If you have littles, a teddy bear tea party is something you need to do.  Some years ago my daughter wanted one for her birthday.
I wondered if her friends were getting a little old for one but what ensued was pure magic.  We sent each girl an invitation with a miniature invitation to her #1 teddy.  They were so excited and it was just the sweetest day.

Each girl was given a simple handmade bear.

The menu was simple and just what a teddy would want to have with his favorite girl.

Gummy berries, teddy grahams, and some bit of honey (This really was some years ago! My daughter is now allergic to tree nuts so these would be a no-go now!)

Muddy bear parfaits.  Just some chocolate pudding, whipped cream, and teddy graham crumble.  Topped with a very muddy (chocolate dipped) gummy bear.

You can’t have a tea party without fairy bread.. or fairy bears rather!

And of course some honey cake.

The cake was my favorite.  I made the decorations with marshmallow fondant.

This bear particularly enjoyed the treats!

This was lost in my “pictures for the website file” that seems to be a pit of things I haven’t gotten to! A few years ago we did this for our oldest daughter and I think it’s time to do another one.  She loves art and so an artsy fartsy birthday was perfect.  She also loves bright colors so I used primary colors to decorate.
Her cake was so simple and cute!

I made 6 layers and colored each a color of the rainbow.  I used a white frosting in between each…

Frosted the outside and then went to town with primary colored sprinkles.

On top I added a rainbow made from marshmallow fondant.  (Use a skewer on each side to give structure and place into cake)  I set this out to dry a couple days ahead of time to firm it up as well.
Then I added some “clouds” with more white frosting on top

It looked pretty cool when we cut into it.

I made pizza and also some colorful whoopie pies.  Just use your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.  Just use white chocolate chips and add some sprinkles, sandwich with frosting and roll sides in sprinkles.

“Paintbrushes” were pretzel rods dipped in brown candy melts, then the tops in a colored melt.

Rice Krispy treats made great paintbrushes too!

I used my “Monster Munch” recipe but used m and m’s instead of reese’s and all white chocolate.

Some white tulle bunches and primary colored streamers made a fun rainbow and cloud backdrop. White balloons would work well too.

The activity was fun and pretty messy! I put an example up of what each station was for.
Spin art is popular in our house.  I just use a cheap salad spinner from IKEA, paper plates trimed to fit it (or construction paper, but you’ll want something thicker), and watered down paint in small bottles.

Marble painting got messy fast but they had so much fun.  Just use washable paints, a container for each color, marbles, and a tray that your paper fits in.

I made the invite myself on Microsoft Word as usual.

If you have a little one who loves art an art party is a fun inexpensive idea! Just make sure to have fun doing things together for the party and be prepared to clean up a mess! 😉

My youngest LOVES Scooby Doo so for her last birthday we of course had a Scooby Doo theme.
I have a few rules about birthdays:
1. We’re not breaking the bank, a kid’s birthday party should be fun, but also inexpensive.
2. If we’re going to have a “theme” it’s because we’re going to spend time together making fun things.

We thought of some pretty fun things for the Scooby Doo theme, and had lots of fun making them together.
First up, hamburger “cake pops”.  Directions here.

And of course Scooby would want some hot dogs to go with the burgers!

Orange Soda.. I mean, Jinkies Juice.

The cake was probably her favorite thing to make.  We found some ideas on pinterest for making a fondant scooby.
We used our trusty Marshmallow fondant of course.

More directions on making it here.

For activities they make their own pizzas.

And played the “mummy game”.

And pin the tag on scooby.

This was a very special day for our family and I wanted to share some of the fun things we did.

Before her baptism we made a trip to the Portland Temple for some pictures in her special dress.
I used fabric from my wedding dress and made my own pattern since I couldn’t find what I wanted.
The buttons are even antiques from my Grandmother’s button jar she had given me.

I made the flowers for her hair and sash with some soft pink specialty fabric (just gathered and sewed in onto a felt circle, some more antique buttons for the center and attached them to alligator clips.
And you have to have sparkly gold kitty shoes to top everything off!

