Our girls’ birthdays are just three days apart and while I’m SO happy that they have their *own* special days we absolutely plan to combine their celebrations when they’re little. This year we celebrated on separate days, but shared a few elements between their “party” themes (Chloe had a “Some-Bunny is Two!” party).
This was the first year that we actually had a proper gathering for Sophie with a few of her buddies — we did a painting party at Michaels Crafts (you can read all about that experience here!). Because most of the decorations were provided by the venue and we had very little time to set up / break down I didn’t do too much for that party, so this post highlights decor elements from our micro family celebration at home.
For a quick shop of the items we used (or available alternatives), you can skip the full post and find everything in my ShopMy storefront here.
GENERAL DECOR
I typically go pretty minimal with our at-home birthday party decor — enough to make the event feel special and so that you could determine the theme, but nothing too crazy. I also applied this same mentality to the party with Sophie’s pals at Michaels Crafts… I just added a few festive touches to make the day feel a bit more celebratory.
These multi-colored pastel “Happy Birthday” banners are ones we already owned and have used before, but they totally fit the colorful “Gabby’s Dollhouse” theme and I just added our strand of sparkly stars for some extra razzle dazzle. If we didn’t already have something that worked, I would have ordered this iridescent alternative!
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Our girl is a BIG fan of balloons, so these were an absolute decor must. Ever since Party City closed, I haven’t known where to go to both buy balloons and also have them inflated.
Thankfully, our local Michael’s is located in the same plaza where the Party City used to be and they offer both balloons and inflation service! If you can’t find what you’re looking for from their selection you can still pay to have balloons inflated that were purchased elsewhere.
While Michael’s has a great selection (that’s even getting better!), sometimes things are sold out and I didn’t want to risk the colors / styles I wanted being out of stock so I ended up sourcing these balloons and this number five mylar balloon for Sophie’s party.
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TABLE DECOR
I bought this ceramic cake stand with ribbon slots last year and have absolutely no regrets! It’s so perfect for any gathering because you can literally thread any color / style ribbon through it so it works for any theme or aesthetic! Highly recommend. I used this lavender colored satin ribbon for this year’s party and it worked perfectly!
Sophie has a TON of Gabby’s Dollhouse figurines already (for her full-sized dollhouse, just like in the show!) so I thought they’d be perfect on-theme elements to include on the table.
I found these purr-fect paper plates for the occasion and they’re a great appetizer / dessert size, but we ended up needing larger plates for our pizza meal! Just something worth noting.
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FOOD / TREATS
CAKE
The main event! Ever since she had her first taste of ice cream it’s become Sophie’s absolute favorite dessert, so it was a no-brainer to order another ice cream cake for her this year! She’s not very adventurous with flavors yet so we kept it simple with yellow cake and French vanilla ice cream (with a rainbow sprinkle mix-in), but since it’s from Coldstone, you know that even a simple combination is going to be delicious!
Coldstone does offer classic rainbow sprinkles for their cakes, but those colors just weren’t going to work with this year’s party aesthetic. As an alternative, I ordered a plain cake (no decorations) and applied my own sprinkles in our general color palette to the exterior of the cake. Sophie absolutely LOVES sprinkles so this simple “upgrade” for the cake made a big difference for our birthday girl!
These longer candles are our favorites, especially for birthdays!
I’ve repurposed my Kate Aspen calligraphy table numbers that I originally bought to use for our wedding reception in 2018 (and ended up not needing) as Sophie’s birthday cake decor every year… and now Chloe gets to use them too! Unfortunately, my set is so old I can’t link the exact style (although it’s possible that you may be able find them secondhand on a website like Poshmark). This alternative is very similar!
I ordered a smaller sized cake this year so there wasn’t a ton of surface area to decorate, but I added these shimmery iridescent skewers and one of Sophie’s MANY Gabby’s Dollhouse figurines (she chose the character!) to bring the theme to the cake.
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ADDITIONAL FOOD / RECIPES
Since our group was small, we kept the food offerings to a minimum, but in searching for some on-theme ideas, I found some very creative “Gabby’s Dollhouse” inspired food suggestions that I would be remiss not to include here:
Cat Rat’s Kittyfish (Goldfish)
Kitty Fairy’s Garden Veggie Platter
DJ Catnip’s Uncrustable Sandwich “Tambourines”
MerCat’s Fruit Punch “Potion” Pouches
Pillowcat’s Taquitos / Pinwheels / Roll-Ups
Pandy’s “Snack Pack” Bags of Chips, etc
And some general Gabby-related things that you can include in any other application: her favorite color is “rainbow” and she loves kitties & hearts. You can use a cookie cutter to cut sandwiches or fruit into shapes or maybe use some little toothpick / skewers with those items on them to decorate the food!
Lastly here are some super cute on-theme food label printables!
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ACTIVITIES
“Gabby’s Dollhouse” often focuses on crafting, in some capacity, in every episode, so literally any craft your kiddo is into is a great idea as an activity for your party.
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TRADITIONS & GIFTS
This is our second year hanging this shimmery streamer strip in Sophie’s bedroom doorway so that she has a fun surprise when she wakes up in the morning on her birthday!
I’m also starting to do this little interview every year to document her thoughts and favorite things.
Sophie already has PLENTY of toys at her disposal, and so many of them are for her age group so we only ordered a few items for her (which is mindset we abide by with both of our girls). This year she received: (1) a few of the Gabby’s Dollhouse / Bluey figurine sets she had been asking for, (2) some Yoto cards, and (3) a Big Girl Bed (more on this coming soon)!
Again, I have to share these wrapping paper sheets, which were actually easier to use than a roll! I was pretty impressed by the quality as well. I had some of this ribbon / bow pattern leftover from last year and decided to use them instead of purchasing something new, but this color is what I would have chosen if I had needed more wrapping paper.
We couldn’t be more proud of our little girl and all of her progress this past year. Happy fifth birthday to our sweet Sophie girl! We can’t wait to see how you grow into kindergartener-hood!
Sending hugs —
xx, Natalie
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