Butterfly Party 6yr - Purple Butterfly Cake

My daughter requested a butterfly birthday party at our home with all of her female classmates for her 6th birthday.  At first I was a little reticent but after reading ideas from this website, I felt encouraged and acquiesced. 

Invitations:  We mailed out our butterfly invitations (which matched the plates, cups, napkins, blowouts, hats, goodie bags, mylar balloons and thank you notes…purchased from my local dollar store) and added our own butterfly stickers to the envelopes, three weeks before the party. 

Decorations:  We decorated the front of our house with balloons at the entry to the driveway and crepe paper streamers down the basketball pole.  My daughter drew butterflies with sidewalk chalk along the walkway up to our home.  The party was set up on our back patio.  Two days before the party my mom, my daughter and I made coffee filter butterflies (which we learned from reading ideas from this site) and hung them with yellow curling ribbon from the inside of our patio table umbrella.  My husband printed different clip art butterflies from our computer.  We then cut them out and taped them to the underside of our glass patio table.  It turned out very cute and much less obnoxious than confetti.  We hung magenta and lavender crepe paper streamers from our rod iron torches that line the sides our patio (we did not light them during the party).  I also decorated my daughter's chair with crepe paper.  I had two card tables set up on the side of the patio with purple tableclothes on them.  We used one as a gift table and I had a trio of matching mylar butterfly balloons on it and a basket with a butterfly wired onto the handle that contained the goodie bags for the girls.  We used the other table during the party for different activities and to serve the cake and ice cream. 

Costumes:  My daughter wore a pink peasant skirt and a white tank top with a pink butterfly on it.  We had told her friends to wear clothing with butterflies on them if they would like to and many of them did.  As a special surprise I had a tiara with a butterfly on it for my daughter to wear for the party. 

When the party began, I greeted the parents at the front of my house and got phone numbers where they could be reached (I learned this the hard way when my son became sick at a party and I had not left my cell phone number).  My daughter took her friends around the house to the gift table to drop off the gifts and then to the second table where each girl could pick to have two butterfly tattoos applied.  They were then directed to the patio table where I had placed their party hats and blowers.  I had written each girl's name on her party hat with pink alphabet stickers and my daughter had decided where each girl was to sit.  This avoided any arguing over who was to sit next to the birthday girl. 

Activities:  Once all the girls arrived we began our first craft.  I had purchased round purple fun foam boxes and had put together individual bags of self adhesive fun foam butterfly and flower shapes for each girl to decorate her box.  They also used different colored pastel glitter glue pens to embellish their boxes.  I had prepared a sample of each of the crafts we did ahead of time to show the girls so that they felt confident about being able to do them. 

After the girls finished their keepsake boxes, they moved over to a quilt I had spread on the grass and my mom read three books to them (What is a Butterfly?, The Crunching Munching Caterpillar, and The Very Hungry Caterpillar).  We then played a game, my daughter and the girl whose birth date was the closest to her's were to be "caterpillars" and the other girls were to "cocoon" them in toilet paper.  We got great pictures and video of this game. 

The girls then began their second craft.  I had bought purple plastic cording with plastic tubing that could be used to connect the cording to make it a necklace.  On each girl's necklace I had slid on one bead that I had glued two eyes onto.  Each girl was given a bag of different colored beads to make a "caterpillar" necklace that they could wear or put into their butterfly keepsake box. 

Games:  We then headed to the driveway to play a relay race.  I had previously decorated four posterboards with cut out butterflies and flowers and stenciled on "Josie's Butterfly Race" and covered with contact paper.  The girls divided into two teams.  Each girl had to race down the driveway and back stepping only on the posterboards (another great video moment!).  After the race we headed back to the patio table for our last craft, butterfly puppet kits made of fun foam that I picked up at Wal-mart (a package of four for only $.94), I just added popsicle sticks to make them easier to use. 

When this was done, I had all of the guests sit on the quilt and my daughter sat in a chair on the patio to open gifts.  Each girl came up one at a time to give the birthday girl her gift and to have their picture taken together.  After the gift opening, we then had cake and ice cream. 

After cake and ice cream, we had a butterfly pinata.  The girls each took turns and after two rounds, my 11 year old son wacked it open.  Each girl had a resealable sandwich bag with a butterfly sticker and her name written on it to hold her candy.  For our final game, we used a toy butterfly that plays music.  The girls passed it around until the music stopped, just like hot potato, until only one girl was left. 

Cake:  I made a butterfly cake that I found the directions to on the internet using a single layer round cake and cutting it in half and then each side by 1/3 and 2/3.  I just cut it a little differently than the diagram to make the wing span larger.  My daughter had drawn a picture of how she wanted the cake to be decorated.  We used a piece of black licorice for the body, a black jelly bean for the head (which I secured with black frosting) and black shoestring licorice for antennae (which was actually very hard to find in my area, I had to travel an hour away to a specialty store to buy it and afterwards I decided I could have gotten the same effect by drawing antennae with black frosting). 

My daughter wanted the wings to be decorated with purple frosting and sprinkled with purple edible glitter, in the center of each wing she wanted a bright pink oval outlined in black (I used pink sugar crystals that I applied by cutting a template out of wax paper and then sprinkling on).  I was VERY nervous decorating the cake because I am terrible at making cakes look good, but after reading all the great tips that other people had written in about on this site (like the wax paper template) it turned out great!!!  I just outlined the wings with black frosting when I was done and it looked just like her picture.  My daughter picked pink ice cream and purple kool-aid to match her cake. 

Favors:  Each girl took home her hat and blowout, her butterfly keepsake box, caterpillar necklace, butterfly puppet and goodie bag.  In each of the goodie bags was a pair of butterfly sunglasses, a candy bracelet with a butterfly charm, a package of 75 3-D butterfly stickers and the book Thumbelina (which had a rose and butterfly on the cover).  When my daughter wrote her thank you notes we included the picture she had taken with each of her friends.  It was a great party, thank you so much for this great web site.  It helped me immensely!!!