I’m SO EXCITED, I can’t even control myself!  My little girl Madison’s Beach Barbie Party was featured on Amy Atlas Events today!!!  Amy is such an inspiration to me…her dessert tables are just AMAZING  and I would love to be her someday

The whole idea for the Beach Barbie party came about because Madi’s favorite movie (since she got it for Easter) is Barbie in a Mermaid’s Tale.  She watches it ALL the time!  She kept saying she wanted a Barbie party, and with her birthday right at the end of summer, I thought a Beach Barbie party only seemed appropriate.

Madi’s favorite colors are pink, purple and violet (that’s exactly what she says!) so I knew I had to incorporate these colors into her party theme.  When I was searching for printables on Etsy, I came across a Malibu Barbie collection from Cathy at Five O’ Five Designs+Paperie and she gladly worked with me to change up the colors of her original collection to match my ideas.  Cathy also created this darling invitation to go along with the party theme – it turned out so cute!

The Barbie silhouette and hibiscus flowers were used throughout the party theme, including the dessert table, printables, and favors.

For activities at the party, the little girls colored Barbie pages, decorated flip flops with sparkling jewels, and made charm bracelets.  To take all their goodies home, I found these baskets at the dollar store and added the striped ribbon around the bottom, the Barbie silhouette vinyl cutout and the Thank You tag and ribbons to the handle.

Also included in the favor basket were hair elastic lollipops I found at Michaels and a hand sanitizer from Bath & Body Works because Madi is obsessed with hand sanitizer

After the girls finished their activies, we had hamburgers, hot dogs, chips and fruit for lunch and of course dessert.  I found the bamboo placemats at HomeGoods on clearance and then most of the other place setting pieces were purchased from Shop Sweet Lulu (including the blue and white striped plates, pink ice cream bowl, utensils and straws).

I saw those bamboo utensils and thought they would be perfect for the party – so fun!  Each girl had a placesetting with her name on it and a water bottle with the cute wrap from Five O’ Five Designs+Paperie.  I also used a cupcake topper as a sticker to hold the utensils in a napkin.

I found the cute purple tulle poms at Heart to Heart Gifts to hang from the chandelier over the food table.  I added some candy in glass containers as decorations for the table as well.

And finally the dessert table.  You probably recognize the surfboards from my son’s Surf’s Up! party earlier this summer.  I decided to put them to good use by flipping them over and painting the other side to match the colors of the Beach Barbie party.  I added vinyl cutouts of the Barbie silhouette and hisbiscus flowers to keep with the overall theme.

At the center of the dessert table was the darling cake that Jill at Sprinklebelle Cakes made.  Again, I absolutely LOVE what she did – she’s so creative.  I showed her the invitation and printables and she took it from there!

Jill also made these darling cupcakes with fondant hibiscus flowers on tops…so cute!

I’m so happy I found Jen at All Things Exquisite…she can do amazing things with cookies.  Her Barbie silhouette and hibiscus flower cookies turned out gorgeous!

I was able to use my cute new cupcake holder that I found at HomeGoods to hold some more cupcakes embellished with cupcake toppers and a large round Barbie silhouette circle from the printables that Cathy created.

Other desserts on the table included these fun fruit ice pops…the girls LOVED these!

Rice krispie treats in the shape of ice cream cones.  I found the aqua baskets at the dollar store and just stuck the sticks into foam and covered with white paper shred.

A few glass jars filled with candy in the colors of the party were also displayed on the table for the girls to fill their treat bags with.

I couldn’t resist showing you this picture of all the cute girls that came to the party.  It was seriously so much fun and all of them were such darling little things.  Madi had such a fun time and she’s already talking about what she wants for her next party…oh boy!!

And a very special THANK YOU to my amazing friend Laura Sheneman for taking all of these gorgeous photos!

Linking up to: Design Dazzle

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I’ve been DYING to to share this party with you and I’m SO excited to finally post it!  It’s a little late because I just got back from being on vacation in Jackson Hole for a week AND I entered the party in a contest over at the amazing entertaining website, Pizzazzerie and we had to wait until the winners were announced before posting the designs on our own blogs.  And No, I didn’t win

I decided I wanted to have a party for my son Jackson and his friends to celebrate the end of school/beginning of summer.  We live in Utah so we’re nowhere near a beach, but I wanted that theme because when I think of summer, I think of the beach!  And, my 8 year old LOVES sharks, so I thought we could use both ideas for the overall design.  I found an invitation on Etsy designed by Sarah at Chachke Designs that was exactly what I was looking for – I seriously loved it!

I came up with the idea of having surfboards for the backdrop of the dessert table and thought I could easily make them out of cardboard.  My husband quickly responded that cardboard simply wouldn’t work and that we needed to make them out of wood.  So that’s what we did!  We cut 8 foot tall surfboards out of plywood with a jigsaw and then painted them fun stripes in the colors I had decided on for the party…orange, blue and green.  Most of the paint came from the ‘reject’ paint cart at Home Depot, so it was really cheap!  They took a little time to make, but I thought they turned out GREAT!

For the main table, I used a white tablecloth with a simple blue net as an overlay to give it more of a beachy feel and created the “Hit the Beach” banner out of scrapbook paper.  I couldn’t find printables to match the theme/colors exactly, so I created the dessert labels myself using a digital paper design.  But, Sarah (who made the invitation) now has matching printables, so you can order everything for your party from her!

For the center of the dessert table, I filled my apothecary jars with candy in the same 3 colors, with striped ribbon to match…orange slices, peach gummy bears, gummy sharks, cotton candy, blue raspberry jelly beans, green apple licorice and lime taffy.  The kids took home a treat bag filled with whatever candies they wanted from the table.

For the desserts, I went to my wonderful cake designer, Sprinklebelle Cakes, for some fondant surfboard and shark cupcakes.  I sent her a picture of the surfboards and just told her to make something that matched the colors, and as usual, I absolutely LOVED them!

Push pops are all the rage lately and I knew I wanted to use them in my table.  I created layers of orange, green and blue jello in the push pops with a gummy shark in the blue layer.  The pushpops were displayed in fun green cardboard suitcases.

I found plastic shot glasses in the exact colors of my party at Dollar Tree and knew I had to use them for something…M&M shots is what I came up with – the kids thought they were great!

I also had a local lady make the wonderful shark and surfboard sugar cookies with buttercream frosting and they were as yummy as they look!  The details of the sharks were just amazing!

I had another small table to hold the party food…hot dogs, chips, fruit, nutter butter flip flop cookies, drinks and paper products.

This kids played outside with water balloons, big squirt guns and raced on the slip-n-slide until it got too cold to be outside anymore.

The weather wasn’t exactly perfect for an outside water party.  You may have noticed the dessert table was set up INSIDE the house with the lanterns on the floor…about an hour before the party started, as I was setting up the dessert table outside, it became really windy and a huge gust of wind knocked EVERYTHING over…ladder, table, surfboards and all!!  Luckily I hadn’t put anything except the tablecloth on the table yet!  I had to move the table inside and thanks to some wonderful friends and family we got it set up inside the house, just in time!  I guess that’s what you get for June in Utah – you just never know!!

A big thank you to the always amazing Laura Sheneman for capturing photos of everything!!

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