For my son’s 12th birthday I created this tween ice cream party. In this post, I go through the steps of how I took what is usually a cutesy pretty theme and gave it a tween middle school vibe.
WORKING OUT THE PARTY THEME
Coming from Sydney Australia all my kid’s birthdays fall in wintertime, so when my son asked for his first ice cream cake it seemed like a novel idea – so novel we decided to go with Ice Cream as the theme!
When I am working out a party theme the first thing I do is create a Pinterest board. You can find my Pinterest board here. Some of my pins might not look like they fit my theme, but I’m always looking for various different aspects, like the colors, layout, details, loot bag ideas, etc.
The very cool and talented Australian cake decorator Katherine Sabbath came to mind with her upside-down ice cream drip cake as my main inspiration.
I found that most ice cream themed parties are done in pastel colors, but I needed a more tween boy feel. Katherine Sabbath likes to mix up pastels with black and I felt that her look made total sense as my inspiration. I also added holographic silver to the color scheme.
Parties Are All About The Details
The first thing I did was design what became the logo for the party “We all scream ice cream” this was a complete rip off from Katherine Sabbath’s book cover Katherine Sabbath Greatest Hits, I hope she will forgive me.
From here I worked out everything else.
My favorite detail of the party was the stickers. Once I had my logo I worked from that to make a range of stickers that had a middle school tween vibe. I then used these to decorate the loot bags and made up little personalized packs for each child.
I can have the grandest plans but time always dictates what gets done. This is why it is essential to do as much as possible ahead of time.
THE PARTY SETUP
For my dessert table my cake is always the centrepiece.
One of my favorite hacks is to raise the cake stand by putting it on a box to give it more height. This time I used a cake stand box (with the cake stand inside to hold the weight), then I wrapped it with holographic paper and put a large logo sticker on the front.
FOOD AND DRINKS FOR THE PARTY
For the treats I made cupcakes and chocolate covered oreo’s, we also had gum-balls, chocolates, and lollipops. As the food was eaten I constantly topped it up.
For the drinks, I had a drink dispenser with lemonade and personalized the mason glasses with stickers of my logo and the kids’ name.
My party was over dinner time so we ordered takeout pizza and we also had an ice cream cake from the supermarket which was the birthday boys wish.
THE ACTIVITIES FOR THE PARTY
We setup our lounge for the kids to have a gaming party, we then had takeout pizza and watched a movie.
I would normally plan more formal games for the activities, however, with my son being 12 this was definitely more of a tween party.
THE LOOT BAGS
The loot bags were my favorite detail of the party, well, to be honest, they are always my favorite detail of parties.
I really wanted them to have a tween middle school vibe and that’s where I came up with the idea of having random stickers scattered on them.
Inside the bags we had lollies, a personalised sticker pack I made and an ice cream cone foam launcher that got here from Amazon.
HOW I MADE MY BALLOON ARCH
I was very happy with how my first ever balloon arch turned out. Balloon arches are a great investment for your party, they make such a big impact on your set up and are very affordable to create.
I bought a kit off Amazon, blew up all the balloons and randomly added the balloons to balloon tape. Small balloons were used to fill in any gaps with glue dots. To achieve the arch we hang the balloons from the roof with removable hooks and fishing wire.
It was way easier than I expected, but it was time consuming. My husband and I made it up the night before and it took us a couple of hours.
Thanks for popping by!
If you found this post helpful or have any questions please leave me a comment.
Thanks, Stacey