Kipper Picnic Birthday Party

My son's 3rd birthday party was last October. I let him pick his party theme, and he chose Kipper the dog. Kipper is a wholesome British cartoon about the many adventures of Kipper, and his friends. We just love the cartoon but there are no Kipper party supplies available in the US- that I could find. Even the UK only has a hand full of pricey Kipper party supplies. So I sought out Kipper parties on the web. I came across two blogs with Kipper parties. One was for a girl, and the other had really cute decor but nothing to do with Kipper except for one picture of Kipper. Needless to say I was on my own with this one,  and starting from scratch. If our children only knew what we do for them. Staying up until 2 a.m. making Kipper puppets, pinwheels, and trying to get the printer to work the way we want it to:) And I will gladly do it every year until he's to old for birthday parties. That will be a sad day for me. Just to see the joy and excitement on my son's face melts my heart and makes the whole party planning fiasco worth it. The funny thing is that it's only a couple months after his party and we haven't watched Kipper since. Wouldn't you know it :)

To limit the party from going in to many different directions I chose our favorite Kipper DVD ( Pools, Parks, and Picnics) and just pulled ideas from that. The added picnic theme worked to my advantage because my house is way to small to comfortably host a party for 20 people. We live in Washington so we were extremely lucky the weather held out until October. In fact it was a beautiful sunny day, perfect for a picnic.

For the party decorations I used a blue checkered picnic pattern with ants, as well as a green one. I printed the pattern on card stock and made invitations, two banners, pinwheels, and a golf flag with the number three on it. I also made two blue and green balloon columns, and Kipper hand puppets.

For the food I picked out things that I would take on a picnic while also keeping the toddlers in mind. I ordered croissant  sandwiches from Costco, I had plastic shot glasses filled with ranch dip and veggies,  a lot of strawberries, a variety of flavored chips, and party popcorn. For drinks I kept it simple ( water, Capri sun, and lemonade).

This was the first year so far that I didn't make a birthday cake. I made cupcakes with ants carrying watermelons, and apple pies instead. I thought it went better with the theme. Although I was a little disappointed with how my cupcakes turned out the kids never seem to mind. Luckily I didn't get any close up shots of those ;)

I had games/activities for the kids that were all relevant to the Kipper Pools Parks and Picnics DVD. As the kids arrived they each got to pick a folded paper party hat to decorate and wear. I provided foam stickers, feathers, jewels, string, tape and glue dots. The first game we had to catch butterflies from a tree. I found butterfly coasters on clearance that were white and silver. I colored everyone in different patterns of colors, tied string to the branches on and scotch taped the butterflies on the end of the string. The person with the most butterflies got a prize as well as the person with the purple butterfly because that was the color of the butterfly Kipper catches. I would suggest giving the younger kids a head start if you have mixed ages. I didn't and the winner was the oldest with eleven butterflies, and most of the toddlers ended up with only one. For the second game everyone got to play par 3 putt putt golf. Everyone hit the ball until they got it in the hole then got a prize. We got the putting green with the hole and ball return at the Goodwill for a few bucks, and used the putter and balls from my sons plastic golf set. Last but not least we did a treasure hunt. I made all the clues to look like treasure maps and hid them accordingly. I even lucked out with a couple of the same hiding spots as the DVD. The clues led them to a DIY cardboard treasure chest where they found their loot bags. This game was a favorite with the kids.

I hope this is inspirational to all those parents planning a party for their little Kipper fan. Have fun.

 Invitations

 

I did a post card style invitation, mostly because my printer wasn't printing the way I wanted it to. I also had my son participate in stuffing the envelopes.  We added some bug foam stickers for the kids that were purchased from the Dollar Tree. A big thanks to my friend Katherine for putting all the images together for me so all I had to do was print :)

  

Patterns and Images

 

 

 I printed these patterns out on card stock to make my banners, pin wheels, a golf flag.  

I used this image to put on my mini brown paper bags full of party popcorn.

This image of Kipper was used for one of the banners and the loot bags.

Loot Bags 

The kids really liked their names in the big sparkly letters.

Balloon Columns

These were relativity easy to make. I used my husbands concrete tampers as my base, and structure. Here is a great You Tube video to learn how.
http://youtu.be/hQL5lJegmHc

DIY Kipper Puppets

I made these Kipper hand puppets with brown paper bags and construction paper. I got the idea from a web site but a template wasn't provided so everything was done freehand. Although these are hand puppets I used them as decoration to top off my balloon columns.

Cupcakes

These are not the actual cupcakes I made, but where the inspiration came from. I didn't get a close up shot of mine, and they weren't as nice as these ones. I used dark chocolate covered raisins on mine because the almonds were big enough to become a choking hazard for the tots. I had problems with the watermelons falling off, coloring the frosting for the legs, and applying it. 

Games and Activities

Decorate your own party hat activity.

Catch the butterflies game.

Treasure hunt.

The loot.

 Party!

Extras

I was going to use these images to make picket signs to put at each game and activity station but I never got around to it.