Kitty Cat Party -7yr- Ring The Cat's Head

My daughter loves all things related to cats and kittens so it was no surprise that she wanted a kitty party for her seventh birthday.  I first looked on line for party ideas and found very little.  This caused me to have to use my imagination!  I decided to make the invitations and wanted them to be a little different from store bought ones.  I went to our local recycling store called The Scrap Box and found thick cardboard rectangles the size of greeting cards. 

I also found cardboard pizza circles and little plastic boxes that I could use for other party projects.  I bought felt squares in cat colors, sequin ribbon and tiny bells at a craft store. I cut out cat shapes from the felt, glued on the sequin ribbon for a collar, sewed on the bell, stitched on whiskers, glued on wiggle eyes and painted on a nose and pink inner ears with fabric paint.  I covered each cardboard rectangle with flowered wallpaper samples and glued the cat on the front.  I cut out tiny little gray mice and stitched on a tail for each before gluing to the front of the card by the cat.  On the back of the card, I glued the birthday party info that I had printed on white paper and cut to fit the card. 

The invitation read,It's the purr-fect time for a birthday party!" Party details followed and ended withThe day will be purr-fect if you'll share it with us!  I drew two little kittens on the bottom of the invitation and colored them in to dress up the invitation a little.  These cards fit in colorful greeting card envelopes I had picked up at the Scrap Box.  Amanda delivered the invitations to all the girls in her class and all eleven girls called to say they would come to the party!  The moms loved the invitations. 

I couldn't find cat decorations so I made my own.  I covered the large pizza circles with dark brown construction paper and the smaller ones with light brown paper.  I added face details and ears to the smaller circles and a tail to the larger circle.  I glued the two together with the smaller circle slightly lower than the center of the large circle.  I added paw shapes to the large circle and when dry I hung the cats by their tails from the ceiling in the family room.  I have wooden beams on my ceiling and small cup hooks attached to hang decorations for birthdays and holidays.  I hung blue pink and white streamers from the hooks as well. 

They are Amanda's favorite colors.  I added balloons in those colors to decorate the ceiling and put cat posters on the walls that I had drawn and colored for the party.  I bought plastic headbands and covered them with black ribbon.  I glued on black felt ears and painted the inner ear pink.  The girls wore these instead of party hats. I made the treat bags by drawing cat shapes an white tag board coloring them and cutting them out.  I glued the front and back together up to the sides of the head.  I left the top open and punched holes in the top threaded ribbon through and tied for handles.  I filled each treat kitty with kisses cat suckers(found at Birthday Express) a cat jingle bell necklace(I made them from a kit from Oriental Trading) cat stickers and a set of cat coloring pages I ran off from a site I found on line.  I put the necklace and stickers in the little plastic boxes I found at the scrap box.  I set up a craft table for the girls to begin at. 

They made friendship rings and bracelets kitty masks cat and mouse tic tac toe games I designed with craft faom.  I precut bowl shapes (cat food dish) from white craft foam.  I cut small cat and mouse shapes from tan and gray foam.  The girls detailed their cats and mice with wiggle eyes and string tails for the mice and yarn tails for the cats.  They glued on ribbon to divide up their tic tac toe boards into a grid.  They really liked their projects and they turned out so cute!  While the girls were working on their crafts my husband set out lunch for me.  I had made sandwiches cut with cat and mouse cookie cutters a cheese and cracker tray veggies and dip chips and juice and frosted cat shaped sugar cookies. 

After the crafts the girls ate lunch.  It was now time for games.  My daughter loves to pin the tail on anything!  It's her favorite game so I painted a cat on a big piece of cardboard and used feather boas for tails. Since there was one for each girl to play the game with each girl took home a feather boa at the end of the party.

I set out eight of my daughter's stuffed cats and the girls played a ring toss game with them.  They tried to get the rings over the cats heads and giggled whenever the rings landed on the tails!  I painted styrofoam balls brown and detailed them to look like cat heads.  I wrapped 24oz. Pop bottles with brown tissue paper and pushed the balls onto the top of the bottles after adding rice for weight.  I gave the girls bean bags I had made out of felt with a kitty transfer ironed on the front and they tried to knock the cats over.  Not too hard but lots of fun.  They then added their bean bag to their growing pile of goodies.  It was now time for cake so the girls hurried to the family room for treats.  I used a mini loaf pan to make a little kitty cake for each girl. I used two cakes for each kitty.  One cake I cut up to make the head and legs.  The other one I used for the body and tail.  I glued the pieces together with frosting and then frosted the whole kitty with pull out strokes using a small leaf tip.  I made a larger version for my daughter. 

I detailed the faces with jelly beans and colored baking pieces and liccorice strings.  The cakes were a huge hit!  Present time soon arrived.  My daughter is a bit shy and at previous birthdays she has been overwhelmed when the excited guests crowd her to see her open gifts or argue over who will go first.  I decided to try a new approach this time.  I had all the kids sit in a circle with their gifts in front of them.  Amanda sat in a chair also in the circle.  Everyone could see her clearly as she opened the gifts.  My son played some silly song music and the girls passed around a ball of yarn.  When the music stopped the child holding the yarn ball gave Amanda her gift.  This continued until all the gifts had been opened.  The girls stayed seated the whole time because they wanted to see who would be next!  I think I'll do this every birthday until the kids get too big for the game! 

By this time it was almost time for parents to pick up the kids.  I had only two more things for them to do before they left.  Prior to the guests arriving my son and husband wound different colored yarn around our front yard.  On one end of each piece of yarn was a Hello Kitty ruler (found at Dollar Store) and the other end was attached to a treat bag.  Each girl was given a ruler and had to trace their yarn around the yard winding it around the ruler as they went until the bags were found.  The girls loved this activity.  It was more fun than just handing them their bags as they went out the door.  I had painted a huge picture of a cat and mouse on cardboard and cut out the face of the cat big enough for a child's face.  Each girl got her picture taken in the cutout.  They looked like they were chasing the mouse!  I used these pictures as our thank you notes later. 

As the girls waited for their parents I pulled out a parachute that I had borrowed from the school where I work.  I put several small stuffed cats in the middle and the kids had a ball tossing them around on the parachute.  As each girl left with her pile of goodies and her bag of treats Amanda handed each child a small stuffed kitty we had purchased from Oriental Trading.  It was our way of saying Thank You for making Amanda's party so much fun.  We printed out the pictures and added them to kitty thank you cards I made from card stock and wall paper samples. I found a cat print boarder in a book and cut out the kitties and glued them to the cards. The cards read "Thank you for making my birthday so special.  It was PURR-FECT because you were there." Another line thanked each girl for the gift she had given Amanda.  This party was so much fun and it turned out so well.  I hope my kids always remember the love I put into making their birthdays so special.  Because I was able to make so many of the things for this party I was able to splurge on the stuffed cats for the kids.  The total cost of Amanda's party was $43.98.  Not bad for a day of fun and a life time of memories!     "