Entertaining

Our Batgirl Turned 4!

Hannah Spitzfaden April 29, 2021 no Comments

If you’ve been following along, you know its birthday season (March – May) in our household. I shared our 2 year-old’s Two Sweet birthday party a few weeks ago, and we already have another celebration under our belt. When I asked our eldest daughter what she wanted to do for her birthday, she insisted on a ‘Batman party.’ With a little persuasion, she agreed a BatGIRL party would be even better.

The Decor

My usual start to planning a birthday party is to scroll Pinterest for ideas, but I was surprised to find there weren’t that many Batgirl themed photos to draw inspiration from. Of course, there are a ton of batMAN themed pins and merchandise, but I still knew I could put my own spin on it. And, there are certainly things from the Batman theme that can translate to a Batgirl party.

I played off of the typical black and yellow Batman colors, but elevated the yellow to gold, and added purple for a more feminine feeling. For all of my kids’ birthdays, I make a ‘Happy Birthday’ banner to match the theme, and for this one, I was even able to download a free Batman font. I used my Cricut machine to cut out gold letters and two sizes of pennant shapes, on different solid colored paper. Then I assembled the banner. While I had my Cricut out, I also cut out some bats, masks, and lightening bolts using this printable.

Balloon garlands are starting to become a birthday tradition around here and recently I invested in an electric balloon pump! I was using this hand pump to blow up balloons for garlands in the past. And while that pump worked great for me in the beginning, now that I’m making more balloon garlands each year, it was time to upgrade.

I’ve found Hobby Lobby has great prices on 12″ balloons, and I bought the larger 24″ balloons, along with purple balloons at Party City. Surprisingly, even my local grocery store has some good balloon options, I found these gold confetti balloons there. I also used some gold and white balloons (currently the gold and white package is not available), and foil star balloons left over from previous birthdays.

Once I used my new balloon pump to blow up a ridiculous amount of balloons, I formed them into a balloon garland using this kit. I always assemble my balloon garland the night before, otherwise my kids would go berserk over all the balloons on the ground, but they last several days so this is great time saver when setting up the day of the party.

With the help of my husband and mother-in-law, I also created some ‘Gotham City’ buildings to line the table. Using scrap wood, my husband cut a few different building shapes, my MIL painted them with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Graphite, and I drew windows and brick patterns with paint pens.

I simply used a ruler to guide my straight lines and then just eyeballed the rest.

I also printed a few pictures of our daughter from her previous birthdays to display as a little walk down memory lane.

Gold fringe, some yarn and a few clothespins brought this DIY photo display to life. I also scattered some of the bat, mask, and lightening bolt cutouts around the photos.

And what party wouldn’t be complete without some signage?!

Andrew and I made this chalkboard easel last year for our daughter’s first birthday, and I love that we can use it again and again. I outlined the letters in pencil first, then used chalkboard pens when I was confident with the spacing and size of the letters. To remove the chalkboard pen ink, I use a wet rag and a little wipe of a magic eraser – works like a charm.

I also used my letter board to write a welcome message for the other super heros.

The Activities

The main attraction at this birthday party was no doubt the bounce house, the same one I borrowed from a friend for our 2-year old’s party. All ages (2 – 9) enjoyed burning some energy in their personalized super hero capes, which made them hungry for some cupcakes!

After letting kids decorate their own cupcakes at my daughter’s birthday party last month, I decided to make this a repeat activity. The kids had such a blast adding their own sprinkles to customize their cupcake eating experience. I used paint palettes to serve the cupcakes and filled them with different sprinkle options. The kids loved it just as much as the last birthday party.

I do want to note, I waited to frost these cupcakes until right before serving, so the icing would still be wet enough for the sprinkles to stick to it. Otherwise, I was worried the frosting would set and the sprinkles would just slide off back onto the plate (which would be kind of a buzz-kill, wouldn’t it?).

Party Favors

To make each child feel like a true super hero, my mother-in-law made wrist cuffs and personalized capes adorned with each child’s first initial.

She used an adult sized t-shirt, cut into a cape shape, and stenciled on the letters with gold paint. The birthday girl got a special cape with an emblem made of felt. The guests were super excited to take their capes home for more super hero adventures.

The Treats

Julianne loves anything chocolate flavored, so I tried a new chocolate buttermilk cupcake recipe coupled with my go-to vanilla frosting. And these gold cupcake liners went perfectly with all the other decorations.

To continue with my color scheme, I found a mix of purple sprinkles to top off these delicious cupcakes in the baking aisle at Michael’s! After searching many other stores for sprinkle options for my daughter’s ‘Two Sweet’ party last month, I was really impressed with the options at Michael’s.

You know we didn’t have a birthday party without ordering some cookies from Pearl’s Pastries. Chelsie made some delicious batgirl themed cookies and, as always, her creativity amazes me.

She even made cookies to match the custom logo on Julianne’s cape! Chelsie really does great work, so if you are in the Dallas area, make sure to check her out.

On the treats table, I also included caramel popcorn and an assortment of other candies, in the purple, gold, and black color scheme of course.

I had such a fun time planning this birthday party and can’t wait to share the next one with you. Have you been planning any birthday parties lately? I’d love to hear about them. Comment below or connect with me on instagram @elleandjaydesign. And now you can follow me on Pinterest too!