Ice Cream Birthday Party Ideas!

It was my daughter's 8th birthday this past week and she decided that she wanted to celebrate with an Ice Cream themed party - complete with a sundae bar! We had so much fun making all the party decorations and she was fully involved in all the planning. I will feature some tutorials throughout the week, but for now here is an overview:

The Invitations: These cute one-sided Ice Cream invites came from Pear Tree Greetings. I really believe that invitations help set the tone for a party so I still rely on good old fashion paper invites. They are pretty adorable!

The Centerpieces: Would you believe my daughter and her friends made these all by themselves?! That's right, these super-cute yarn ice cream sundaes are that easy to make. 

The Pinata: My daughter was insistent on having a pinata this year; however, I could not find a reasonably priced ice cream pinata anywhere. Thank goodness for Pinterest because we found out how to make our very own pinata! This sucker took us about a week to make but we were both so proud of it by the time we were done!  

The Cupcakes: Of course, I make the biggest deal out of the birthday cake - or cupcakes in this case. Since there were so many people at the party and there would already be a bit of chaos with the sundae bar, I decided it would make more sense to have cupcakes than a cake I would need to cut and serve. My daughter and her friends painted the stand and we worked on the rest of the decorations together - I LOVED the finished product and will review it later today!

The cupcakes were: white cake with Oreo filling and a buttercream, chocolate ice cream topping with a cherry on top and a spice cake with apple filling, buttercream with caramel ice cream topping, and a cherry. Unfortunately a couple of days before my daughter's birthday I become acutely and, unfortunately, hot rock bottom right after her party and had to go to the ER. This definitely was not my best work and my husband did all the baking (and just about everything else for the party - he deserves husband of the year for that one!)

The Party Hats:
I usually like to plan some sort of craft for the kids so this year they made their own party hats out of headbands, tissue paper, ribbon and waffle cones.

And, of course, the Birthday Girl!