I began thinking about the twins’s first birthday party before they were six months old. It’s kind of crazy, I know, but I’m a planner. I wanted something that would be a little unique for twins. Most of my searching found Dr. Suess’ Thing 1/Thing 2 which I just wasn’t feeling. So when I came across this invitation on Etsy, I knew an ice cream sundae party was what I wanted. I just love the phrasing “double the scoops, double the fun” because the twins have been double a lot of things for the past year.
One thing I may not have mentioned yet is that my family members are extremely talented in a lot of ways. To the point that I waited as long as possible to tell my sister the theme, because I knew once she had it she would run with it. And did she ever. But, we had a wonderful party and fun was had by all. So I wanted to share what we did and where we got our supplies.
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Ice Cream Cart
There were three main decorated areas in the room. The first thing you saw was our custom made ice cream cart. The cart was the brain child of my sister, but the work of my dad and his bff who is a skilled carpenter. They actually built the cart to sit on top of an antique tea table. It gave the cart the ability to be rolled around and the antique feel of an actual ice cream cart.
The cart was truly a team effort as it was painted by my mom and I made the decals on my Cricut cutting machine. Inside of the cart were ice cream cone shaped bubbles that I found on Amazon for party favors .
The awesome thing about the cart is that the crafted part was removable. So I plan to keep it for the girls to play in as they grow up. It will be great for all kinds of pretend play.
Cake Table
The center point of most modern 1st birthday parties is a smash cake. Of course we are not exempt from this tradition. Although it appears that all three of my girls take after my husband more than me and weren’t too crazy about eating cake.
Anyways, we decided to do two small melted ice cream drip cakes and a ton of mini cupcakes. As in, we took home a ridiculous amount of mini cupcakes because we had way more than enough. Because the cakes were only 4 inches, we had to order special sample size cones to fit them. They are adorable!
My sister did the decorating in this area as well. The backdrop is streamers and I made banners on my Cricut with a design idea I saw on Etsy. All od the tables had small ice cream shaped confetti that I also made on the Cricut.
Ice Cream Sundae Bar
This was basically the center point of the party. Usually when I go to party my main thought is for the cake, but since ice cream was the theme here, that had to be the show stopper. So this is where my sister put most of her design efforts. She surprised me and ordered the awesome ice cream shop backdrop from Amazon. She then accented it with the balloon arch, and the giant balloon cone. Please forgive the wrinkled tablecloth, we realized as we were setting up that we did not have enough tablecloths and my mom had to pull cloth ones from her stash. In ordinary situations she would have never allowed for wrinkled tablecloths.
If you ask my sister, she will say that doing the balloons is not difficult. However, I know for a fact that it is tedious work that is slightly time consuming. Most of these balloons were completed the night before the party and she was back at it the next morning two and a half hours before the party started. She, and my sister-in-law who helped her, are the real MVPs of this party. It wouldn’t have been half as beautiful without them. I purchased these balloons. The colors were great with the exception of the random red and lime green balloons thrown in.
When I planned out the ice cream sundae bar, I had in mind a small variety of the best syrups and toppings. I was planning chocolate, strawberry, and caramel syrups along with sprinkles, chocolate chips, mini marshmallows, whipped cream, and cherries. However, my sister deemed that it wasn’t enough and added a variety of candies, cookies, and root beer for floats. Despite my initial annoyance at the addition of the root beer, it turned out to be a huge hit.
Party Time
Of course there were other important parts of the party. The food being number one. We did a taco bar with a pretty extensive variety of toppings. There were other options we had considered before, but after tacos were suggested I knew they would be the easiest and most cost effective way to feed a large crowd that included a lot of small children.
One thing I love to have at parties for kids is a place just for them. I did this at M’s backyard party (pictured here) and wanted to do it here as well. So I printed out some ice cream themed coloring pages and brought a few ice cream toys from home. My sister had skinny balloons to make sprinkles for the giant ice cream cone and the leftovers became part of this as well. I, along with some of the other parents, were able to show off our skills as amateur balloon artists. I make an excellent dog by the way. We also had some cones I cut on my Cricut for a banner that we did not need and I have no idea where the stickers came from. All together they made for a fun craft table.
We also had somewhat of a fail with our table decorations that ended up working out really well. The plan was to inflate balloons with helium and attach them to a paper cone so they looked like an ice cream cone. But I used card stock to cut the cone because I had difficulty putting the standard paper ones together. Well, the card stock was too heavy and pulled the helium down, but not all the way. Seen in the top right picture above, the cone rested on the table while the helium pulled up just enough to make the balloon float. It made for a very neat illusion.
Final Thoughts
As I planned this party, there were so many people I wanted to invite. So many people helped us make it through the past year, especially our church family. we would have needed a much larger space if we invited everyone that supported us in the past year. As it was, we couldn’t do it at our home as I would have preferred. Because of this, we decided not to open gifts. We also suggested to those that wanted to give something, that diapers and clothes were what the girls truly needed. Boy, did they deliver. We were so blessed with an abundance of clothes, diapers, and gift cards. My girls will be set for months.
I always thought the saying “it takes a village to raise a child” was a little cheesy, but after having twins I am so incredibly thankful for our village. I don’t think we would have made it through this year as sane as we are without them. This party was a celebration of not only the girls’ birthday, but also of our village and it will always be a day to remember.
Martina