Strawberry Shortcake -5yr- Strawberry Balloons

I decided to have a Strawberry Shortcake party for my DD who was turning 5 this June.  I found a whole bunch of SSC party supplies at my local Walmart, very affordably priced too. 

I mailed out the pre-printed SSC invites, also passed them out to her preschool classmates.   

I first came up with ideas for the table settings.  I have long folding tables to accomodate the parents.  I bought cheap $.99  plastic table covers, in both red and green. I placed the red one on first, then placed the green one on top.  I then trimmed the green tablecloth shorter, so that it was a sort of topper to the red one.  I wanted the green tablecloth to look like a leafy stem over the "strawberry" red tablecloth.  So I jagged the edges of the green tablecloth to give it the look and the red tablecloth got decorated with little black "seeds" that I drew on with a marker.  My tables then looked like giant strawberries.

I made a head table for the birtday girl and her friends.  I used 2 cheap little kids plastic tables that I purchased at the swapmeet, and placed a big piece of plywood over it.  I pre-covered the whole thing with a white plastic table cloth, and then used the SSC themed tablecloth over that. 

I placed my daughter's SSC playhouse in the center of the table as a centerpiece and pre-set the table with all the themed plates, cups and napkins.  I scattered little fake strawberries, that I found at a craft store, all over the table.  I was able to fit 10 red plastic children's chairs that I purchased at the .99 cent store all around.  It was adorable.    I made strawberry balloons.  I pre-cut green tissue paper into the shape of a leafy stem. 

The day of the party I rented a helium tank, and blew up a whole bunch of red balloons.  With plain ol' white glue, I squirted some on top of the balloon and stuck the tissue paper stem to the top. I then drew little black seeds all over the balloons.  They looked like huge bouquets of floating strawberries, which were used as the center piece on my parents tables.  We played lots of games, all with a strawberry twist. 

I purchased a Strawberry Shortcake CD from Target, that we used to play musical chairs with and pass the berry (like hotpotato).  I had them also do a craft.  I got plain brown lunch sacks and put lots of markers, crayons and stickers on a table.  I had each child decorate their bag and more importantly, write their name on it.  That was then the bag they used to put their pinata candy in. 

Kids are always misplacing those things and crying when they think another child has their bag, I figured this was a good solution.  It was then time to eat.  The menu consisted of barbequed chicken, kabobs, almond rice, salad, and fruit.  I had all the kids sit down TOGETHER and eat at the same time so that I could snap lots of pictures with all of them.   

We then cut the cake, which I purchased at Sam's club, and opened presents. 

For the girl's favor bags, I found these adorable velvet strawberry bags at, of course, the .99cent store.  I filled them with SSC party favors, a pair of sunglasses, a bracelet and a pencil.  The boy's favor bags were just simple grean lunch saks, they cost $.10 each at Walmart, I filled them with boy appropriate things and punched holes into the folded down flap.  I laced raffia through it and made them long enough to work as handles. Instead of just passing them out, I took the idea from this website to have the boys then the girls get in a circle and pass around the bag to music, when the music stopped they got out and kept the bag.   

Everyone loved the party.  I had Mom's coming up thanking me over and over again for showing their kids such a good time.  One mom even said she was going to steal all the ideas for her baby daughter's party.  It was a lot of work, but I figure my DD isn't going to let me do cutesy parties for much longer, I better take advantage of this time while I can.