Firefighter Birthday Party

We just planned this fabulous party at the New York Fire Museum last week. It was a spectacular party and all 30 kids had  a blast!

There were balloon artists, face painters, cupcake decorating (with lots of candy eating), and a firefighter to lead the 4 year-olds through a series of drills and activities!
This beautiful birthday cake made to look like the birthday boy and his dog.

The little firefighters had to stay hydrated with all that activity so we picked out these fabulous fire hydrant water bottles to keep them well watered!

All children became fire fighters when they dawned their fire chief hats and their snazzy personalized fire fighter jackets.

The room was decorated with balloons and a beautiful personalized birthday banner.

Grown ups and children alike decorated their arms and faces with colorful and glittery paints.

The children bounced all though out the party!

And all that was left on the floor was a pile of shoes.

It was quite a spectacle to see!

Long colorful tubes were part of the obstacle course during the children’s fire training.

And no child went home empty handed! They each had a bag with their uniforms, a fireman book and a cute dalmatian dog.

A Wonderland of a Party

We continue to love your ideas that you share with us of your successful parties, here is another party by our Partymaker and Pastry Chef Sara Pereira for her birthday! This just goes to show you don't have to be a child to have a fabulous birthday party! Here is her story:

 

I had been planning this birthday party for at least 5 months. I’ve always loved everything whimsical, and although Alice in Wonderland isn’t my favorite Disney Movie, it had the most creative and colorful ideas! I wanted my very own mad hatter tea party. I even asked the guests to come dressed up in their best mad tea party costumes. They all complied, and even agreed to wear the oversized accordion hats that I found online at Oriental Trading. 

I wanted the table spread to be colorful and somewhat cluttered like the movie. I didn’t want the table to look prim and proper, I wanted it to miss match and call out for attention. I used an assortment of cake and cupcake stands to create height and different levels for the food items. 

I also baked all of the food myself, the bread for sandwiches, the scones, the quiche, chocolate macarons, the birthday cake, and I even dipped the dainty little strawberries in white and pink chocolate. I wanted the food to be very much what you would eat at a tea party, all finger food.

I also used food coloring to paint phrases such as ‘eat me’, ‘bite me’, ‘try me’, and ‘drink me’ which the guests found quite irresistible.

When it came to the signature drink of the party, I didn’t do tea because most of my friends aren’t tea drinkers, so my I made my dad’s signature drink, his ‘Sandia’ which means watermelon in Spanish. It is a drink made with watermelon juice, quite a few different mixtures of liqueur, and served inside the watermelon itself. 

I carved the watermelon to look like the Cheshire cat, since it already had stripes of its own. The drink was a hit! When the drink was finished my friends asked me to break open the watermelon so they could eat the flesh! Although this drink has a lot of alcohol, you can always make it kid friendly by making a mocktail mixture and serving it inside the watermelon.

The only real tea at the party was the jasmine blooming tea displayed inside a clear apothecary jar that sat in the centre of the table. It was more decorative than functional, but it looked beautiful through the clear glass.

There was also a multitude of tea cups of all sizes laid out on the table. I bought a few teacup shaped flower planters and painted them with bright colors, and some with themes from the movie such as the Cheshire cat’s smile and the suits from a deck of cards. The largest planter I found at a supermarket in the gardening isle of Shop Rite. It was quite a find! It was so large that I could fit a regular bowl in it, so I decided to serve the salad inside it. Most of the guests didn’t realize it was a large teacup until the bowl was almost empty. The middle sized teacup planter I used to put the silverware inside so that the guests could find them more easily.

I am also raving about the newly popular teacupcakes. They are made out of silicone and you can bake cupcakes right inside them. They come with a saucer too so that you get that perfect teacup look. Unfortunately the molds only come in white as of now, but you can always use an edible airbrush paint to color them after they’ve been baked! I loved this look and even used one of the tea cupcakes  to top off the birthday cake.

The birthday cake is one of our Stardust favorites, it’s the black forest cake. I wouldn’t typically place a black forest cake underneath a fondant layer, as many Pastry Chefs will tell you, whipped cream under fondant is a very dangerous and risky venture, but since it was my favorite cake I decided to alter it a bit to make it work. It wasn’t a very elaborate cake since there was so much on the table that would detract from it, but it had a nice height with the rest of the items.

 

The place settings were just as bright as the rest of the food. The bright blue table cloth contrasted with the bright pink plates, and the black hexagonal cake plates. I also used bright yellow napkins with a large fake gerbera daisy on top to top off the setting. And instead of teacups to serve beverages, I used neon colored margarita glasses. They worked really nicely by adding that different height effect I was trying to achieve.

To achieve the party setting in the room I had to add a lot of color without destroying my walls, so I bought a set of balloon wallies from the online Wallies store. They are great because they stick nicely to the wall without damaging it and come off very easily and don’t peel the paint.

I also loved Martha Stewart’s poms and the effect they added to the room. They are very fun and festive, and are so easy to assemble. They have a multitude of colors and sizes too.

And no party is complete without balloons. I ordered a few helium balloons to decorate around the room and on the side of the chairs. My husband Todd had a great idea for the back of our white chairs. We made them look like decks of cards by adding the suits to each opposing corner. I also added some ribbon to enhance the color effect. It was perfect!

