How to throw a kids birthday party that’s fun and stylish

At Blogzine we never say no to a kids birthday party! It is a perfect time to pull out all the bells and whistles. And although you want your kid to have an amazing day, you also don’t want to turn your house into a Disney theme store. 

This is where the fun stuff happens

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1. Pick a theme that you and your kid like

If your kid has a cool hobby or always plays with the same sort of toys, then it’s quite easy to choose a theme for the kids birthday party.

Recently, my oldest son turned 3 years. So this year is the first one that he actually understands what’s happening. I really wanted to choose something that he likes. As he is totally into music, dancing, singing and playing the piano right now I decided to go for a ‘Music’ theme this time. I know I could do some fun things with it and he would totally love it!

If your kid is still too little you can just opt for a certain colour scheme. The first year I decorated with the same colors (black, white and mint) as his birth card. This seemed like a logical and, more important, stylish choice. Let’s be honest, that first birthday party is more for you and your guests than it is for your baby. He or she doesn’t really have a clue on what’s happening.

You can also pick something that just seems like a lot of fun for your kid. Something that gives you lots of opportunities in terms of decoration. For his second birthday, for example, the theme was ‘Party animals’: think all kinds of plastic animals with little party heads on as a cake topper. Or center pieces on the tables and some fun circus-like striped cardboard plates. And what about a little animal train filled with sweets and some paper pompons against the wall?

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2. More is more!

This doesn’t mean that you have to decorate every little corner of your house. Be, however, consistent in your decorations: let your theme run through all of them as a red thread. Then it all comes together nicely as a whole.

For this party, I had a mainly black and white colour scheme to have a link with the keys of a piano. So I chose a black paper tabel cloth. This is much easier to clean up afterwards. I combined it with a crisp, white table runner, white plates and piano like napkins.

I added a touch of gold again because kids love all things “shiny and sparkly”. It has that immediate festive feel so I used some gold cutlery. To decorate my table runner, I found these little golden drums, some little wooden guitars and funny golden bells. I hung up some black acryl music notes with fish wire on a tabel clamp. This gave the illusion of notes flowing into the air.

When buying your decorations, try to choose things where your kid can still play with afterwards. For them, it’s like an extra present. For you it means that your closets aren’t packed with all kinds of decorations that you don’t use anymore. 

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3. Sugar mania

Julia Child, a famous American cook, once said: “ A party without cake is just a meeting”. Well, let me tell you something, this kids birthday party was definitely not a meeting! After all, a birthday party is the perfect excuse to have a little cheat day, right?

So, as always I had set up a sweet table which means lots and loooots of cake and other sweets! The most important cake is off course the birthday cake! If you like sugar work, then you can have the most crazy designs. I personally don’t like eating this so I wanted something different which I could finish of myself with my decorations.

Since I’m more of a desperate housewife, I let the people of sweetplanet.be make this beautiful naked cake with a half chocolate drip. Very rock ’n roll, don’t you think? The mini drums, guitar, the music notes and the personalized golden cake topper with my son’s name really were the finishing touch.

Besides cake, there was also a lemon pie, a cream pie, donuts, cupcakes, profiteroles, a piano keypad made out of white and milk chocolate Leo’s and some homemade icetea!

You can add all kinds of desserts in little glasses, cookies, chocolate dipped strawberries or marshmallows,…Whatever you want really. And allthough it is called a sweet table, you can also make little triangle sandwiches of some other savouries. Basically, the sky is the limit here.

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4. Bring in the fun!

Of course, opening the presents is the highlight of the party for your kid but since you can never have too much fun, you can also think of some other activities such as playing some board games or have an outdoor scavenger hunt.

As an extra fun element I bought a piñata in the shape of a guitar and a colorful piñata stick. I could already imagine my son’s ecstatic face when all the candy and toys came falling out.

However, what seemed like a great idea at the time when I bought it, on second thought, I didn’t think it was the best plan to hand over a pinata stick to my 3-year old and let him smack the piñata into pieces. Since kids of that age don’t always understand that you can only do certain things in a specific situation, he could potentionally destroy our whole house with it so we decided to just give the piñata to him as an extra toy to play with. When your kids are a little bit bigger, however, it can be really cool!

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5. Thank you, come again

Another fun thing to do is handing out favors to your guests when they go home. You can choose anything you want but things as sweets, little plants, small jars of honey or miniature drinks always do well as a favor.

If you really want to go all the way, you can give something that lies in the line of your party theme e.g. for this year I found some great pasta in the shape of music notes and for the men I had a bottle opener in the shape of a guitar.

It’s also nice if you add a personal touch to it. You can do this by making personalized labels, by adding a little picture or by just simply writing your kid’s name and the date onto a little flag or tag.

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6. Need some more inspiration?

If you have an upcoming kids birthday party and you’re lacking any ideas on what to do, here are soms other cool themes for a party. Enjoy the celebrations!