Sunny by Design: Pajama Glam Birthday party

What do you get when you take eight giggling girls, a table bed, lots of zebra and leopard print, tons of pink, feathers, glitter, nail polish and of course cake. A Pajama Glam Sleepover party.

Marina has always known what she wants and her birthday party was no different. From beginning to end she was involved with planning, colors scheme, assembly and painting. Any party that requires painting and assembly is good indeed.

It all started with this adorable table bed I found on pinterest for a Night Owl Party from Snowy Bliss. A wonderful blog by the way, very creative with gorgeous photography. Well after seeing this bed how can you not be a fan.

Marina didn't want owls but she did want animal print and loved the bed idea so we ran with it and this is what we came up with.

WARNING! GET READY FOR LOTS OF PINK!

(I'm really sorry about that, it just kind of happened.)

I created the headboard from cardboard and paint. The pillows are also cardboard and Marina helped with a lot of the painting, to her joy. She's such a creative person and I love encouraging that.

I wanted to do more of these but ran out of time. I just love paper poms and can't get enough of them. I also found these lanterns that actually light up. I thought that since most of the party would be in the evening we could light them, but they ended up being too dim.

I've seen rosette cakes all over the internet so couldn't resist making one for my sweet girls special day. It was much easier than decorating a cake and having to mix several different colors. This was just one color and one style of decoration. Don't look too closely though or you'll see all my mistakes.

Cake banners are another one of my new favorite things. I have terrible cake handwriting skills. So being able to place a cute little paper banner on top is much more attractive than being subjected to my shaky handwriting.

To say crafting supplies are limited here is an understatement. Living in Germany makes it very difficult to find anything and this boa was the only one I found. I had plans to place one on the table where the girls were eating or maybe the chairs and one on the spa table but that didn't happen. Yes there was a spa table but we'll get to that later.

We did have a zebra cake, with chocolate stripes running through it. I got this idea and recipe from Pinterest as well, which led me to The Whimsical cupcake and the recipe I found there. I didn't have Dutch process cocoa which would have made the stripes much darker. I still think it turned out great and the dramatic stripe effect was achieved.

One thing I will recommend is this cake was very good the first day (since I sampled the piece I had to cut off the top to make it level), but every day after that it got more and more dry. I always make my cakes a couple days in advance so this didn't work to well for me. So if you make this cake bake and serve it the same day.

There was another version I found at My Cake School, using cake mix batter and I'm thinking this one would have been moister.

These were just peanut butter cookies, dyed pink, with Hershey hugs instead of kisses on top. I found the recipe and a great tutorial here at Life is Sweets.

We also had Raspberry White Chocolate dessert shots. I saw a picture of these on the web and decided to come up with my own recipe. They came out very yummy and quite pretty I think. These could easily be used for Valentine's day too.

The Zebra Truffles were of course Oreo truffles, but they were striped inside and out for the occasion. I made the stripes on the inside by using golden Oreos and chocolate oreos, pressed together. I know I make these a lot but they are always a hit so they're kind of a must have now.

We also had striped strawberry Pocky sticks. These were super easy to make. I just melted some chocolate chips and drizzled the stripes on the sticks. My kid's love Pocky sticks and the pink fit in perfectly with the table. My kids love these and if you've never tried them they are a must. They are also very yummy with hot chocolate.

The apothecary jars were a huge hit. I gave the girls small plastic bags and let them fill them with the candy and cookies from the jars to take home. The fruit candy and Marshmallows are German treats that are always a hit. One little girl filled her entire bag with the fruit candies (which are kind of like gigantic skittles, but way better).

To create the table bed I placed a pink fleece blanket over the top and layered it with this beautiful organza fabric I found at an actual German craft store. Craft stores are few and far between here and usually tucked away and very hard to find. I also placed a banner on the front of the table that I designed for the party, which is now hanging on her bedroom door. I love being able to reuse party decorations.

We had a small spa station with mani and pedi things laid out. This area was well used during the party.

Marina also painted the entire spa sign herself. She did such a great job and I love that she is so creative and artistic.

Every girl received a pair of fuzzy socks, a dream journal, lip gloss, scented lotion, an emery board and pen, in their zebra striped makeup bag.

I made the dream journals by hand with cardstock for the cover and plain printer paper for the pages. I punched holes in the spine and threaded a ribbon through to hold it all together. The girls loved these books and were so cute curled up in their sleeping bags writing about their dreams. I really wish I'd gotten a picture.

For Dinner the girls made their own pizzas. My husband Tony manned the pizza station and oven. I never could have gotten through that chaos without him. They had a great time making pizza but trying to keep track of who's pizza was who's was nearly impossible.

Makeover anyone?
(Notice the sea of sleeping bags behind my sweet 8 year old).

After a very full night of painting nails, makeovers, movie watching, hide and seek, eating pizza and a multitude of sweets. The girls woke up the next morning to....

Banana strawberry smoothies, banana chocolate chip, and blueberry muffins.

Yes this party was a lot of work but so worth the effort in the end. All the girls were adorable and we all had a really good time with lots of wonderful memories to cherish forever. Isn't that what birthday parties are all about?