🎀 Willa Turns 5: A DIY Barbie Dream Party 🎀

Clearly, I was VERY inspired by prior parties I saw on PINTEREST. I always find that this is a great place to start to idea dump and later edit down. 

THE BALLOON ARCH

I didn’t want it to feel too overdone. My time to plan this party was limited and I was determined to stick to a strict budget. I loved how the round balloon arch could be a focal point like in this photo, so I essentially recreated that using this round arch and a combination of white, pink & fuschia balloons all size 12 inches. You absolutely need an electric pump to help blow them all up, and this machine is one that I've had for almost 5 years now! It works great. You can also use smaller 5 or 6 inch balloons in the same colors to fill in the spaces and make the arch look full.

Willa's name was made with leftover cardboard, painted white. I drew the Barbie font on with some pink acrylic paint and we used floss to hang it from the rod 😂. We didn't have fishing line anywhere and floss was the next best thing!

THE TABLE SETTING

Knowing the table was going to be used mainly for arts & crafts, I kept it super simple. My girlfriend thankfully had a number of tables and kids folding chair that I could borrow which saved us A TON of money in rental fees. The tables were 4 feet x 2 feet so I place two together to create one long community table. Here is a link to the cute pink table runners we used... perfectly brings out the Barbie theme! The Barbie Pink plates I used can be found here too!

Here are some photos of how it all turned out:

Most of Willa's friends (including her) are heading off to Kindergarten in the Fall, so I wanted to give them something small that they could use! I've been seeing so many girls rocking chunky keychains on their backpacks and thought it would be so cute to make custom keychains with all their names! 

The colors were PINK of course, and I found these super cute acrylic letters to work with. You can also find the other materials I used in this link too. 

One of the hardest tasks of planning this party was finding an AFFORDABLE Barbie cake! I learned that many grocery stores stopped selling this classic Barbie Doll cake and I was getting so desperate I almost opted to make it myself with box cake! Thankfully I found the cake I was looking for at Vons in Gardena, and it was perfect! This looked exactly like the cake my mom bought me for my 5th birthday which made it that much more special 🌸.

I have to give a huge shout out to SABRINA from Taylor Entertainment. I hired this company for an hour to do face painting on the girls (this is one of Willa's favorite things!) and Sabrina absolutely nailed it. I appreciated her showing up early, setting up ahead of schedule and being so patient with all the kids. Her artwork was so beautiful and she was FAST. Some of the girls even got to have two designs painted on their arm, and many of the adults (including me lol!) got to enjoy some face paint too. 

And finally, the arts & crafts activity that kept all the girls engaged when they weren't busy running around playing 🙂. My girls do a lot of arts & crafts on the regular, so I had a huge stash of crafting supplies and leftovers to pick from. I drew the rainbows & clouds on some leftover cardboard, we painted them all white and that was the base they worked with.