evie’s ‘bow-tique’ birthday party

The timing of our trip to visit Jordan and her family was perfect- we arrived the night before Evie’s third birthday and got to be there for her birthday party (lucky us!). Evie’s bow themed birthday party was inspired by her love of Minnie Mouse’s “Bow-tique.”

MENU

All of Evie’s favorite foods made their way on to the menu (bow-ified wherever possible)- bow shaped caprese pasta, cinnamon sugar popcorn, strawberry cake, rock candy…

…and a whole lineup of other yummy sweets and treats…

DECOR

This will probably come as a surprise, given the bow theme, but the decor for the party can be summed up in one word- BOWS.

There were rows of giant bows on the wall…

…tiny bows on the cups and wooden cutlery…

…more bows on the popcorn boxes..

…even more bows on the rock candy…

…gumballs arranged as a bow…

…rice krispy treat ‘bows’...

…a bow cake topper…

…bows on the party hats!

The only other major decor element was the wall of rainbow striped crepe paper. And really, I shouldn’t undersell the giant hit that the rainbow of paper was! We tied the paper back into ‘curtains’ when the Bowtique opened for business, which didn’t seem to detract from it’s allure one bit. We even left it up for a couple of days after the party since we didn’t want to stamp out the sheer delight that it created in our kids (not right away at least- haha!).

PARTY APPAREL

I don’t usually include a whole section for party outfits, but these cousins in their matching bow dresses pretty much did me in.

We found the dresses at a local shop in Jordan’s town. However, they were only available in sizes 8-14, so I did some small alterations to turn them into maxi dresses for our girlies.

Aren’t they beyond cute? I die.

ACTIVITIES

We always underestimate how much time a little shop will occupy during a party (see Evie’s farmer’s market party last year… or the Sweet Shoppe at Piper’s Madeline party). That said, shopping at the Bow-tique ended up being the far-and-away favorite use of time at this little party (well, that and sneaking treats from the treat table after all parents had issued ‘no more sweets’ cut-offs). Even the boys. who initially thought the Bow-tique much too girly for their patronage, ended up shopping the night away. More details on the bow-tique are coming later this week…

There was also a “Decorate your own bow” station. Jordan manned the hot glue gun and followed directions to create bow masterpieces under each guest’s supervision and direction.

FAVORS

The bow-tique was used as a play station all party long (we just kept restocking), but at the end of the party, each guest went on a bow (or bow tie) shopping spree and filled a favor bag with bow-tiquey goodies.

There were also “Evie’s Bow-tique” favor cards that were filled with matching bows and ready to tuck in favor bags at the end of the shopping sprees.