Many parents throw some form of themed birthday party at some point in their child’s lifetime, particularly when they’re young, but the year my daughter turned five I had a creative epiphany. I took this concept a step further when I thought, why not let HER choose the theme? Now I’m not talking about your garden variety, pre-boxed, buy-it-in-the-store themes.

​

Her challenge:

Pick your theme—and it can be anything.

​

My challenge:

Inventing appropriate décor, activities, hand-made invitations and (my favorite) a customized cake relevant to her chosen theme.

​

     Her first idea was the tie-dye party. It was easy enough to find tie-dye printed napkins and plates. More challenging to my creativity was figuring out how to tie-dye a cake! I bought white shirts for her guests to tie-dye as keepsake souvenirs and still have a nifty tie-dye dress from that event. Thus began an annual tradition that’s still running strong nearly a decade later.

​

     She’s kept me on my toes over the years with her themes. Some have been admittedly more difficult to pull off than others but that’s half the fun. It’s a bonding experience that keeps my creative juices flowing. Since the advent of the first party she’s challenged me with Under the Sea, a Hawaiian Luau, a Princess Party (no Disney cheats!) a Fairy Party, Beach Bash, a Masquerade (no dancing required but I crafted a slew of awesome masks and the purple and black top-hat cake is probably one of my favorites to this day) a Vampire theme (thank the internet for providing a way to order plastic vampire fangs in June and my sister for showing up with a shiny new bicycle laid to rest in an oversized cardboard coffin!) and finally the first (and hopefully last and only) trademarked theme when she requested a Five Nights at Freddy’s theme which I designed a live-action version of the game for her friends to play, complete with hand-made souvenir masks.

​

     This year was a little different. Due to unforeseen scheduling conflicts involving a surprise my sister had in store, this was the first year her party was planned to be held before her actual birthday. We realized her birthday party was really going to be an UN-birthday party and the theme sort of dictated itself. Any self-respecting literature lover worth their salt will have guessed just by reading the title but in case you haven’t figured it out, this year we paid homage to one of the greatest literary classics of all time, Alice in Wonderland.

​

     We threw a true-to-form very merry un-birthday complete with top hats worthy of the Mad Hatter in lieu of traditional party hats, cupcakes decorated as a chessboard topped with red candy roses and our own patch of Mome Raths  to NOT step on (though since they were constructed of long skinny balloons filled with water and given faces with markers we DID throw them at each other!) A hand-drawn Cheshire cat poster grinned over it all. What fun! I can’t wait to see what next year’s theme brings!

​

Back