My baby girl turned 4 on the 1st of January 2013 and her party planning started in June (she really is a mini me). The list of the themes she wanted went, an office party at Daddy's work? a chocolate party at Cadbury world (er No, it's 3 hours away), a fairy party and a princess party. She finally decided on a Hello Kitty party 5 weeks before the big day.
A quick search online and we found loads of inspiration for the decorations and games. And this is what we did...
We had the party with 23 guests from 10am -12noon which left us with the rest of the day to recover.
Decorations
We hired Patcham Memorial Hall because it's a lovely and has fairy lights strung from the beams. We turned these on and hung up pink and red paper chains, tissue paper flower garlands and happy birthday bunting.
I bought some cheap satin and 10m of bright pink honeycomb parc from
Fabricland. I made a large satin bow by sewing a large oval with the right sides together leaving a small gap in the centre to turn the fabric the right side out. I then made a 5cm x 20cm long rectangle in the same way leaving a 5cm end open. Turned it the right way out and tied it round the middle of the oval to make the bow. A safety pin on the back and string and it was ready to hang up.
I cut the pink honeycomb parc to cover the tables and had enough left over to pin round the entrance door. I made the drape by tying a piece of string in the centre.
Ruby got a big ballet kitty for Christmas and she sat on the gift table.
A pack of cheap pink ribbon from
Tiger was cut up into strips and tied into bows on each chair.
There were also Hello Kitty paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling. I bought 3 99p paper lanterns from Asda and used felt tip pens to draw on a Hello Kitty face. I used
these cookie cutters I bought from Pretty Neat Things as a stencil for the bow, cut them out of red paper and stuck them on. I tied big lengths of string to the wire inside and tied them to the beams. I saw this idea as a Hello Kitty Piñata and all you would need to do is add a piece of paper to cover the hole at the bottom and then fill with sweets and hand the kids a stick and stand back!
Games and activities
I printed off sheets of Hello Kitty colouring from somewhere online for the kids to do when they arrived. My friend Kay helped me with face painting Kitty's on to the kids faces. I was impressed with how many of the boys wanted to look like Kitty or in some cases Hello Kevin. They won't want to do that when they turn 5 :( We told them we could only paint Kitty's which stopped the requests for Spiderman.
Using the "how to draw Kitty" in Ruby's magazine I made a Pin the bow on Kitty out of card. There was a little red bow for them to stick on and a Hello Kitty mask for them to wear. The winner got a
Mega Blocks Hello Kitty figure or a Dinosaur figure.
We decided to play lots of games that didn't necessarily involve winners and prizes which worked really well.
There was music on including the very catchy Hello Kitty's Wonderland from iTunes and pink balloons to play with.
As an ice breaker we played Matching Pairs. I made up 23 pairs of cards with a coloured shape on one side and a Hello Kitty image cut out from gift wrap on the other. I then hid the cards around the hall and gave each child a card. When they had found their pair they had to return both cards to me and I gave them a sticker.
We played a balloon game where the kids had to partner up and face each other holding a balloon between their tummies without touching it. They then had to copy simple instructions like, step to the side or put your arms in the air. When you dropped a balloon you were out. The last pair were the winners. They were very good at this game and it took up about 15 minutes.
The last game before lunch was Copy Kitty where the kids took it in turns to be a cat and the others had to copy them. They did things like "play with a ball of string""wash their faces" and "chase the mouse". They all got a go, had lots of fun and used up some energy.
Party food and cake
Not a lot of photo's of the food, it didn't hang around long enough.
Using the Hello Kitty cookie cutters we made bow and kitty face jam and cream cheese sandwiches. Served, mini sausages, hoola hoops and grapes. I cut out lots of red paper bows and stuck them to plastic cups containing pink smarties. Using icing gel pens I put kitty faces onto mini meringues. And you can't have a party without party rings and chocolate fingers on a pretty cardboard cake stand. I love these as they are so easy to store. There was also jelly.
Last but not least was probably the easiest cake I have ever made. I covered a square chocolate sponge cake with buttercream and pink fondant icing and using a cardboard stencil that I had made for the mask I cut out a white fondant Kitty face. I used liquorice laces for the eyes, whiskers, nose and edge of the face and bow. The nose and bow are coloured fondant. She was yummy!
A little Hello Kitty tip I learnt from Ruby's magazine is that Kitty always wears her red bow over her left ear and her twin Mimmy wears her yellow bow over her right ear!
Finally a very big thank you to Selena for helping me set up the decorations and to Kay for the face painting xx
Ruby says a big thank you too. To all her guests for coming and especially to Rachel and George for the Hello Kitty PJ case, as you can see it doubles up at a head for Ruby Kitty!
