Ice Cream Party

And finally, the big reveal! You saw the cake and the balloons, now here are the pictures of the small ice cream party we had at home to celebrate the end of the school year.  

Naturally we had to have an ice cream stand.  This is a cardboard market stand that we bought at IKEA a while ago.  We covered up the red and green stripes that are on the bottom and the top of the stand with paper and added some cut out ice cream cones to decorate our stand. My younger daughter loved this and enjoyed giving out the ice cream from her "store".

This ice cream van is available in our real store and it is so cute! I used it along with some baking/treat cups to hold the toppings and the ice cream cones.

And that's the end of our ice cream week.  Have a good weekend everyone!

DIY Ice Cream Balloons

As I said on Monday, it's ice cream week here on the blog. Here is a fun DIY that you can use to decorate for any themed party.

For our ice cream party, we decorated balloons with ice cream stickers to match the theme. I made these stickers by drawing the cones in Illustrator and then printing them on adhesive paper. Then I used my Silhouette to cut them out. I made a couple of them bigger and also used them to decorate our ice cream stand (more pictures of that on Friday!). 

I love how these turned out! You can do this for all of your themed parties. Find (or make) some stickers in your theme and simply stick them on plain balloons. It's fun for the kids to do too and they can feel like they helped to set up for the party. Plain balloons are still great, but decorated ones are so much more fun!

Sweet Mondays: Ice Cream Scoop Cake

This week is going to be all about ice cream.  School is finally out for summer and my daughters and I decided to have an ice cream party.  They helped to decorate and got out all of the toppings for the ice cream. It was a fun way to celebrate the end of the school year. More pictures from the party will come this week.

In the meantime, here is the "cake" we made for our little party.  All we did was scoop ice cream into a tower and put some toothpick flags on them to make it more festive.  And if you wanted to use that idea for a birthday, you can just put a candle on top. But make sure you work quickly...it melts fast!

To serve this, you can just pass out spoons and share the ice cream.  You can also take the scoops off the "cake" and serve it in bowls or cute ice cream cups. Don't forget the toppings!

Mini Ice Cream Party-In-A-Box

I have some friends who are having birthdays this week and, since they are far away and I can't be there to celebrate with them, I thought it would be fun to send them a mini ice cream party-in-a-box. I included everything they would need for a mini ice cream party at home -- cute ice cream cups, colorful spoons, candles to blow out and balloons to decorate. I even included some paper ice cream toppers to decorate the ice cream.  On the inside of the box cover there is a mini ice cream banner so that when the recipient opens it, it's immediately a party!

How fun would it be to receive this? To make it easy for you to send one of these boxes, we are making them available in our shop.  We can ship it directly to the person of your choice and we'll include a hand-written note with a message from you.

If you don't have any birthdays coming up, this is also a great item to take to a summer play date or to a girlfriend's house for a night of ice cream!

View it in our shop!

Summer Party Themes

Summer is almost here and for some of you lucky ones, you have already started your summer break. We only have 5 weeks of summer vacation here in Switzerland and it doesn't start until mid-July!  I'm already dreaming of sunny skies and warm nights and thinking about what summer parties we can have.  In doing that, I took a look at some of the themes I've designed and thought I would share with you some ideas for your summer parties.

1. Pool Party

If you have access to a pool, a pool party is a great idea for summer.  It's a fun theme for both kids and adults, and it's really simple to set up.  All you need is a pool, and the kids are kept busy and are happy swimming.  Always make sure someone is watching the kids in the pool to be safe.  The food is easy as well.  You can BBQ or have easy finger foods like mini hot dogs and chips. It's definitely an easy-going party and is perfect for summer! See how we styled our pool party for more ideas.

2. Nautical Party

Summer is the time to be by the sea, so why not have a seaside nautical inspired party? We used our red, white and blue printable collection to have a party by the sea. If you can't be by the sea this summer, bring it to you by decorating with lots of red, white and blue, and adding some anchor or nautical decorations to your dessert tables.

3. Camping Party

This is a fun one for the kids! I know I always wanted to sleep under the stars in the backyard, and how much more fun would that have been if my friends would be there too! Set up some tents in the backyard, roast s'mores, tell ghost stories and you have a recipe for a great party. And if the weather doesn't cooperate, you can always have it indoors.  We had our camping party indoors.  You can take our ideas and bring them outside for more fun!

4. Ice Cream Party

What is summer without ice cream? Have an impromptu ice cream party for friends and enjoy chatting and catching up. Isn't that what summer is for anyway?