L.O.L. Birthday

Recently my oldest daughter turned 7 and requested an L.O.L. Doll themed birthday. Fierce, creative, and so fashionable, it was a fun theme that reflected my daughter’s personality. No one was surprised when she told us her favorite dolls were Queen Bee and Royal Bee. Here is how my daughter helped me to craft her DIY home birthday party to celebrate with her family and first grade friends. Hoping these ideas and printables can help your kids to also enjoy some simple and fabulous fun.

Decorations:

We made pool noodle music notes and some cardboard boomboxes to help add a pop of color and fun to our kitchen. The pool noodle quarter and eighth notes were made by simply coiling pool noodles and securing them with a bit of hot glue. The boombox was made by wrapping a rectangular box with silver paper, gluing two pink paper plates and the printable I made below. The handle was made from one paper towel roll and one toilet paper roll cut in half and wrapped in aluminum foil. Everything was strung up with clear fishing wire. For less than ten dollars, we were able to decorate this large space. Each pool noodle note took about five minutes to make and the boombox took about fifteen minutes to put together with my daughter helping. We plan to save our pool noodle notes to decorate our Nutcracker themed house for Christmas next year as pool noodles make resilient outdoor decorations. This type of decoration could also work for a Barbie or even an 80’s party.

I used a pink plastic tablecloth folded in half and attached it to the wall with some clear push pins. Together with my daughter, we cut out a large L.O.L. out of white poster board, with each letter taking up most of one poster board. We glued the letters onto black poster board then added black pom poms to create polka dots. The rest was simply her name printed out onto white cardstock, cut, and secured to the pink tablecloth with a little double sided tape. We also found some metallic heart and star paper plates at the Dollar Tree and attached a few to the wall to further embellish her playroom. She loved this so much it has since been moved to decorate her bedroom. This ended up being eight feet wide, took under a half an hour, and less than ten dollars to achieve.

The sign was one of the first things people saw when they entered and it really created a nice impact.

We created a large Diva out of tablecloth, tissue paper, and some cowprint fabric we had. I made the large L.O.L. Doll eye printable and it is also free to download below. The large bow was made by folding two pink tablecloths in a triangular shape and then adding a square shaped middle. The hair took 15 pieces of white tissue paper, layered in groups of three, and fringed at the end. Gold tablecloth folded into a rough face shape was attached to the wall using clear push pins. Finally the cow fabric was taped to the wall. This took about 20 minutes to put together and was an easy and inexpensive way to add some large scale fun to our living room.

Over the cake table, I made this banner for my daughter. I also found free coloring pages here, projected them onto white posterboard, and my daughter painted and cut them out to help tie the theme of her party in.

I projected more coloring pages onto huge particleboard panels that I purchased from Home Depot to create these larger than life dolls. The panels were 4X8 feet. After I made the outlines with a black Sharpie, my daughters painted them using regular acrylic paint, and my husband cut them out using his jigsaw. We displayed them all throughout the house. The girls enjoyed posing and playing with them. I made some easy and quick pretend lipstick for them out of pool noodles wrapped with a little strip of cardstock, and a piece of black garbage bag. Shown here are my youngest two, giving the dolls a makeover.

Party Activities:

As my daughter’s birthday is in the middle of winter, usually with thirty degree weather and a chance of snow, we like to make sure to have plenty of indoor activities. I like to set up a craft table that is self explanatory with all the supplies laid out, where guests can come and go as they please.

This was the setup on party day. I made a bunch of oversized bows by scrunching black garbage bags, black, and white tissue paper into slices of pink pool noodles and hung them all over the walls to create more quick, easy, and inexpensive decorations.

Here are my kids starting the party before the guests arrive. It gives them something to do while I warm up food and my husband and I get some more pre-party cleaning done.

I downloaded some coloring pages that I found here, and added some text to make personal coloring pages for my daughter. I make more personalized coloring pages for kids here.

I projected some more coloring pages onto white poster paper to create a wall of large coloring posters for the kids.

I purchased the white poster board here and hung some paper cups filled with crayons using command strips. For under three dollars, and in about 30 minutes, I was able to make a hallway gallery of six posters for the girls to color.

Here are my oldest and youngest daughter coloring away.

The kids decorated paper hot cocoa cups, hair bows, and headbands. They also made bracelets and necklaces. I found the paper cups and lids at Party City and the hairbows here on Amazon. The beads, pipe cleaners, tray, and gem stickers were all from the Dollar Tree.

The kids also made paper bag puppets using the templates I made below. Shown here is Splash Queen.

Here is little sister putting the finishing touches on her Queen Bee puppet.

These templates are best printed out onto white cardstock and used to create Splash Queen and Queen Bee. For my daughter’s party, I used the templates to cut out a large pile of construction paper to create a quick and easy craft setup. The second template are for the doll eyes. I printed out multiple copies and used a 2 inch circle punch to have them ready for the girls to create their own puppets. I also included yellow crepe paper streamer so they could make Queen Bee’s hair and cut out a variety of different colored dresses so her friends could also make their own unique dolls.

