It’s birthday season coming up for me with two parties in the next month or so and I just can’t resist a good party. It doesn’t matter how small the party is, or how little money is spent but I just love the little details which make all the difference. Here is Kitty’s from last year. We invited her whole class and family friends as it was her first year in school. The first year there’s always that awkward…’who do I invite?’ before they have made any strong groups of friends.  It was manic and crazy but totally fun.

The Theme.

I always plan a theme to my parties, even if it’s just colours, as then it makes it easier to shop and you can be focused on buying the right items. I thought it would be cool to do a Superhero party for Kitty without any traditional superhero characters or logos. We set colours (pink, purple and yellow) to make it more of a girls party but with a nod to the classic figures. (Yellow for Superman/Batman, purple for Batman and pink for the pink power ranger she had seen on TV once?!)

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The Cake

I love making the kids a birthday cake. It’s my one task I set myself. Even if I buy in food, entertainers and other stuff, I have to make the cake. My mum always made us our birthday cakes and although I can hardly remember all my celebrations, I remember all the cakes. If they are a bit wonky or you have to cover them with icing to hide the burnt bits, it doesn’t really matter. Kids have a way of totally seeing past this and just seeing ‘cake’! For this I made enough mixture for 2 large sponge cakes, split it into 4 sections and coloured each mixture with some food colour, then baked them 2 at a time. It’s really easy and visually is always exciting. You just pile the cakes on top of each other with buttercream icing in between to keep it all together. I buttercreamed the whole cake and then pressed in sweets and sprinkles which I pressed into the sides with my hands, before adding my magic edible glitter dust. Buttercream is so easy to make ( whip up butter, add icing sugar and a little water or milk until you have the perfect consistency and add a teaspoon of vanilla essence…(the vanilla is key.) It tastes simply divine I would urge anyone not to buy the ready made variety as it is crammed full of E numbers and tastes nowhere as good as the real thing. Plus no cake is finished until it has glitter in my house!

For the top section, I bought ready made sugar icing already coloured in a block, rolled it out and cut out the shape I wanted with a knife. I added candles and a sparkler for full effect. Well she was a superhero for the day after all.

The Costumes

No superhero party is complete without costumes. I knew lots of people would come in their favourite dressing up character but I like to be a little different so I created a costume for her very own Super Kitty character. She wore her favourite pink glitter vest and sparkly tights and I ordered her an awesome personalised cape from Peanut Pop with a reversible felt eye mask. I made the belt by glueing some felt circles together and cutting a K for the front. I then stitched this very roughly to some glitter elastic. I knew it wouldn’t last forever but if it got her through the day then it was a winner…it’s still intact now.

Seb wanted to be Spiderman (as did lots of other little boys!) but was upset he didn’t have his own cape, so I cut him a cape shape from some plain fabric with pinking shears so it didn’t need stitching! (Always a great cheat!) And then glued on a felt ‘S’ and a star I cut out myself. It stayed on by a large safety pin as I didn’t have any velcro. It took about 5-10 minutes to make and he loved it.

Some guests also made a real effort and totally rose to the challenge too. We had a green coloured little girl with ripped clothes as the incredible hulk and a Robin hood. One of the guests even came with a cape made from an old curtain that his mum had whipped up!

Someone became a little obsessed by the sparkle of the sequins in the sunshine. The day she was born it snowed…I guess never rely on the weather in England!

The Details

I found some cool star plates in Paperchase, picked plain yellow napkins and gave everyone a cardboard mask which you can pick up in most supermarkets pretty cheaply. For the night scene present table, I collected cardboard boxes, covered them in shiny black paper and cut out gold paper rectangles for windows. As we had so many kids, a centre piece for the table was out of the question so this was a perfect option for the first thing people saw as they walked in. I finished it off with a gold number balloon and and Super K glitter letter. The letter was from Hobbycraft and i just painted it with a PVA/Paint mix then sprinkled glitter onto the front section to dry.

I found some cool superhero printables on Etsy. There is lots of choice for downloadable party printables and with these we recovered water bottles and made paper badges for the party bags.

Party bags/ gifts

The number of kids for this party was around 50. For that number I only wanted to spend between £1 and £1.50 per child which means you have to shop around. In the end, I ordered superhero cupcake rings from the States from Cupcake Social  and gave these to each child on top of a glitter cupcake I made, instead of cutting up the cake to share between 50. This was easy, as then I could prepare all the gifts in advance and save time on the day. I also then bought plain clear bags, added some chocolate and sweets and labelled them with a superhero tag. Although Britain has party websites dedicated to this kind of the thing, the range of choices of quality or unique items is poor so I often source my items from different countries and have them shipped. I paid $4 for each 12 superhero cupcake rings, including shipping and in comparision, the only ones I found in Britain were on ebay at over 3 times that cost.

I’ll be collecting a few more party ideas for you over the nest few weeks so you can check out Seb’s dinosaur party and Kitty’s Under the Sea adventure too!