Spa Themed Birthday Party - Its Spatacular!

Once a year, my oldest child has a birthday. 

(This invitation is available here if you are having a spa or beauty birthday.)

Her birthdays are the roughest birthdays for several reasons. First of all, she was born on Christmas. Yes, she was seriously born on 12/25. So she shares a birthday with Jesus Christ, there is not really much she can do to compete with that, and its always fun to have some jerkwad relative hand my child a gift and say, "Here this is for Christmas AND your birthday put together." I've decided that next time (even if their birthday is in July) I will be handing them a present in said birthday month and using the same phrase. LOL...priceless picture moment.

Anyway, getting off topic, the second reason its rough is because she never knows what she wants, especially when it comes to a party. So this year we settled on a Spa slash Beauty Sleepover. And it was stupendously amazing.

First, when guests arrived, they saw the sign on the door and knew right away what to expect. This was a drop your coat, get your mani-pedi relax-on, kinda fling. Oh yeah.

 Got our dining room table set up with some party favors and a quick photo booth prop- had to take before pics of the guests coming in, wearing an ugly shower cap and holding a massively big loofah. (I mean, really- If Im gonna be teaching a bunch of 11 year old girls how to do makeup, I at least gotta give their parents blackmail photos for future boyfriends, right??)

Here are a couple closer shots of the table:

Then we had a few stations set up around the house to make sure we had a surreal beauty experience going on. We had a manicure station, a popcorn station, a sundae bar, and of course the usually party snack food table spread.

For the food labels, I used 2" circle cutouts on skewer sticks, and taped them to nail polish bottles to keep with our spa theme. 

 And of course girly colors all the way. :)

 As you can see, our decorations mainly consisted of pink and turquoise tulle, and multi colored paper which I designed into signs and such. Kept it pretty simple since tulle can be pretty overwhelming all on its own. For the games, we played stack the cucumbers, in which the girls paired up and tried to stack cucumbers on one eye of a partner (who laid on the floor of course) and the pair with the tallest stack won. 

 Our next activity was genius. I had no idea it was going to be such a hit. Seriously I think it will become a staple at all my parties just for sheer convenience  I got about 5 rolls of tin foil from the dollar tree, and had the kids do a "fashion show" based on fashions they designed from the foil. This kept them busy well over an hour.

Finally, our wind down activities were manicures (we painted nails to a musical chairs style of game) and makeovers. This was fun for the girls, and since the party favors I was giving out consisted of makeup bags that included eye shadow, lipstick, facial wipes, hair bands, and blush, this was a perfect way to use their new makeup. They also got to take home their nail polish kits (smaller makeup bags with nail polish, remover, nail glitter, and a manicure set).

 A dance party or two, and the kids were worn out enough to lay down and watch a movie, and us grown ups could get some rest!

Party well served! (Clean up crew on Monday!)