A Fall Kid's Birthday Party

Note: Sorry for the formatting issues- I wrote this last night when blogger was having issues and it will not fix for some reason. :(

My daughter's birthday always falls right around Thanksgiving so trying to figure out when we are going to do a birthday party is often very tricky. She has never had a friend party- but her big brother did at 5, so we decided she should to and it would be best to do it before Thanksgiving- so I threw together a birthday party in three days!
The party's theme all started because of the cake. We kept seeing fall cake ideas- all of which seemed crazy and very time consuming. But then in a moment of inspiration- I created The Apple Basket Cake.

CakeI used three cake mixes- most of which went into the 12x12 cake pan. After the cake was fully cooled I cut skinny triangles from both bottom sides- they were about 1" at the bottom then came to a point to angle the square to make it more basket like. I used Wilton's brown food dye, making sure to put a crumb coat (or lots of frosting) on where I had cut the cake. I then just added a little extra brown dye making it darker and drew the lines and rims on the basket.
For the apple cupcakes I used NO TASTE red dye. You need a lot of red dye to make something truly red so you need the no taste red other wise it will have a bitter taste. I broke pretzel sticks into thirds approximately and stuck the pretzel into the top for the stems. The leaves are those crescent shaped gummies. I cut each gummy in half as otherwise it was too thick and also trimmed the ends to make them a little more leaf shaped. And of course there was the bonus worm.

Games

• Q-tip Tree Painting- I drew the outline of a tree and gave the kids a plate with a bit of red, green, yellow, and orange paint and a q-tip. The kids were then supposed to dip their q-tips and just dab circle leaves on the tree. My son (who's tree is shown) did a little extra painting
• Pin The Apple on the Tree- Like Pin the Tale on the donkey. I bought a large poster board sized board at the dollar store and drew and then painted a tree. I then cut apples out of construction paper.
  
• Pine Cone Races- like an egg race just with pine-cones (acorns would have been even better) to go along with the fall theme
• Pine Cone Relay- divided kids into two teams and gave a pile of pine cones that they had to get into the cup on the other side of the room by carrying it down on their spoon
  
• Balloon Races- race with a balloon between the legs
• Pinata- Not fall related but a party tradition here
  

Goodie- BagsWe searched the dollar bins at Target and the Dollar store to fill the goodie bags. I bought a piece of gold sparkly paper and printed some leaf shapes onto the paper.I cut roughly around the leaf shape and then glued (just used a glue stick) each leaf to a piece of ribbon. I then taped the ribbon to the back side of the goodie bag (lunch sack)

Decorations and Food<The great thing about having a fall party near the end of fall is all of the fall decor is 50% off. I bought the pompom and leaf garlands that we simply taped to the ceiling at Party City.

I cut the pumpkins out of construction paper and then folded them accordion style. I glued the green stem onto the back and the clipped each pumpkin onto a piece of yarn. I taped the yarn to the counter.

On the counter I had a garland of leaves from some of my fall decor and a bag of fake gourds and vegetables scattered on the counter. The fall plates I later filled with vegetables.We also served pizza and pop.
It was a great birthday party. All of the kids had fun and there were no tears involved...well except when the birthday girl realized her brother helped with the candles.I am linking this post up at the following crafting blogs this week or next.

P.S. There is still time to link up your Ten Things to Smile About lists- go to yesterday's post here. And don't forget tomorrow is Proud Mommy Moments! So get your post ready to link up.