Hello Kitty Birthday Party

Are you planning a party with a Hello Kitty theme??? 

That cute little kitty is making a huge comeback and I love it! She was awesome when I was a kid and is just as awesome today. I am so thrilled that my daughter loves her because I get to relive the whole HK thing all over again, but this time I get the goods. I really didn't have as much HK as I wanted as a kid. My daughter on the other hand... has what seems like EVERYTHING! Especially after her birthday party. 

While planning my party I scoured the web for ideas on how I could make the party special for her. I started months in advance and quickly realized that I would have to make a lot of the things myself to get the effect I wanted. The good news...I have assembled it all for you right here. Directions. Links to where I bought my supplies etc. Here we go. 

READY MADE- EASY TO FIND 

Party supplies like cups, plates, napkins, table covers, favors, games, decorations like crepe paper and balloons   are all available for easy purchase at Partycity or Walmart.

Walmart also had several really cute pink filigree table covers for .97  each!  How can you go wrong?






MORE PERSONALIZED OPTIONS

Now for favor bags you can buy some small pre-printed plastic ones as well but where's the fun in that??  Why not make your own?  I did, and they were super easy and very cute!  The wonderful thing about HK is that she is EASY as pie to draw.  I bought some plain white sack lunch type paper sacks and drew her face on with paint pens and sharpies.  It seemed that the black sharpies worked better and were more vibrant.  For her bow I cut cardstock and outlined the details in sharpie.  I really like to accentuate the cartooniness (?word) of HK.
Cute Right?


In the photo above you can see that I also made some HK beer koozies.  Now why in the world would we need those at a little girl's party?  Well I'll tell you.  Each year we had a party we started to notice that it was typically the dads that would bring their respective daughters.  So this year we decided to honor our daughter loving dads with something their very own.  So thus was born the Hello Kitty beer koozie.  Not too shabby.  I ordered plain white koozies on ebay.  We bought a set of 12 for $9.99 and when you buy 2   (which I did with a friend) you get 12 more free.  So 36 koozies for $20.  Pretty good.  I then used the freezer paper method of stenciling to imprint HK's face onto the koozies. I freehanded outlines of the bow and nose and glittered up her bow (cause I could) and VOILA! a pretty snazzy HK Koozie. 

* You don't know the freezer paper method??  Check this site out for some awesome instructions.  Once you start you will never stop.  It is so cool.   http://www.dana-made-it.com.


PINATA

For the first time ever my daughter wanted a pinata.  Getting an HK pinata proved a bit more difficult than I thought so I made my own.  I searched and found a great tutorial here at www.cutoutandkeep.net.  I made mine bigger and more true to HKs true cartoon form.  I did however use the same structural build as the tutorial but since our candy was super heavy I added a cardboard strip around the center between the front and back.  I glued and taped all pieces together for strength.  I used picture wire as the hanging mechanism and then covered it all with brown paper bags before adding the decorations.  My decorations consisted of strips of crepe paper fringed by cutting slits about 1" apart.  Only cut halfway up the paper for obvious reasons.  For her face and bow I cut out pieces of cardstock, outlined with sharpie and decorated with glitter.  This whole project is a bit time consuming  (took about 2 hours) but really turned out great.  The kids loved it!


CAKE AND CUPCAKES

For the cupcakes I had come across some really cool ideas on the web that I wanted to do but my daughter saw some at Sams Club that had rings in them so she had to have those.  The rings can be purchased on e-bay.  Just search HK Cupcake Rings or something similar.  So this year I got off easy with the cupcakes.  We used a funfetti cake box mix and I made Wilton's buttercream which is my favorite.  Added pearl nonpareils and a rind.  SIMPLE.  If you want to see some of the other designs I liked go on over to my Pinterest board and check them out.

For the cake I wanted to do something with fondant, but she HAD to have this HK candle.   So I had my daughter look at some pictures with me on the web and she liked these hot pink mod style flowers so that's what I tried to emulate.  I really wanted to do a cute little HK Ballerina on the front but this turned out cute so no harm done right?  Really do check out the pinterest board because there are some awesome ideas out there for party ideas.










How about Cake Pops?  These are awesome from www.bakerella.com.  In fact everything she does is awesome.









DRESS UP

We made our party into a little dress up party.  I made tutus for all the girls as well as HK Headbands.  We also painted each girl's face with whiskers and a yellow nose.

The tutus were easy to make and a tutorial can be found here at www.cutoutandkeep.net/.  Things I did differently were to sew the elastic before wrapping the tulle and I didn't pull so tight because I found that it would stretch out the elastic.  After the tutu was complete I sewed a single line stitch around the waistband to reinforce the tulle and to ensure it would not unravel.

For the headbands I bought some "craft headbands" and sewed some fleece ears.  Stuffed them with the fleece scraps  (waste not) and hot glued them onto the headband.  I then covered all exposed headband with more fleece and made a felt bow (tutorial for bow here).  These turned out AWESOME.  I love them.





BALLOON IDEAS

If you have either a lot of help or a lot of time here are some ideas with balloons.

Flower balloons.  Now these are so cute and can be found on kimmccrary.blogspot.com

www.prettys13.com

 HK  face balloons.  Instead of a balloon bow you could use cardstock.  I also think that a regular shaped balloon would work just fine.  She just needs darker whiskers in my opinion.  I had full intentions of making these but ran out of time.  :(

PARENTS.COM

WAYS TO MAKE THE BIRTHDAY SPECIAL

Fill your child's room with balloons after they fall asleep the night before their party.  This was a huge hit at our house.  We also put her large bag of presents in the middle of the floor in the balloon pile.  So much fun.

Another idea is to crepe paper their doorway so they have to bust through it in the morning.  How Cute!.

secretsofasupermommy.blogspot.com

 

 OK now I know there's more so I will continually update this as I remember things I did or find new ideas.  If you have any great ideas I'd love to hear them.  Have a HAPPY BIRTHDAY party Helly Kitty style!