icecream party

Goose turned 8 years old at the end of January. Eight!!! I actually contemplated not having a party after the mass of activity over Christmas & New Year….. but how could I not?!?!?!!

You’ve seen the food from the party and now we have the activities…

Santa’s gift of fun & bright nail polish in Goose’s stocking was the colour inspiration for this party – for some reason they just spoke ‘ice-cream’ to me. So, of course we had to incorporate them into the party activities…

As guests arrived they could have their nails painted…

…apply an icecream tattoo*

…colour in some icecream colouring pages

(these gorgeous free printable colouring pages can be found here)

…make their own paper icecream van

(these fun icecream van printables can be found here)

…play a quick game of icypole ‘memory’ (no photo) (made using this free printable)

…or pin the cherry on top of the icecream sundae!

Then we played…

The Flour Game:

1. Fill a large bowl with flour (any kind will do).

2. Tip it upside down onto a plate and pop a lolly (sweet) on the top.

(I thought a jaffa looked a bit like a cherry on the top of an icecream sundae)

3. Get the kids to sit in a circle and take it in turns to carefully take a spoonful of flour and return it to the bowl one at a time.

4. If your spoonful causes the lolly to fall, then you get to eat the lolly… without using your hands!!!

5. Pop all the flour back in the bowl and repeat as many times as you like, so make sure you have a whole packet of lollies.

6. You will find that some try really hard not to make it fall, but others (see below) like to deliberately make it fall whenever it is their turn! The child loves to get messy!

Then we went outside to wash it all off with some water pinatas!

I had plans to make this icecream pinata, but after two failed attempts, we decided that a water pinata would be much easier and possibly even more fun on a hot day!**

Made by hanging garbage bags on each corner of the hills hoist clothes line and filling them with water via the hose.

Then we played a relay game with water bombs…

…followed by a good old fashioned backyard slippery slide!

Black plastic, a hose & some dishwashing detergent.

This is an activity we did all the time as kids and with the drought in recent years here in Australia it has been very hard to do the same with our children. The restrictions here in Melbourne have been reduced and you can now water your lawn with a handheld hose with a trigger nozzle attachment at any time of day… so if the kids happen to be running in front of that hose at the same time I am watering the lawn…

They had soooo much fun and in hindsight I really should have just had this activity only and skipped the rest!

Click here for more icecream party pics!

If you’d like to see some of our previous parties here at FGB headquarters, head on over to our DIY kids party ideas page!

* I am so excited about these tattoos – I made them myself – I really & truly did! I’ll be doing a separate ‘how-to’ post very soon – stay tuned! Addition Oct 2012 (finally) – more info on making your own tatts here.

** Did I mention it was approx. 37 degrees! Thanks to Family Fun for the idea!
*** leftover from the space party – I love reusing & recycling for parties! You can purchase some from your local hardware store.

Every year on Goose’s birthday the temperature is always around 35-39 degrees celcius*… which is pretty hot! So this year, instead of fighting it, we thought we’d just embrace it with lots of icecream and lots of water based fun!

As per usual I’ll share this party with you in a few posts.

Food first.

The food for this party was very simple & basic. The party was held in the afternoon at 2pm, so no main meal was required and the weather was so hot that I didn’t need to bother with hot food. We had the usual party type fare of popcorn, chips, watermelon, strawberries, dip & biscuits/carrot/celery and on top of that we added a few fun ice-cream themed treats…

Chocolate Icecream cupcakes.

Chocolate muffins cooked right in the cones.

Recipe here.

Icecream shaped fairy bread.
Fairly obvious, but the ‘cone’ was made from rye bread and chocolate sprinkles and the ‘icecream’ with white bread, a scone cutter and rainbow sprinkles.

To Drink:

Water bottles – covered in printable icecream paper from here.

Spiders (AKA icecream soda)- umbrellas & straws always add a bit of fun.

We also had delicious and totally healthy pure fruit icecreams made from frozen fruit (mango, banana, rasberries, pineapple & strawberries) in Granny’s juicer.

After lots of water games it was time for some icecream! I had shown Goose a few cake ideas that I’d found via pinterest and this gorgeous icecream cake over at One Charming Party blog was her favourite.

To make the cake, I softened a 4 litre tub of vanilla icecream and squished it into a large springform pan that was lined with a plastic bag and popped it back in the freezer. Then I removed the icecream from the pan mould, popped it onto a round cake board and smoothed the edges. For the top I used, another dollop of icecream, lots of ice magic, a waffle cone and some sprinkles on the top.

Tip #1 – don’t take too long on this part (like I did) as it melts very quickly on a hot day & icecream starts poking through the layers of hard choc and you have to re-choc!

Tip #2 – don’t cover the entire top of the cake with ice magic as candles stick more easily into icecream!