Daddy read an L.O.L. book. This is always a low cost and welcomed addition to all of our kids’ parties. We usually wait until all the kids have gotten a little riled up and crazy and then bring them into this storytime to settle down before they go enjoy more sugar.

I propped the large wooden cutouts that we made along with a basket of fun accessories. Together my daughters and I raided their closets for anything glittery, had cheetah print, or looked fancy and fun. We also added all their puffer vests and fuzzy earmuffs to the mix.

Here is my youngest two with Glitter Queen sporting their cheetah print, puffer vests, and fluffy earmuffs shouting L.O.L!

There are five L.O.L. inspired photo props. There are four with speech bubbles that say O.M.G., L.O.L., It’s My Birthday!, and So Dang Fun! as well as one arrow that says Birthday Girl. This is available to download below for personal use.

This file is best printed out onto white cardstock and attached to black posterboard and then hot glued to a wooden dowel or chopstick to create sturdy and fun photo props.

I also made a super fast craft using a few pieces of adhesive foam that I had to create this simple play makeup. It took five minutes to cut out all the little squares, peel off the backing, and adhere to the black foam. I added some q-tips and purchased a few makeup brushes from the Dollar Tree and my daughters just loved this. They have given all their dolls, pets, as well as each other numerous makeovers.

We also made a homemade pinata out of a moving box, some priority mailboxes (as the birthday girl had received several packages in the mail already), some tissue paper, and crepe paper streamer. My daughter helped me to punch out black paper circles to create polka dots to add and to cover the sides with pink crepe paper streamer to tie all the patterns and theme of her party together. The pinata ended up matching her cake as well as her birthday banner, playroom sign, and water bottles below.

Here is the birthday girl filling up her pinata with candy while her sisters patiently wait for her to drop some Dum Dums.

Food:

We included the birthday girl’s favorite foods as well as a lot of homemade kid favorites. My daughter loves Daddy’s beef barbecue and baked beans as well as Aunt Jill’s queso. We also served mac and cheese, twice baked potatoes, corn, chili, shrimp chips, as well as these delicious egg rolls that my daughter helped us to roll.

As the weather is usually cold on my daughter’s birthday, we like to have a hot chocolate bar. I used more free clipart to make the sign and she helped me to further embellish it with glitter snowflakes stickers we had leftover from some of our winter crafting. I found the delicious hot chocolate recipe from Wishes and Dishes and we have made it numerous times in the past few years. We just filled our bar with what we had in our pantry, some chocolate chips, mini marshmallows, M&M’s, and added some fun straws as well as some edible cookie straws. Here is my son, with a Dum Dum in his mouth, contemplating what to add to his cup. The kids really enjoyed serving themselves and each other.

My daughter helped me to make her homemade L.O.L. Suprise cake. We made a four layer cake alternating with chocolate and vanilla and hollowed out the middle. I filled the middle with sprinkles that would spill out as a surprise when the cake was cut. She also helped me to decorate her cake with chocolate chips, heart and star shaped cookies she decorated, and more printed L.O.L. Doll clip art.

I used more free clip art and sized them to make these simple L.O.L Doll cupcake toppers. I adhered them to toothpicks and inserted them into these delicious chocolate cupcakes.

I found Queen Bee cookie cutters here and used this recipe to make L.O.L. Doll sugar cookies. I also cut out some hearts and stars. I baked them and left the decorating to the kids as another party activity. The kids all enjoyed this and spent about 45 minutes here just chatting with each other, frosting, and sprinkling away.

I also made these coordinating water bottle labels to further tie in the colors and theme of her party.

Favors:

I found this favor pack at Walmart on sale and was able to divide the contents to create favor bags for her classmates at school and also for all the guests at her birthday. I used free clipart to create her personalized bag labels and attached them to plain white bags that I bought in bulk here. I create more personalized bag labels here.

The bags for her class had a little paper cocoa cup that I decorated with the sticker found in the pack, some candy, Diva maze activity, and a little heart shaped notebook that also came in the party pack. The bags for the party contained sunglasses and slap bracelets and were given to the guests to fill with pinata candy as well as any crafts they wanted to take home. Aunt Jill also made the delicious chocolate covered pretzels pictured above for the guests.

My greatest joy in creating these parties for my children is seeing all their excitement and happiness. In the days leading up to her birthday, my daughter made numerous drawings of L.O.L. Dolls including the one above which we displayed throughout the house on her birthday. She was so proud of all the things we had made together and we really enjoyed a lot of fun in the process. Her friends couldn’t believe she had made a pinata, painted all those doll posters and cutouts, and decorated her cake. Going through all this helped her to appreciate how much work goes into a party as well as how to budget and plan. I also liked having the chance to show my kids that we don’t have to buy the latest and greatest and can make a lot out of simple and inexpensive supplies.

I create more printable activities for kids here with the goal of helping to grow kids who love to learn.

To see my other kids’ parties click here.

If you use these printables or party ideas, I would love to see it! Please use #sodangfun on social media, tag me @sodangfun on Instagram, or post to my Facebook page.

I hope this post can help you to create something fun with and for your young fashionista/world changer!