Pool Birthday Party – recipes & labels

Computer Boy turned 10 in January. When I asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday this year he said “can i just have a regular party, not with a theme?” GAH! He decided to have his party at the local recreation center pool and water playground. My kids love to swim, so with 2 feet of snow on the ground we headed off to the pool.

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I kept it simple so it didn’t feel like a huge party theme. I used blue ombre waves in the decorating with beach ball colors for the rest.

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The centerpiece was the fondant cake. For the invitations I wrote all the party details on beach balls and delivered them to the school.

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My favorite part is coming up with the themed party food. It was around lunch so we started off with “sand”wiches. Get it??? HA!

Then “take a dip” with veggies and Crack Dip (seriously, this dip is AMAZING)

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And I made these beach ball sugar cookies!

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This party was different than most, because most of the party food was bought rather than made!  But there were so many easy foods out there to pick from!  I love the gummie floaty options, inner tubes and noodles…

pool-party-killer-goldfish-tide-jello

Goldfish was easy, but these tidepools did NOT turn out. I went to 3 different stores looking for blue jell-o with nothing, so I bught lime and added blue dye. It end up WAY to dar, and you can’t see the gummie fish at the bottom. But that didn’t stop the kids from eating them all!

pool-party-kick-boards-wafers-life-savers

I kind of wish I had taken the time to cut the corners off one side of these sugar wafer “kickboards” but no one probably would have even noticed. And of COURSE we had to have lifesavers. I wanted white ones, but the birthday boy picked out the fruit flavered bag. He wins!

pool-party-water-juice-blue-lagoon

Since I called the water bottles “pool water” I couldn’t think of anything other than “blue lagoon” to call the blue kool-aid… boo, it’s the one label I’m still not 100% in love with. What would you have named it?

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And if anyone is interested here are the Pool Birthday Party Labels in PDF form!

Crepe Bar Birthday Party

Last month was my mom’s birthday! She and my dad are living here right now, and it’s the first time we’ve been close for her birthday since I was in high school, so it seemed like the perfect time to throw a Surprise party!

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Because it’s UTAH, it’s a small world and we all know lots of people here. She has a sampling of friends from like every age and stage of our lives living here so my sister and I invited all the ones we could find.

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When we were talking about the food we really quickly decided on a crepe bar!  And then we picked our color scheme (Brown, tan, cream, burgundy!) and everything fell into place!!!  I’m sharing half the recipes on my blog (scroll down) and the other half are on Chelsea’s Crepe Party Post

crepe-bar-birthday-party-flourless-chocolate-cake

My mom’s favorite is my flourless chocolate cake so I made that for her, dressing it up with stabilized whipped cream and black berries.

crepe-bar-birthday-party-chocolate-cinnamon-plain

We made three crepe flavors, plain, cinnamon and chocolate!!! (the chocolate recipe is below, my plain crepe recipe is here on this post and my sisters plain and cinnamon is here on Chelsea’s post)

crepe-bar-birthday-party-filling-sauces

For the fillings we had a sweet cream cheese, a TART sour cream/cream cheese and a lemon sour cream filling.  For toppings we have the buttermilk syrup, my hot fudge and my berry coulis! (The tart filling is below, the sweet and lemon are on Chelsea’s post, the buttermilk is either here on my post, or my Chelsea’s post.  The hot fudge and coulis is down below)

crepe-bar-birthday-party-whipped-cream-fruits

I made stabilized whipped cream, so it could be left out during the party and not  all melty… and three berry filling options, strawberries, mixed berries and bananas (bleck).

crepe-bar-birthday-party-ice-cream

For those who really love it rich we had vanilla ice cream (also it’s good on the cake!) I printed off two full sheets, pressed them around the container and cut it to fit.

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Wash it all down with milk… (we had water too of course).  I LOVE my sisters cake plate… I need one (anyone know where I can find something similar?)

crepe-bar-birthday-party-chocolate-berry-coulis-sweet

We had to create some samples to show off for you guys!  Chocolate with tart sour cream/cream cheese, strawberries, coulis and whipped cream… Mmmmmm

crepe-bar-cinnamon-crepe-tart-filling-chocolate-syrup

Cinnamon crepes with sweet cream cheese filling, banana’s and strawberries, hot fudge and whipped cream (I picked around the banana’s- Ewwww)

crepe-bar-lemon-filling-fruit-buttermilk-syrup

Plain crepes with lemon filling, mixed berries, buttermilk syrup and more whipped cream!  So so SOOO good!

crepe-bar-birthday-party-table

I am SOOO in love with how the whole table turned out!  If your interested in the labels click on them to open them up in flickr and download them.  I meant to have a PDF of them for you, BUT my out of date 2003 Office word is NOT working for me right now, Grrrrr!

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