Shortcake Party -4yr- Straw Hats

My daughter discovered strawberry shortcake at a friends house (a movie)just before her birthday and it was all she could talk about, so inevitably we planned a SSC party. To start with, for the invitations I bought mini baskets (oriental trading co.)and my daughter helped me make foam strawberries which we glued to both sides of the basket and filled with individually wrapped fruit gummies (otc).

The invitation itself was filled with berry" talk and anounced that SSC and all her fruity friends would be there along with lots of details about the party... then we rolled them up and tied them with a red or green ribbon to the handle of the basket - they turned out really cute. 

For decorations I like to keep it pretty simple - big strawberries made from foam or construction paper tied to ribbons along the walls and ceiling and different colored ballons and ribbons hung everywhere (my daughter wanted all of the colors not just red green and pink so we incorporated all fruits along with strawberries at our party). A pretty tip that I especially like to do with girl's parties is to buy some shimmer ribbon (otc) and use that in place of streamers - it just gives it more of a beautiful look. one of the favorite things we did was put a different colored ribbon hanging down long on each blade of our ceiling fan above the dinning room table (the girls did their activities and ate at)and have it spin really slowly throughout the party. 

When the girls arrived I had a table set up in the entry way with large laminated pictures of orange blosson lemon merinque tea blossom and blueberry muffin taped to the edge of the table to look like they were standing. on the table behind each of them were 3 straw hats (michael's for $1.00) tied with a matching colored ribbon with enough to hang down the back over the rim of the hat and three paper (you could use foam too)fruits (flower for tea blossom)glued to the front and the sides.

The girls were told that they got to be on of SSC's friends today and to choose whichever hat they wanted. My daughter was insistant that she was the only strawberry shortcake so she had a hat with red and green ribbon and of course strawberries. The girls really loved their hats and made great pictures but be sure to write their names on the inside when they choose their hat so nobody fights or loses it because they come off and on throughout the party. Along with hat they were also told to choose a little bag/purse(otc) and bring it to the table to decorate. I had lots of foam shapes for the girls to use - fruit butterflies ladybugs letters etc. the self adhesive ones are the best for girls this age just becuase you don't have to worry about the time it takes for glue to dry. 

Then we started games. the first game was to feed the strawberry land poinies thier favorite ice cream. I had blown up and laminated 4 of the ponies: Milkshake Orange sherbet blueberry something or other and another one I can't remember right now (the web has amazing picture collectors that will give you a great print out and the name of each character pony and friend). The game was to transfer your team's colored ice cream (balls of orange blue yellow and purple - all the same colors as the girls hats - making team's easy) from the big basket to your ponies basket balancing each ice cream scoop on a big metal spoon. we used the balls you put in ball pits and had the same number of each color in the basket so that when one's team's color was gone they won.  

The next game was to pick the fruit off of the fruit tree - I have 2 big pillars on either side of the entrance to our sitting room and made contruction paper trees on either one just the height of the girls. I glued multi-colored and various sizes of pom-poms on both trees (the same number on each) and put the girls into 2 teams. each team had a basket and they simply pulled the fruit off of the trees and put in the basket as fast as they could. Depending on the age and number of guests at your party you can easily put 100 on each tree - they loved this game so much and many of them get handfuls of fruit before they drop them in the basket.  

Did a fruit walk to the wiggles fruit salad song. Each time a fruit was picked from my basket (mini replicates of the big fruit they were walking on) they were pronounce "Rotten fruit" (which always made them smile) and were sent to "freshen up" at the strawberry land's beauty parlor. I had a table set up with SSC toys and pom-poms for them to play with while they waited to get tatoo's nail decals body jewelry body marker stencils body glitter etc. after all the girls were done with the game I also threw in the SSC around the world movie for them to watch when their beautifing was over.- I love to have a quiet activity while I'm getting lunch on the table.  For lunch we had PB&strawberryJ sandwiches cut into a heart with kiwi and raisins to make it a strawberry fruit salad red and green jiggler squares and fruit punch. All on SSC tableware. 

After food we played pass the strawberry - gifts wrapped in pink and green tissue paper with seeds drawn on to look like a strawberry tied with a ribbon. As each strawberry was passed around the girl holding it when the music stopped got to go to the table and open her gift - a bracelet with 3 charms the girl needed to slide on herself (otc).  When all the girls were at the table and finished with their bracelets I said "did you hear that? I think there's somebody at the door". All the girls raced to the door to see who it could be - to their amazement SSC (who was on the door greating them as they all arived to the party) was gone and there was a note taped on the door in her place.

The note announced that her and her friends wanted to play hide and seek and left clues to help the girls find each of them along with prizes so your grab your bags and let's play! - this is when the girls also noticed that orange blossom lemon merique tea blossom and blueberry muffin were also missing. They were so excited - then I read them the first clue: "To find me orange blossom you might want to look where you keep my favorite fruit" the girls raced to the fridge and found nothing it only took them a minute to think of the pantry where they found little tissue wrapped presets and orange blossom - everyone took a prize. Each friend was like this receiving fruit gummies fruit shaped erasers a glitter pen and a notebook until we finally found SSC with coloring books that I had made for each girl from pics on the web - a cover complete with a glitter strawberry and red/green ribbon holding it all together. 

We opened presents and then had cupcakes and icecream. I was going to have the girls decorate their own cupcakes but we ran out of time (if you do this party you may want to extend to 2 hours instead of the 1 1/2 hour I did). I had prepared for that though and had plenty of cupcakes made with either pink or light green frosting with strawberry halves placed on top and a red twizzler aross the top for the handle to look like a basket filled with strawberries - really cute and simple.    I hope I've given you some ideas you can use - it's almost a year later and my daughter still talks about it. Good Luck partying!"