10 Birthday Party Themes & How to Make Them

August 31, 2018

I’ve gotten a couple of responses to my recent birthday posts asking for ideas, about how we figured out our birthday party themes or how we did certain ones so I’m thinking I should be for hire – anyone planning a birthday??

I’m a terrible business though so I thought I would just share some of our ideas here for you all anyways! 🙂 I’ll try to separate them by category to make it a little easier. Have fun party people!

Outdoor

Pool Party: This was one of my favorites! The kids love swimming in the water and they got to splash around with some of their favorite people! Win-Win! We were able to use a pool at a little apartment complex and rented out a pool house room in case of bad weather – plus where we set up for cake. We kept it pretty simple and did BBQ, fruit (for the littles), a couple bowls of popcorn and some beer/wine for the adults. For the birthday boy we got a little #1 bow tie – which I have to say looked super cute with the bathing suit. A few beach balls & balloons finished it all off – we let the pool and adorable babies do most of the work on this one!

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Circus: We used our play parachute hung with some clothespins to create our circus tent – then set up little carnival themed bags of popcorn, animal crackers and stuffed animals for the circus. We had corn dogs & pigs in a blanket – clown shoes beer and even found a circus themed wine! We had a couple of cute lawn games that we did sort of carnival style – ring toss, bean bag toss, a velcro darts game & some glass bottles with a ping-pong ball. There are so many fun ways you can go with this one.

Drive In: This one is great for a slightly older crowd, but also works for younger birthdays depending on your guest list. If you’ve got some outdoor space you can hang a sheet for the screen and get a cheap projector (or like we did borrow one from the office) to play a movie! Get lots of popcorn (for bigger kids) or movie snacks and set up some blankets or chairs outside. While it’s simply showing a movie the excitement of this is in the novelty. Keep it as simple as that or decorate some of the chairs or some cardboard boxes to look like cars. Have kids wear their pjs to make it a sleep over (or a camp out if you’re really brave). Make some fun admit one tickets and keep the kids busy before the show starts with some activities based on the movie you decide to show! I’d recommend some easy food(think pizza) before hand or as the movie starts and pause for a commercial break or concession stand break about half way through to do cake!

Books

We’re Going On A Bear Hunt: This was one of our daughters favorite books – and still is her #1 request. It was a little bit more elaborate to set up, but our kids were so into it! We did the party based on the song version so we could play the song and go through all the activities. We made each part – using party streamers for the swishy grass, the bridge which we made by covering a cardboard box with contact paper and cutting out/hot gluing on some rails.

Our tree was just one of our barstools wrapped in streamers with a few leaves cut out and thrown on for good measure. Some blue tissue paper for our river with another cardboard box for a boat and white fabric for the sail.

Our cave was really fun to make. We used our play tent and covered it with some extra packing paper from our move! Just crinkled it up and taped it on – the babies had a blast helping crinkling and ripping all the paper! We printed out some bear paws to follow around to show the path & order of the steps. For snacks we had bear claws, gummy bears, teddy grahams, “bear” berries (the kinds bear likes to eat), little bear plates and some random bear beers we found at our liquor store! If you’ve got a bear cookie cutter you could also make some cute cookies or sandwiches for something more substantial.

Dr Seuss: Okay, so not technically one book but we had a lot of fun with this one! We did “pin the hat on the cat” which I made by drawing the cat and then printed/cut out some hats and used double sided tape to pin it on. We got some adorable pens with big fluff balls on the top to make our own little truffula tree forest – although I’m sure big pom-poms on sticks would create a similar effect (and be easier to find). We had an awesome Lorax drink for the grown ups (which you can find in the Birthday Parties! post), green deviled eggs (blend some spinach into the yolk part) and ham sandwiches, and cat in the hat caprese. We used some stirrers, hot glued his face on the bottom and layered them with mozzarella & tomato, but for a sweeter version try using strawberry & banana. We also found some cute book marks and stickers and put all of our Dr. Seuss books out which kept the kids entertained!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar: This is a really fun one to do food-wise because you have so many options! Bust out the fruit and poke some holes in it for the kids! Then make your way through the cheese, salami, pickles, pie, cake etc. just like the story. You can check out our Hungry Caterpillar Theme week for some activities to keep the kids busy – or make your own decor like this hungry caterpillar paper lantern – a few simple paper lanterns, invisible thread and some construction paper to make a face (or they sell some pre-made for a little extra $$ if you don’t want to do it yourself).

Harry Potter: This was actually put on by a friend of mine but she gave permission to share her ideas with you all!

The amount of detail and the decor on this one was phenomenal! It was made extra special because the invitation came in the form of a Hogwarts acceptance letter a few weeks before the party even started to get the excitement going! Activity wise was wand making & decorating which was done simply with chopsticks, glue and paint but came out looking amazing (see the slideshow below). Chocolate covered frogs she made with a candy mold and little boxes with printed out character cards. The room was filled with invisible thread galore for hanging ceiling candles, letters coming out of the fireplace, and of course the harry potter soundtrack playing. The cocktail was potions class – so lots of random vials and glasses (filled with booze and mixers) with potions level names and caldrons to mix your own drink in. Butterbeer for the alcohol free (cream soda & butterscotch) and treacle tarts which they made but you could also completely buy a box of those mini frozen tarts and pretend!!

Travel: For a travel theme check out this great pin the tag on the bag game! The suitcase is pretty simple to draw (or you can find a real one often at thrift stores) draw a spot for the tag and then we just grabbed a pack of tags or you could easily cut out your own! Write guests names or let them create their own design before pinning them on! You could also make little passport books and make a game of letting the kids go around to each room of your house to collect a stamp or sticker for each different “country” Set up foods for different countries in the rooms if you are into it! We also found these great landmark cookie cutters to make fun travel themed take homes! If your kid has lots of stuffed animals (they do seem to accumulate them!) you could even set them up in their home countries. While ours were so little we had fun setting up a little box train to pull them around from place to place, but this would also be wonderful outside if you’ve got lots of room for little cars or bikes! Have some fun by doing a sort of Where’s Waldo printing out pictures of your baby in landmarks around the world to decorate!

Science: I love this one because there are so many directions you could take it! Think drinks from syringes & test tubes, cupcakes or cookies with the periodic elements written on them, use melon balls or berries and toothpicks to create elements etc. Plus depending on the age/interests you can relive all your science experiment fun with egg drop games, paper clip or popsicle stick weighted bridges, newspaper skyscrapers, balloon rockets, or tornado bottles. One of our big hits with pretty much any age is picking up ice with a string – let the kids have at it trying to figure out how to do it then put a little salt on your string or on top of the ice cube let it rest for a few seconds and lift the string by both ends – voila!

Mickey/Minnie Mouse: If you’ve been following the stories on our instagram (@threeintwoblog) you’ll have seen some of the fun we had with our most recent Minnie Mouse party! We got one cookie cutter and made Mickey dinner rolls and rice krispy treats – had Minnie’s bow-tie pasta and Minnie’s ‘Tails (a fun pink cocktail decorated with a simple polka dot ribbon), and bow bites (strawberry/blueberries on a toothpick) which the kids DEVOURED. We got a big pack of Minnie/Mickey ears and loads of balloons – it was a blast! Try a pin the bow on Minnie for some added fun! If you’ve got older kids coming making their own bows could be an awesome project to keep them busy – just make sure you have a spot you don’t mind them making a bit messy if you are letting them glue, glitter etc. If mess is a problem they make some cute foam stickers that are great for “decorating” but maybe not as cool of a finished bow that they can wear again…

Outdoor

Books

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