SJ 7th Birthday – Decor – Ellie Love Blog

Carrying on from my birthday party posts, next in our family is our big girl SJ. Now that she is a bit older (and she is her mother’s child) she LOVES getting involved with her parties. We sit down together, pick a theme, scroll through Pinterest and she gets to choose her favourite ideas, the cake she would like, fun activities and games to play and the friends she would like to invite.

SJ’s party is often the biggest and most elaborate – this girl loves to party! She counts down to her birthday, squeals in excitement for our birthday morning traditions in bed, plans her birthday ring treats and then has the biggest grin on her face for her WHOLE party. And then wakes at the crack of dawn the next day to open all her gifts. She really does love to celebrate! And it is all made worth it when we can see her having the time of her life, and she comes to us afterwards to say thank you for the best birthday and party ever!

Side note: my two favourite party quirks about our SJ are:

She now requests an “after party”. Two years ago, a few families stayed after the official party had ended as the kids were still having so much fun on the slip-and-slide, we ordered some pizza and parted until bed time. So, last year SJ decided to ask a handful of her best friends to stay after the party had ended and we had a braai and again, partied until bedtime. This year, the same happened and we had a homemade pizza night and then her two besties even slept over. Apparently this is now a party tradition.
She doesn’t have a gift wish list. When I asked her this year what she would like for her birthday, she said she would love anything, as long as it was a surprise (this follows on from last year when she asked for a hot pink yo-yo and pencil sharpener and that is it!). This can make it quite difficult to shop for her but the truth is – she really does love anything. She loves dress up clothes and accessories, she loves books and puzzles, she loves arts and crafts, she loves board games and fantasy play.

Back to the party celebrations – SJ decided on a carnival theme but asked for girl colours rather than red which apparently is a boys circus/carnival theme. The pink, blue and yellow seemed to go well together without it being too “girly”. We had lots of fun with the decor ideas, spray painted toy animals, reels of carnival tickets and party hats, and even more fun with carnival food – hot dogs, popcorn, slush puppy, toffee apples and the cutest clown cupcakes.

SJ was also adamant that we had to include circus games – this after she asked why the actual circus that comes to town, couldn’t come to her party and set up their full circus tent and ferris wheel in our garden?! I love her imagination and big thinking/dreams!

We hired a face painter, ballooner shaper and a clown who did a magic show and then played fun games with the kids: egg and spoon race, tug of war and the limbo.

Safe to say that for the 7th year in a row this was SJ’s BEST PARTY EVER!