I can’t believe my little girl is 7 years old already! We were planning a party for a couple of weeks from now. But, we had some scheduling conflicts, and I had to put the party together in 3 days! This is UNHEARD of in this house! Normally, I would plan, stress, decorate, and stress some more for weeks and weeks before one of my kids’ birthday parties! But, honestly, I took the laid back approach (who am I kidding), and pulled it all together in a couple of days using some of our decorations from last years Pinkalicious party and some great colorful paper décor from Party City.
The best part of this birthday bash was that the birthday girl was in on all of the planning. I think it made her feel a little more grown up help plan the party and keep it a secret from her friends.
She wanted a sleepover for her birthday party, but we just felt like age 7 was a little too soon for our family. So we came up with the idea of a daytime sleepover. A kind of “pretend” slumber party!
So, instead of a nighttime party, we had an early morning pancake and pajama fest! I contacted all of the moms ahead of time and asked them to have the girls dressed in their “going out” pj’s. They were to keep everything a secret from the girls. We only invited the number of girls that we could fit in our SUV. We headed out early, just “A”, me, and our favorite 13 yr old friend “S”, who was riding shot gun :)
By 8 a.m. we were ringing the doorbells at the homes of some sleepy but excited little girls. Actually, they were a bit confused at first as to why were were at the door in our pj’s and why we wanted them to come with us! It was cute! But the moms had the sleeping bags packed, and we were well on our way to the next pick up in no time.
And so the group of giggly girls grew as did the excitement and anticipation of who was to ring the doorbell and explain our fun plan to the next girl on the route. By the time we reached the last house, we were picking up two girls- sisters. The oldest ran AWAY from the door shouting “I’m not properly dressed to go out!” It was hilarious! We quickly got her back on track by pointing out that we were ALL wearing pj’s for the party!
With the car packed full of giggly girls and sleeping bags, we were well on our way home for a bacon and pancake breakfast with all the toppings.
The ingredients for our sugar coma included:
-Home made pancakes
-mini- M&M’s
-Cherries
-Whipped cream
-chocolate syrup
-maple syrup
- chocolate chips
-blueberries
-strawberries
-Bacon
The girls were hungry and excited and dug right in. Plates were piled high with all forbidden breakfast foods :)
After everyone had eaten enough sugar, they all took their sleeping bags upstairs to our bonus room to spread out for their sleepover.
We put on a movie for them while hubby assembled the cake in the kitchen. We wanted to stay with the pancake/sleepover theme, so hubby made this chocolate pancake stack from zoomyummy as a cake. Click on over to see her beautiful photo of what it could look like. Ours turned out more like this…
(Never you mind that rainbow “7” candle! My girl picked that out weeks ago from the grocery store. So we definitely HAD to use it)
While the cake was coming together, the girls played a couple of rounds of musical sleeping bags. It was quite funny watching them scramble around the room to hop on a sleeping bag when the music stopped, because the sleeping bags were so slippery!
Next was the impromptu dance party!
Fun!
Karate kid? Stayin’ Alive?
Cake time:
anticipation….
mmm… it was good!
Overall, this was a quick and easy to plan party with great results! The girls had a blast, and not one of them came up and asked why I didn’t bust out the Silhouette machine and make pajama shaped garland!
Our very favorite part of the whole party was surprising our friends! “A”’s anticipation and the girls faces as they opened their doors and saw us standing there in our pj’s was worth all the last minute scrambling around.
What a FUN surprise :)
Happy birthday to my very favorite 7 year old!
Love,
Mommy
Linking up to these great parties:
Uncommon Designs
