DIY Dala Horse Piñata

If you've been here a while you'll probably know that my kids have a habit of choosing strange themes for their birthday parties. We've had a potato party, a Nutella party, a metal detector and penny finding party... 

Well, the latest birthday party hasn't been any different!

This past weekend we celebrated Mathilde's 10th birthday with an Ikea themed party. Yep, she chose everyone's favorite Swedish flat pack furniture store as her party theme!

I've got to say, it was actually a pretty fun theme. The guests all wore Ikea bucket hats (Mathilde's signature look lately), we gave out mini Ikea bags with small Ikea goodies in them as party bags, we played pass-the-parcel with a classic Blåhaj shark plushie as the prize in the middle, we ate Swedish cookies and meatballs, and we finished the party with a (rather shoddy looking!) Ikea bucket hat cake. 

My favorite party activity, however, was the piñata! To go along with the Swedish theme, I made Mathilde a Dala horse pinata. Now, it may look a little complicated in the pictures but, it was seriously one of the easiest piñatas to make ever. You want to know the secret? It's really just a store bought donkey piñata!

Today I'm sharing my simple DIY for taking a store bought donkey piñata and turning it into a Swedish Dala horse piñata. How fun is that?

Mathilde's Science Party

A few weekends back we celebrated Mathilde's 8th birthday with a science themed birthday party.

When Mathilde chose science as the theme for her party I was super excited because I knew it meant we could do lots of fun, colorful and messy experiments with her friends. And what's better than making lots of colorful mess? Not much when you're eight - or even if you're a grown up!

We had all our regular party favorites including a piñata (shaped like an atom) and a themed cake (shaped like a beaker full of a green solution) as well as lots of fun and messy experiments. 

Today I'm sharing all the fun along with instructions for the simple experiments we did. If you're thinking of throwing a science themed party for your kiddo (or yourself!) or just interested in seeing all the fun read on...

Lola's 11th Birthday

A few weekends back we celebrated Lola's 11th birthday with a small Animal Crossing themed party. If you've been following along on Instagram you've likely already seen it, but as always, I love to share our parties on the blog too.

As with last year, we kept Lola's birthday party pretty small due to the pandemic, so we celebrated with neighbors and friends who we actually had not seen since Lola's 9th birthday party. Keeping the party small seems like it would mean less work for me, but there was still a piñata to make, a cake to decorate and themed party bags to put together. I love preparing everything for parties though, so I'm totally in my element when it comes to this sort of stuff. It's the only time I really get to do something creative (apart from Halloween) so I really enjoy it.

Let's take a look Lola's party...

Beehive Piñata DIY

For Mathilde's recent bee themed birthday party I made a beehive piñata. If you've been here a while you'll know that making piñatas is one of my favorite things. I find the repetitive work very relaxing and I love that it gives me a creative outlet. 

Most piñatas that I make for the girls are made from cardboard. This type of piñata is super easy to make and I can usually get one made in just a few hours - which is great because I'm totally a last minute crafter! For Mathilde's beehive piñata, however, I went with a good old balloon and papier-mâché style. These are also easy to make but are much more time consuming. The crafting itself doesn't take all that long, but the drying time between each layer means that I need to allow at least three days for the whole project.

I've shared a simple papier-mâché piñata DIY here in the past (you can see it here) but it was a decade ago so I figured it was time for an updated DIY with better photos!

 

Here's how to make your own papier-mâché piñata...

Mathilde's 7th Birthday

My baby is seven! 

This past Saturday was Mathilde's seventh birthday. We celebrated with a small party on Sunday with just our family and our neighbor. I had originally planned to hold the party on Mathilde's actual birthday but Ava came down with covid-like symptoms and we had to wait for her test results - which oddly came through at 11pm Friday. I guess those covid testers are working around the clock! Anyway, by then I had figured we wouldn't know Ava's test results until Saturday and pushed the party out to Sunday. It gave me an extra day to get everything ready, so that was a bonus.

Despite her party being small, Mathilde was still keen to pick a theme for her celebration. She went through quite a few (Minecraft, Slime Rancher, Among Us, bread (?)...) before she settled on bees as her theme. To go along with the theme I made a beehive piñata, honey crackles as treats, and decorated her cake (badly!) with a honeycomb pattern.  

Mathilde's 6th Birthday

Last Friday Mathilde turned six. 

Given that we're all sheltering at home, a party with her classmates and friends was unfortunately out of the picture. But that didn't mean that there was no party at all. Originally I didn't think we'd do anything right now and save the party for over Summer when (fingers crossed) we can start seeing friends again. But a few days before her birthday Mathilde started talking about all the fun things she was looking forward to doing at her party. It occurred to me that there was no reason to cancel or postpone her party at all. Instead of celebrating with friends, we celebrated with just the five of us. 

Because we were busy with school at home on Friday we celebrated Mathilde's birthday with a small party on Saturday. It worked out quite well as Friday was rainy on and off, but Saturday had glorious weather.

Lola's Potato Party

A few weekends back we celebrated Lola's 9th birthday with a potato themed party.

Ok, I know what you're thinking... A potato themed party? Huh?

I know, it's a weird one, but if you've ever met Lola then you'll know that she tends to be, well, a little weird at times too!

I have no idea what this potato thing is all about, but Lola and her friends at school have a potato club and so it seemed only fitting that it should also be the theme of her birthday party - especially seeing as most of the guests are members of this esteemed club!

