmas. Thankfully it is still available! I wanted something nice and tasteful since it was going to take up a good amount of space in her bedroom. She has a few Maileg mice to use with it and my mom and dad got her some additional furniture to fill it up a bit more (the house comes with furniture but not enough- in my opinion). She adores it and could spend hours playing with it upstairs in her room!
All in all, it was a wonderful party and a really special day for Caroline and our family!
