Tiny Party

Theme:
My oldest son's and my daughter's birthdays are 2 days apart.  When they were younger this meant combined parties with a theme that I made unique to fit a boy and a girl.  Of course the combined parties went away as they got older, but this year it was fun to make their themes somewhat match.  My son's 13th birthday party was Friday night with the Super-sized party, and my daughter's 11th birthday Tiny party was Saturday.

Invitations:
I found some really cute tiny pink and white envelopes at a scrapbook store.  They were about 1 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches, so that's the size we made the invitations.  The trick was to get all of the info on it without getting the text so small you need a magnifying glass to read it.

Decorations:
My daughter picked the tablecloth and pink placemats to match some napkins that she liked.  We asked a local party store to make helium balloons for us out of mini balloons, but they wouldn't because apparently they aren't made the same and will only hold helium for a couple of hours.  They showed us a sample of the cute mini balloon bouquet that you see as a centerpiece on the table, and that's what we went with instead.  But how cute would it have been to have mini helium balloons tied together!

Activities:
As the girls showed up we made Shrinky Dinks keychains.  I had a table set up with all the supplies and patterns for them to trace.  They outlined the design with Sharpie markers and then colored them in with colored pencils.  Don't forget to punch holes before you shrink!  Then the girls had a ball watching them shrink in the oven.  Most of them had never even heard of Shrinky Dinks before.   We ate dinner while they cooled down, then later added ribbon for the ties.  You can see their designs above.  So cute!

We also decided instead of party favors, to make little decorated cakes for them to take home.  I used craft store coupons (and found some on Sale) to get 12 Wilton cupcake boxes that hold 4 cupcakes.  I took out the cupcake dividers and made circles of cardboard to fit inside each box that  I covered with foil.  This made it easy to decorate the cakes and then get them into the box for transporting.  I found some small cake pans and baked 12 little cakes and then froze them to make them easier to decorate.

So after we ate and opened presents the girls had a ball decorating their mini cakes until parents came to pick them up.  I had white frosting for the bases and then mixed up pink, green, yellow, purple and blue icing in bags with an assortment of decorating tips for them to ice with.  I did a small demo of how to make leaves and flowers with different tips, but for the most part they just got creative and had fun.  I also had some little flower sprinkles for them to use.  I forgot to get photos of their finished cakes, but a bad quality photo (but the only one I had) of my daughter's finished cake is above.

Food:
We set the table up with the placemats and kid's dishes (3 sets) from IKEA.  They come with little plates, bowls, cups and silverware.  We used tiny straws that I cut to fit the size of the cups.

I spent a month searching for tiny foods, and found some really cute ones.  I had bowls of mini M&M's, crackers, cookies and Oreo's sitting on the table.  For the food I cut refrigerated crescent rolls into smaller triangles with a pizza cutter and wrapped them around Lil' Smokies to make mini pigs-in-a-blanket, and heated up Bagle Bites mini pizzas.  We also had a Jello salad and veggie tray with baby pickles, baby carrots and little celery sticks.  We had lemonaid to drink, but when your cup only holds about an ounce you have to refill it MANY times to quench your thirst.

I also bought some cute little shot glasses at IKEA that worked perfect for making tiny sundaes.  I used a small metal scoop to put in a couple tiny scoops of ice cream and the girls had fun adding their toppings.

Cake:
I made mini cupcakes dipped in glaze with colored sugar on top.  I found a tiered tray at the DI thrift store that in displayed all the cupcakes on.  I made several for each girl.  You can see them in the top photo also.

You have no idea how many times I heard squeals of "Oh, cute!" during this party.  The girls really enjoyed it and it proved that it's a great theme for girls of any age.  You could also combine it with American Girl or other dolls for a younger girl's party.