Hannah's Pajama Party

I LOVE themed birthday parties for kids! I love the challenge and getting my creative and artistic juices flowing. The theme here is a sleepover/pajama party (without the actual sleepover-we're so not ready for that yet!) The inspiration came from Hannah only wanting to wear her pajamas all the time and she has a book about a sleepover that got her thinking. Here are all my favorite details and pictures of the party! Watch out Martha Stewart!

The Invitation

The Favors
Each bag includes a toothbrush, a homemade chocolate covered pretzel stick, chap stick, press on tattoos, and a pizza straw. Everything you need for a sleepover except mini flashlights that I couldn't find over here. I wanted to do pillow case decorating too, but I had trouble finding the supplies for that here too.

The Cake
Counting Sheep! Marshmallows, toothpicks, whipped cream, and black icing made up the sheep. They are held up by bamboo skewers while "jumping" over a chocolate covered pretzel fence. The cake is chocolate underneath a whipped cream icing to look like a cloud. I have been planning this out for months and developing new ideas to make it all hold together well. Hannah helped me make it, and was thrilled about it! She was a little disappointed though that the sheep were not actually jumping over the fence. When we finished she asked, "How do we make them jump now , Mom?" Oops! Sorry Hannah, but even moms have limitations! :)

Hannah's a much better candle blower this year!

Opening Gifts
There were only 5 other kids that came and 3 of them were from the same family. It was a great size, especially so there wasn't an overwhelming amount of gifts. It was perfect!
Everyone wore their pajamas of course, even me!

The Games
These seemed to be the highlight of the party! I came up with two games, one of which Hannah specifically requested. It was a treasure hunt like in her sleep over book. I took pictures of different places in the house, like the Easel, the shower, Genna's bed, etc. then printed them out and glued them to some nice paper folded them up and placed them in those spots. I gave them the first "clue." Then they went and found what was in the picture, finding another "clue" there, and so on. At the end were all their treat bags! It was a hit!
The next game I thought of kind of last minute. I had been trying to find a way to bring popcorn into the party without it being solely for eating since we had pizza (another sleepover necessity) since it is a popular sleepover item. So I put masking tape on the floor and had everyone get a piece of popcorn (many were eaten before i could explain the game,) and they all lined up on the floor. The game was a "race" to blow your popcorn piece across the taped finish line. They did this many times, but Genna and her 2 year old friend were not able to do it. Genna was still sitting at the beginning when the game was over. I told her to blow it and she said, "I can't do it, Mom." She was blowing straight down on top of it. :)

There was some vacuuming to be done after the party, as you can imagine.

Here, Genna gave up and just started eating her piece instead of playing. :) Munch strikes again! She spent most of the party eating, actually!
I love the bottoms in this picture too!

I would say the party was a success! The best part, besides the joy it brought my little 4 year old, was that it wasn't very time consuming for me. I was able to be creative and yet not sacrifice time with the family or get stressed out about getting it all done! Genna's already decided she wants a princess tea party for her birthday! I am already brainstorming!