I made a special scrapbook for her day, including a page to tell her about her dress.  I included scraps of the fabrics and some more of the special buttons to save for another special day.  I printed this frame from the Graphics Fairy for journaling.

And some of the favorite pictures taken at the Temple.

I printed more of the frame (I added a little banner that says “A message for Lucy”) and had them at the baptism for friends and family to write messages to her.
Afterwards I added them to her scrapbook.

For the treats…
Basically we did cupcakes and cookies.  Lucy really wanted blues (for water) and doves (for the dove that appears when Christ was baptized).

I’ve had this cookie cutter set (at least the temple and angel moroni) for many years.  Originally purchased at Deseret Book.  Lucy really wanted a dove and luckily I had one from a set, and used a small scalloped circle as well.
I topped them with a glaze and some luster dust and some marshmallow fondant decorations.

You can find these cookie cutters at Deseret Book.  After baking I added a bit of blue coloring to clear vanilla extract and used a small food paintbrush (you can find them with cake decorating supplies) to paint details.  Painting after baking will give a brighter color.

If you don’t know this tip all ready, the best cupcake liners are mini souffle cups.  I buy mine at United Grocer’s Cash and Carry but any restaurant supply store should have them.  You can get them in a range of sizes, from teeny tiny to regular cupcake size.  You just put them on a cookie sheet, no cupcake pans needed.
I frosted with blue and white swirled frosting.

I didn’t catch a better picture! The banner was made with my Silhouette, she really wanted a dove and the CTR symbol.   I placed her memory book with the pictures we took at the Temple and the shadowbox I made her for decoration.

I had to share this too.  She received this special Baptism charm bracelet for a gift.  It is so sweet.  She doesn’t love wearing jewelry but she hung it over her desk and looks at it all the time.

My oldest turned 12 and is OBSESSED with Mary Poppins.  Some may say that’s because she has Autism.. but I think she’s just more in tune with what awesome is. 😀
We had a whole Mary Poppins themed party, it was so fun!
I made her a carpet bag, hat, and costume, and a sweet friend made her the scarf.  The gloves were a thrift shop lucky find.

A sweet friend bought her the umbrella and it made her over the moon happy.  She wears this costume all the time now!  The dress was made from an old shirt, I added a red elastic waistband, blue skirt, and red bow.  We found the hat for Daddy’s chimney sweep costume at Target.  He still has to learn the chimney sweep dance routine. 😉

“17 Cherry Tree Lane Cherry Limeade” for the drink, my recipe is here.

Pic Nik Shoestring potatoes for “Fiddlesticks” 🙂  My favorite movie quote of all time “Fiddlesticks, boy!  Feed the birds and what have you got? Fat birds!”

I HAD to make something for spoonfulls of sugar.  At first I thought I’d just put a dollop of frosting on some small spoons but I had sugar cookie dough left and thought of this.
So glad I did, they were so cute!  I just traced a small spoon (you can buy cookie cutters in spoon shapes too).  I used a small rolled up piece of foil under my silicone baking mat so the spoons would be curved… but many of them broke after cooling.  Next time I would just make them flat.  Piped a dollop of frosting on the spoon and sprinkled with sanding sugar!

For the sugar cookies I made cherries, hats (using sprinkles for the decorations), daisies, and a waiter penguin.

I am not the best at decorating sugar cookies, but I was pretty happy with how theses came out!

I figured we shouldn’t have ALL sweets so I made kite PB sandwiches (twizzlers pull and peel licorice for the kite strings) and the umbrellas are made from babybel cheese cut in half and a cut down bendable black straw for the handle.

My daughter LOVES a special little candy shop in Portland, Candy Babel, so we had some of her sweets at the party.  Licorice scottie dogs to represent Andrew (The little dog in the movie), gold coins for tuppence, gummy cherries, and gummy peach penguins.

Chimney soot treat bars and chimney sweeps, recipes here.

I made a little kite for the top of her cake with green paper , bendable gold ribbon, and washi tape for edge.  I used twizzlers pull and peel for the red stripes, and used marshmallow fondant for the cherries (with this martha stewart mold) and also cut out letters from it to spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious around the top.

