As usual this blog post is coming to you a few months post-party … but with her birthday being right before the chaos of Christmas it’s just how it’s gotta be. 🙂  My “little” girl turned 4 in November … FOUR!!!  What the heck!!!

We decided to go with a vintage ice cream parlour theme this year … I’m very pleased with how everything turned out!

First we did a photo shoot with just Aylah and Mosby to test out the setup … I think Mosby thoroughly enjoyed himself …

Ice cream cart was made by me (wood from home depot, fabric from FabricLand), crochet cones were a labour of love by myself and Aylah’s aunt Rikki, and the paper cones were all cut with my Cricut using the “Simply Charmed” cartidge, Mosby’s banana split costume was a lucky find from Winners)

Fast forward to party day …

Invites were made with the Cricut as well, complete with small red glass beads to be cherries.  I love how the cherries turned out, though it took extra postage to mail these puppies because the beads made the envelopes too thick.

I got the idea to do the awnings from Pinterest (big surprise), and I love how they turned out.  The base is cut from foam board which is hot glued and duct taped onto dowels.  I wanted to keep them very light weight as they are hanging from temporary Command hooks as to not put holes in my wall.

I made our dining table look like an ice cream cart by simply adding a tight band of fabric around the base and adding a cardboard wagon wheel.

The 3D cone garland was completely hand made using small styrafoam balls wrapped in tissue paper.  Cherry is a pom pom with a pipe cleaner hot glued on.  Cone is kraft wrapping paper.

These two delicious cakes came from my dear friend Christina at Pearls and Spice here in Hamilton.  They tasted even better than they looked if you can believe it!

These little paper ice cream trucks turned out adorable.  They are only paper, so the contents had to be light weight … marshmallows and caramel corn worked perfectly.  Here is where I purchased the template for these …

I took on the challenge this year of trying to make all of the sweets myself.  It was a grueling process … and took many days (and LOTS of help from Craig’s mom) … but it was so worth it.  How CUTE are these sweet treats!!!

What’s an ice cream party without a sundae bar …

Practical tip if you’re planning an ice cream party of your own … PRE-SCOOP all of the ice cream.  We used those disposable tin trays and scooped all of the flavours ahead of time.  Makes it much easier and faster to serve ice cream to a room full of people!!

This balloon arch gave me a run for my money, but I LOVE the impact it makes on the room.  It turned our family room into an ice cream castle!!

BALLOON tip … and I’ve never heard of this before, so I MIGHT have invented this all on my own.
Mint green balloons … they apparently don’t exist … trust me.  I ordered from 3 different companies online and everything claiming to be “mint” or showing a picture that resembles mint arrives looking more like either kelly green or aqua … neither of which were acceptable for my picky standards.  I needed the balloons to be MINT … just like the ice cream would be.  So in desperation … I used common logic, lol.  I had kelly green balloons, which were a nice colour, but way too dark … and I had white balloons … hmm … if only they could be mixed.  So I LAYERED THEM!!!!!  Brilliant if I don’t say so myself!!  roll up the kelly green balloon, insert it into the white one, blow them up together and just tie the green balloon (it’s impossible to tie both together without losing a finger).  Problem solved.  The ONLY issue with this was that it made the balloons twice as heavy, so for the helium filled balloons, they didn’t float as long.  I did a test run to see how many hours they would float for … the normal balloons stayed up for a couple of days, but the doubled mint balloons only lasted about 9 hours.  This meant that I had to leave the green balloons to be inflated the morning of the party.  Not a huge deal, but definitely something worth noting if anyone else is planning on layering balloons to achieve a certain colour.  🙂  I’m SO excited about this discovery … the sky is the limit with colours now.  No more being stuck with the primary colours that Party City has to offer.

This adorable Ice Cream Land game was a free printable that I found here.

Disclaimer: I thought the idea of all of the little cards was messy and awkward for kids, so I opted to design this 8 sided dice instead … which worked wonderfully.

Cotton candy cone favours for the littles and chocolate suckers for the grown ups. 🙂

After everyone mingled and had some sweets we went down into the studio for some games.  First up was pin the cherry on the sundae followed by “hot sundae” … which is basically hot potato – ice cream cone edition.

And the trademark of all of Aylah’s parties is a fun photo shoot with her friends.  I always include the photos of each kid with the thank you cards that we send out.  A free mini session once a year is a perk of being Aylah’s friend I guess, lol.

Then onto cake and presents.  Aylah had such a great time … she was all smiles the whole afternoon … which makes me one happy mama!!  Mission accomplished. 🙂

Huge THANK YOU goes out to all of the helping hands that made this celebration possible … Aylah’s grandmas (Kim & Pat), Aunts (Courtney, Shelley & Rikki), and Uncle Shawn for taking photos …. truly thank you!!  It takes a village. 🙂