So just what does a potato themed party involve?

Potatoes, of course!

We smashed a fancy potato pinata that I made (although it looked a little more like a Mr Monopoly egg due to the balloon shape!), we played "Pin the Top Hat on the Potato", sang "Happy Birthday" over a cake featuring a fondant kawaii potato (not all potatoes are fancy!), ate Irish potato candies that I remember from my childhood and potato latkes, handed out realistic looking potato stress balls as thank you gifts, and Lola wore a potato t-shirt.

Here's a look at all the fun - well, some of it, because the kids spent half their time playing hide and seek in the house and it's hard to take photos of them when you don't know where they're hiding!

Mathilde's Super Mario Party

This past weekend we celebrated Mathilde's 5th birthday with a Super Mario themed party.

Mathilde has been a big fan of playing Super Mario games lately and watching the cheesy cartoon from the late 80s, so it was only fitting that she chose it as the theme for her birthday party. She came up with all sorts of over the top ideas that she wanted for her party: life sized Mario Kart cars for everyone to race around on a track, a life sized castle made out of cardboard boxes and filled with piranha plants coming out of pipes and Goombas to avoid, a large screen on the wall and multiple Nintendo devices so all the kids could play Super Mario games together... Just a little bit of a stretch! Given that we only had three days between arriving home from our trip to Austin and the big party, there was only so much I could plan - not that any of these outlandish ideas were on the cards in the first place!

Super Mario really was such a fun theme to work with. While I didn't go with any of Mathilde's plans I did find a lot of fun ways to incorporate the theme into her party. I made a Mystery Block piñata (filled with chocolate coins, of course), prepared a Piranha Plant puppet DIY for the kids to make, made mini Mystery Blocks filled with chocolate coins as party bags, baked a Super Mushroom shaped birthday cake and mushroom cupcakes, and wrapped Super Mario goodies up for Pass the Parcel. We also had Mario mustaches for the guests to wear, Mathilde had a Mario hat, and I bought Mario themed t-shirts from Uniqlo for the girls and I.

   

Lola's Emoji Themed Birthday Party

Last weekend we celebrated Lola's 8th birthday with an emoji themed birthday party. There were smiley face emojis, heart eye face emojis, winking face emojis, and, yes, plenty of her favorite: the poop emoji!

We had a beautiful sunny day here in Berkeley and celebrated Lola's birthday up on our roof deck as we usually do. It wasn't even windy, which is pretty rare! In fact, we were even able to light a candle on her cake without it blowing out straight away. I don't think that has ever happened at any of our parties!

The emoji theme was spread across all aspects of Lola's party and I'll have lots of fun (and simple) DIYs coming soon. I made emoji face decorations and photo props, I baked emoji cookies, cupcakes, poop emoji meringues and a rainbow poop emoji birthday cake, we had an emoji face piñata, emoji themed gifts in the party bags and pass the parcel, and the girls wore emoji t-shirts. So many emojis!

Mathilde's Dinosaur Party

This time of year is always super busy for us with fun events most weekends, and this past weekend was no different. In fact, this past weekend saw one of the most fun events for us: Mathilde's dinosaur party!

Mathilde had such a fun time celebrating her 3rd birthday with all of her little (and big) friends. We were lucky that Sunday was an absolutely beautiful day weather-wise and this year, there were no other parties up on our roof deck at the same time. Last year there were other tenants using the pergola area on our roof deck during Mathilde's digger party so were not able to use the table and chairs, and we had nowhere to hang a piñata. But this year we were in luck and had the whole roof deck to ourselves. Or maybe all of the dinosaur roars coming from the kids scared everyone else away!

Ava's Peanuts Birthday Party

This past weekend we celebrated Ava's ninth birthday with a Peanuts themed party on our roof top.

The past two years we've had incredibly rainy weather for Ava's party and haven't been able to use our roof top. This year, however, we had a beautiful, sunny day. Perfect for a roof top party.

The Peanuts gang make such a fun party theme - and gave me the chance to get a little creative! We had a Snoopy doghouse piñata, Charlie Brown cookies, a comic strip photo booth, Lucy's psychiatrist booth for photos (and bad advice!), Snoopy doghouse party bags, and Ava decorated her birthday cake herself with a drawing of Snoopy and Woodstock. How cute is that cake? I covered it with fondant and Ava decorated it with edible markers. Seriously, those edible markers are one of the best things ever!

Lola's Metal Detector & Penny Finding Party

This weekend we celebrated Lola's 5th birthday with a birthday party with a very specific theme: Lola's Metal Detector and Penny Finding Party! Lola came up with the theme herself and I have to say that despite it sounding kind of weird, it was one of the most fun parties we've ever thrown.

Wondering how such a party theme came about? Well, Lola is kind of obsessed with finding pennies. It's amazing just how many she finds when we're out and about. She's so good at finding pennies that she refers to herself as a "penny finding machine"! That said, quite some time ago she decided that an actual penny finding machine (ie. a metal detector) would help her find many more pennies. I have no idea where she got the idea about a metal detector from (presumably tv), but she has been asking for one for her birthday or Christmas since she was two! I figured she was a little small for a metal detector back then and told her she'd have to wait until she was at least five. Well, she didn't forget and when it came time to start planning her party this year she came up with this wonderful theme. Of course, that meant that a shiny new metal detector was unwrapped on the morning of Lola's birthday!