Juniper’s Puppy-Themed Birthday Party
Last year, I selected a cake off the rack at a local grocery store, and I bought Juniper a balloon. That was about the extent of my party planning. We joked that her birthday party theme was “mom and dad just gutted a house.” So this year I wanted to put more effort into making her birthday party feel special. I spent a little time working on crafts or food each day during the week before her puppy party. With a little bit of effort and a small budget, her puppy party ended up being such a sweet affair!
First, I spent some time on Pinterest deciding what kind of cookies I wanted to make, then I bought this dog cookie cutter set. I used this butter cookie recipe to make and freeze the cookies a couple of weeks in advance. Then I used this royal icing recipe to decorate the cookies two days before the party.
Materials:
–plain white paper cups
-kraft card stock (I used this kind to match my plates)
–dog bone template*
–glue dots or double sided tape
-scissors
-printer
Load your printer with the card stock and print out one sheet of this dog bone template. Cut out each dog bone by hand with scissors. Use glue dots or double-sided tape to affix each dog bone to paper party cups. The dog bones are a cute decorative detail, but they also provide a nice spot for people to write their names on their cups!
*Full disclosure: I made the dog bone template out of this clip art that someone else designed.
Instead of party hats, we like to make special headbands that go with our birthday party theme. (We still have a few bumblebee headbands from Lucy’s third birthday party.) Of course, it was a no-brainer to make dog ears for a puppy party! The girls were obsessed with them. We even got face paint to give the kids dog faces that matched their headbands. The kids ended up getting sidetracked at the party and we didn’t do face paint then, but we did do it the next day!
The dog ear headbands were pretty easy to make, and the supplies were inexpensive. Check out how I made them below!
-2 pieces of crafting felt for each headband (or just one for smaller ears)
-plastic headbands (I bought a set of plastic headbands to save money for this and future headband projects.)
-fabric scissors
-hot glue gun with glue
Step One: Cut out two ear shapes and at least two 1″ strips of felt for wrapping the plastic headband. I found that I could get by with only two strips of felt for wrapping the headband in step two, but it took a bit of stretching. I didn’t use any templates for the ear shapes, but you can see below what the shapes looked like that I ended up freehand cutting out of my felt pieces.
Step Three: Glue the dog ears onto the headband. You may want to pin them in place first and put on the headband to see if you like the placement. Then you can commit to gluing them into place.
The girls requested I try to make dog ears like our dogs, so I added some white fringe to the bottom of some black floppy ears to look like our Theo, and I did try to make Alfie cookies, but really they ended up looking more like Lassie. Oh well, they tasted great and the girls didn’t seem to notice the discrepancies the way that I did.
I think it’s important to know your limits when planning a party, and for me, that limit was at cupcakes. I figured I could either make dog cupcakes or dog cookies, but I didn’t want to put myself through having to do both of them. So I ordered these puppy cupcakes (or pupcakes, if you will!) from my friend Shawna, who owns a shop called A Cupcake A Day in Medina, Ohio. They were delicious and I was so pleased with how cute they turned out!
The last puppy party detail I added was little paw prints across the walls in our kitchen and dining room. I found a template I liked using Google Images, printed out three per sheet of card stock, and hand cut them. They were stuck to the wall with glue dots, and they came off easily during party cleanup.