I made the cake really small, so I made some mini cupcakes to go with it.  The daisies were made with a tiny daisy cutter I have, and a mini candy chip in the center.

For the activity we made “stained glass kites”.

You’ll need:
Contact paper
Black construction paper or cardstock, cut in kite shapes and straight strips
Twine
Tissue paper squares
Glitter and sequins, optional

They place the kite shape on contact paper, then make the cross strips if they want, then sequins and glitter, then fill with tissue.
Top with another piece of contact paper, trim edges, and add a string.  Hang in the window.

Other activity ideas:

Feed the birds: Make peanut butter pine cone bird feeders.  Tie twine around a pinecone so you can hang it.  Spread it with peanut butter and roll in birdseed.

Chalk drawings: This buttermilk chalk painting is SO fun for kids!… okay, adults too! I totally do it with my girls every time.

Visit a carousel.

Other refreshment ideas: 

Cotton candy “London fog” or “chimney smoke”

Candy Apples (like Jane and Michael have at the horse race)

Tea sandwiches.. you could even do a whole tea party theme, go with the Tea party on the ceiling.

This girl was soooo happy to have a Mary Poppins party and we all had so much fun!

I made the invites, pretty simple, but cute:
The front:

And the inside:

I’ve heard alot of backlash lately for the Lego Friends line, but in my opinion it’s not a bad thing.  My Lucy loves animals.  And many of their sets include animals, if not involved totally around animals.  When she got the Lego friends pet saloon she took it apart and rebuilt it to be an aquarium with a dolphin exhibit.  I’m not crazy about the girl figures, but they don’t offend me either.  When she turned 7 she knew just what kind of party she wanted.  Lego!  These ideas would work easily for a boy too, you could change the colors to primary too for classic lego, but since my daughters favorite color is pink we went with that. 🙂  We stayed within our rule for birthday parties, which is they have to be very inexpensive things we make ourselves together.  This makes for a much more memorable party when your child is helping to make everything.

I printed some simple invitations using this free Lego Block font and this free Lego Brix font on white cardstock.
I cut out on the top and bottom to look like the lego head shape.

My daughter decorated the front of the invitations.  She really enjoyed this part.

I made a small birthday banner on pink cardstock (again using the lego blocks font).  The little tabs on top I left longer so they could fold over the ribbon to hang.

My daughter and I made this together to hold the silverware and napkins, with L for Lucy and 7 since it was her 7th birthday.

I used these molds from Amazon to make some mini chocolate lego figures and bricks. We used candy melts and covered the backs with sprinkles.

For some sandwiches all you need is a small circle cutter and a knife to cut squares or rectangles.  We made some lego fairy bread (a birthday tradition in our house) using frosting as the “glue” for the sprinkles.  And some peanut butter and honey ones as well.  Just use frosting or peanut butter to “glue” the dots on.

You can make lego cookies using any square cookie or graham cracker and mini marshmallows cut in half for the dots.  I coated ours in candy melts leftover from the Lego Head Marshmallow Pops.  We also dipped pretzel rods in melted candy melts and added sprinkles and big candy hearts.

And of course the Lego Head Marshmallow Pops!

We covered juice boxes with colored paper and taped dots on using mounting tape so they popped out a bit.

The cake was so easy.  Lucy did most of it herself even.  I baked a cake in a 9 by 13 pan and cut a 9 inch square out for the cake.  We used jumbo marshmallows cut in half for the circles on top, but you could also cut them out of cake.  Lucy put her name in Lego candy on the front of the cake.

Using the leftover cake we cut squares out and covered them with frosting, then more lego candy.

For the activity each girl had a tray with choices for making a ring.  I bought the rings with blanks at Craft Warehouse, but you can find them online as well.  We went to our local used lego store and sorted through the bins and found pieces that would work for the rings, except the flowers, which I found cheap on Ebay.

It quickly became a game of “how many things can you fit on your lego ring?” 🙂

My Lego lover was very happy!

While I don’t think it’s necessary to do a “favor” for every party, especially since they each got a ring to take home, we found enough of the pieces to make a heart for each friend.  We strung them on some ribbon and made these boxes to hold them.