Even the bathroom didn't get missed, we picked the queen's favorite quote 'Off with your head' and turned it into 'Off to the head.'

It was really quite a party, and with the Alice in Wonderland movie playing in the background, even those who had never watched the movie became familiar with some aspect of the movie. An amazing birthday party it was!

Share your great party ideas with us by emailing partymakers@partymakers.com

Decorate-a-Cake with Rainbow Colors

We just had a beautiful nostalgic moment this past weekend. One of our clients who had a Bake a Cake Party for her 9th birthday hosted a Decorate a Cake party for her 6th year old daughter at the NY Harmonie Club.
With 45 children, we needed to come up with a great idea so that the kids could be entertained and participating during the cake decorating component of the party. We decided on a rainbow theme where the 7 colors of the rainbow represented different decorating teams. And to enhance the excitement, we created the Ultimate Birthday Cake Challenge where each team had a leader that would teach them how to use a pastry bag and how to decorate with it.

The Harmonie Club has beautiful regal-looking rooms that are perfect for special events, but when you are throwing a 6 year-old's birthday party you need to make it more fun and colorful. That's why we brought in a lot of color and balloons.

We loved the balloon trees and flower pods that brightened up the room. Each cake decorating table was also covered with a tablecloth that represented the colors of the rainbow.

Besides the decorating, there was also a face painter that dazzled all the little girls with her magical designs...

... and the most fabulous balloon artist who created custom jewelry, wands, dogs and other unimaginable creatures out of balloons.

You could see how impressed the party guests were when they entered the colorful room full of balloons and birthday cheer! While waiting for all the guests to arrive they accessorized their outfits with balloons and face painting. They also personalized their chef hat, a very important component that they would later need for decorating the birthday cake.

When the guests had all arrived they gathered in a circle and were told about their very important mission. They were going to be part of the Ultimate Birthday Cake Challenge, because the Pastry Chef didn't have time to finish The Birthday Cake!

In order to start on this mission they had to be sorted into their teams, so they picked a colored paper out of a chef's hat that corresponded to the color of their team. They dawned their aprons and met with their group and group leader around their respective tables. The tables were all set and ready for them. They had a multitude of pastry tips and practice paper, as well as a colored cake and cupcakes that they would decorate individually and take home.


The guests learned how to color frosting and how to fill pastry bags, they then learned how to make a multitude of flowers, and last but not least, their favorite, the clown!

All the while as the children were decorating, a mock TV crew and reporter interviewed the children as they happily decorated away and sneakily tasted a few frosted fingers.

After perfecting their skills on their individual cupcakes, it was then time to decide on how to decorate the team's cake that they would then present to the birthday girl. The children chose their favorite flowers that they had made and transferred them over to the team's cake.

The cakes looked beautiful and so original! The teams were called up in order of their rainbow color and presented their cake to a gleaming birthday girl. The combined cakes made for a beautiful rainbow. The children were thrilled to have taken part in such an important component of the birthday girl's party.

25 punds of buttercream later, it was time for the guests to eat a few savoury nibbles. A beautiful buffet filled with kid-friendly foods, including ice cream, was a great hunger buster for all 45 kids. They all sat down to eat as they viewed the video of their cake decorating that was now broadcasting in the room's TV.

And after all the hard work and creativity that went into this party the final note was singing happy birthday and eating the cakes that the children decorated themselves.  What a celebration it was, and a great big surprise when they saw the rainbow battered cake lying beneath all the buttercream!

It was a memorable party for the birthday girl and a nostalgic moment for the mother, who had once, many years ago also been in her daughter's shoes.

Linda Kaye's Partymakers Talented Team

A Hawaiian Birthday

This was a very special week-end, I attended the 9^th birthday celebration of my granddaughter Chloe. It was a Hawaiian party theme, and her love for party planning came out with so many of the special touches and details she added to the evening.  And what a bold undertaking that was! She invited 12 of her girlfriends for dinner and a sleep over complete with  Hawaiian entertainment.  She planned many activities to keep her guests busy all night long.

The Hawaiian  party  started with a mocktail hour at the Tiki Bar. Smoothies and delicious fruity drinks  greeted the girls as they arrived.  There were all these little Hawaiian touches that Chloe didn’t overlook, the coconut statues on top of the dinner table, the Hawaiian skirts that rimmed the tiki bar, the festive music. I felt like I was in a little Hawaiian paradise.

Shortly after all the girls arrived, a hula dancer taught them all the right moves to kick off this Hawaiian Luau. They learned all these interesting facts about Hawaii, and learned a dance choreography that was then turned into a Hawaiian travel commercial.

The girls had a great time shaking their Hawaiian skirts, even my grandson Jack took part in the act! But  after all that practicing and performing the guests were exausted, so dinner was their next stop. Chloe had this fantastic idea of having guests create their own fruit skewers.  There was a large platter of diced up fruit and skewers that guests could customize however they wished. This is a great idea if you have picky eaters who might not like certain items, you can try this with vegetables too.

And of course no birthday dinner is complete without birthday cake! The girls topped off their meal with a Tiki hut inspired cake.