Halie's 8th Birthday - Lisa Frank Fun!

 A few months before Halie's birthday we found Lisa Frank party supplies on clearance at our local Dollar General and she decided that's the theme she wanted for her 8th birthday.  We found some plates, napkins, invitations, and a banner marked down.  Later on we found a couple more banners at the thrift store for 25¢ each.  We even found favors and prizes on after Easter clearance that were bright and colorful as well.  She had fun picking out the rest of her party supplies from the party store.

She also decided she wanted to have a water party since August is SO very hot down here.  We prayed every day that the rain would hold off until after the party and it did, we had beautiful sunny weather and were able to do everything outside.  (Mama didn't want no soppin' wet kiddos traipsing through the house.)  We set up tables on the deck for food, drinks, and gifts, and set up chairs in the shade of our big tree for the adults.

I didn't realize until later that my camera was on the wrong setting and some of the pictures got washed out.  : (  

She had so much fun finding colorful/rainbow themed items to use.  This is the first year that she has really had a desire to have an input on her party, other than choosing a theme and it was fun working together to plan it.

Everything looked so colorful and festive.

We found these little favor bags in the after Easter clearance stuff and they fit in with the theme perfectly.

We filled up one of those snap-set pools for the kids to play in, and also put a sprinkler under the trampoline which was a lot of fun for them.  There were also water guns and tubes of bubbles to blow.

We played a couple of games.  For one of them we used the little toy basketball hoop and the kids each got a turn to see how many water balloons they could throw through the hoop in 30 seconds without them breaking first.

Another game was called Drip, Drip, Dunk.  It was the same idea as Duck, Duck, Goose, but we used a large cup that we had poked a hole in and the kids took turns going around the circle dripping water on each child and then "dunking" one of them by dumping the whole cup of  water on their head.

The last game was Hot Potato, but with water balloons.  :)

After some play time, and games, we ate pizza for lunch, they played a bit more and then it was time for presents.

An air soft pistol with plastic BB's from Daddy.  :D

Fun stuff from cousin Emma.

Lots of goodies from Nana and Papaw.

Dollhouse furniture from Meemaw and Papaw.

One of the things on her wish list was new rain boots and I found these cute horse ones that have her two favorite colors, pink and aqua!

The day before the party my two little helpers assisted with the birthday cake making.

She wanted the inside to be rainbow colors so we bought a neon food coloring set and two cake mixes. She also picked out a hot pink frosting from the store that she wanted me to use.

We layered the multi-colored batter into the pans and hoped for the best.

The finished product!

We used purple between the layers and then I piped in a decorative edge around the bottom and also around the topper.  We found the colorful candy flowers at Walmart and used those to help bring in some more of the rainbow colors of Lisa Frank.

Even a Lisa Frank unicorn for the topper!  (More on that story in a minute.)

This is how the inside of the cake turned out and Halie thought it was awesome.  :)

Now, back to the topper story.  The topper I originally ordered ended up being way too small, more like a cupcake topper size, and I wasn't sure what we were going to do.  But then one day in the thrift store we found this dirty little, ugly unicorn for 50¢.  I decided for that cheap I'd experiment with painting it to look like the Lisa Frank unicorn and we'd use it as a topper instead.  I used craft paints I already had and then coated the whole thing with a clear glossy sealer.

Halie was SO in love with it and even more excited that she gets to keep it even after the party.  :)

She invited all girls to her water party, but one girl has a brother Burl's age and so we told him he was welcome to come too so that Burl would have a male presence to help him fend off the girly-ness of the day.  :)

She had so much fun and we were so thankful for the beautiful weather.

A fun day indeed!