Hey party peeps!
On the blog last week and on Hostess With The Mostess I shared with you guys LOTS of ideas and tutorials from my daughter’s party last month and today I’m wrapping it up with the last post sharing — “Kitty-licious” Tween Party Ideas and Tips. If you missed any of the tutorials, I’ve included links to them throughout this post that will take you directly to each one. Also, if you missed my HWTM Trend Alert featuring Tween Party Bars you can click here. Coming soon…I’m revealing the REAL COST of this party for every single item in it along with a full shopping list of where I got it all!
Here we go!
TWEEN PARTY THEME & PRINTABLES!
I get asked all the time as an event planner, what to do for teen and tween birthday parties. I happen to have a tween myself and know first hand what a balance you have to strike with this age group who are right in between a young girl and becoming a teen. They DON’T want kiddie themes! They DO want themes—but they want them with a more grown up look and feel. So, when my daughter announced she wanted a sleepover for 7 of her BFFs and wanted a Kitty theme I knew right away what I would do!
For me, it was simple…I would not base my design around cute pet kitties…instead I would go bold and use safari cats as my focus and bring in a more sophisticated glam color palette of black, pink, silver and bling mixed in with cool tween fabrics: denim and plush pink and black leopard print. It certaintly helps that my daughter LOVES safari cats and the leopard is her favorite animal! SCORE #1 for mommy! Yeah!
The most fun part for me is designing the printable collection to put the high-end designer touch to the party space. I LOVE how you can personalize and customize ordinary items and favors and instantly make them glam and high-end looking simply by adding a well-designed printable collection to your party space. The collections come with everything you’ll need to do this. The “Kitty-licious” party printables are available now in our shop here.
TRANSFORM THE PARTY SPACE INTO A TWEEN HANGOUT!
For this party I wanted to create an area in our house that I could completely transform into a Tween Hangout. All of the party was contained in that one area and when you walked in, it looked like a super trendy girl glam hangout! The looks on the girls faces when they arrived was priceless! Creating a hang out space as cool as this makes your job as the party host easy! Just set it all up and let the girls hang out, do the activities when they want, listen to music. As much as I am a planner….with Tweens they just go with the flow and they feel empowered and grown up when you allow them to create their own agendas. Once I set it all up, my job was done!
Check out the main elements below from the party along with a few GIRLFRIEND TIPS along the way!
TWEEN DINING TABLE WITH PERSONALIZED PLACE SETTINGS!
Using the plate inlays in our printable package I created custom plates and personalized placecards for each guest that they could take home as a party favor! Click here to see how to make these personalized placecards using bling sticks!
GIRLFRIEND’S TIP: You can get melamine plates customized with your artwork from a few sites like Shutterfly, but those run about $25 each! Using printable plate inlays is definately a fabulous Look for Less tip as they cost less than $1 to print!
TWEEN CANDY BAR!
The girls LOVED this candy bar featuring custom cotton candy favor bags (available here), custom iced cookies from Sugar Cravings packaged with our printable bag toppers and lots of pink goodies.
GIRLFRIEND’S TIP: Whenever I serve cookies on my sweets bars, I always package them individually in cello bags with custom printable toppers so they can be transported easily when guests leave. Trying to put a cookie inside a favor bag without a wrapper…not good. And the presentation is just fabulous isn’t it?
TWEEN DRESS UP BAR!
Girls love to dress up! Even tweens! Couple that with a nail bar for the girls to give each other manicures and music playing… Instant fashion show! The girls were dancing all around with their matching tutus and custom t-shirts and singing in front of the huge floor length mirror like they were an all-girl band! Too cute!
GIRLFRIEND’S TIP: Our printable packages include t-shirt iron-ons that you can use to customize the dressup items you may have. I chose to leave the tank tops blank and provide the girls with fabric markers so they could create their own t-shirts. I needed something to keep these girls busy for hours!!!
TWEEN FAVOR BAR!
I designed this area to look like a part of a tween’s room and not just a display table. The mirror totally was the focal point which I personalized with one of the plate inlays. I also monogrammed each of the denim tote bags with each girl’s initial. Click here to see how to make monogrammed favor bags.
GIRLFRIEND’S TIP: Turn plain Dollar Store items into custom party favors! Using the circle labels included in the printables package, I customized each of the journals—total score from The Dollar Tree! The girls stayed up all night writing in each other’s journals! Again…something that looked great and functioned as an activity! Gotta love that!
TWEEN BEAUTY BAR!
Total glam moment in the party decor! The girls got the VIP treatment with beauty cases that I personalized with a printable sign with each girl’s name full of cool beauty items and sweets. Those super cute bling compact mirrors I found at Dollar Tree and those pink mini cosmetic cases I found in the dollar section of Michaels that I personalized with a monogram printable. I also setup a cool director’s chair customized with another printable that doubled as the birthday girl’s special chair for opening her gifts and a special VIP Glitter Tattoo chair where each girl was treated to two hand-painted glitter tattoos from a local facepainter.
GIRLFRIEND’S TIP: To keep each bar interactive, I included an activity. On the beauty bar, the girls made their own Kitty Collar Necklaces. Click here to see how to make Kitty Collar Necklaces.
MILK & COOKIES BAR
All of these activities kept the girls busy most of the night. As a surprise, I setup a Cookies & Milk Bar for a late night snack! Each girl got a kitty cat food bowl embellished with pink rhinestones and contained 2 custom iced cookies and to wash it down? Strawberry milk shooters! Click here to see how to set up your own Milk & Cookies Bar.
TWEEN BREAKFAST BAR
The next morning I reused the dining table and setup a tween (no-stove top cook) breakfast pancake bar complete with homemade Jelly Syrup! The girls LOVED this! Click here to see how to setup this Breakfast Pancake Bar and my yummy Jelly Syrup recipe. You must try it.
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Cheers!
Tonya
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