Claire’s Willy Wonka Birthday Party
My daughter is 7 years old. SEVEN! I’m not sure how in the world that happened, but here we are.
Those of you that know me well know that I enjoy party planning. And, of course, there always needs to be a theme. It’s even better if it’s a themed based on a book! The last party I planned was her 5th birthday party (Charlotte’s Web themed, in case you were wondering). Last year, we had just moved to our current town and didn’t really know anyone, so we tried to make her birthday as special as possible, but didn’t have a party.
One of our favorite authors is Roald Dahl. He manages to capture the magic of childhood in a way that few other authors do. We’ve read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory multiple times and it’s one of our favorites! [We also recommend its little known sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.] So, when I asked Claire what kind of party she would like to have this year, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was her first suggestion!
Decorations
Since we moved to a smaller home (and don’t have access to a church fellowship hall), I had to think smaller in terms of decorations, but I still tried to find a few ways to Wonka-ify our home.
The Food
We did a simple afternoon party, so I didn’t provide a whole lot of food. Well, scratch that. I gave the kids a LOT of candy (sorry, parents!), but I only served cake, cupcakes, ice cream and aforementioned fizzy lifting drink.
Claire really wanted a cake with the chocolate river on it. I’m not cake decorator, so I tried to keep it simple. I used green fondant (my first time ever using fondant, which was intimidating) and dyed coconut for the grass, chocolate frosting for the river, and gumdrops, m&m’s and lollipops for additional decorations. I found the chocolate 7 candle holder at Party City. It seemed to fit perfectly on a Willy Wonka cake!
I also made cupcakes. The white W’s are white chocolate that I melted and then piped onto wax paper. Once they hardened in the freezer, they were ready to pop onto the cupcakes. I used Hershey bars for the some of the cupcakes also. You can’t tell in the picture, but I used gold foil cupcake wrappers (reminiscent of the Golden Tickets).
I also added this “lickable wallpaper” to the goodie bags. I tried to look for the candy buttons, but I couldn’t find them in any local stores (probably because they’re not even very good). So I cut out Fruit Roll Ups and put them on wax paper.
Party Games
Unfortunately, I didn’t take quite as many pictures during the party as I should have. I was having a lot of fun with the kids, so I didn’t get pictures of our first few activities.
The first thing we did was make our own candy bars! We pretended the kitchen was our inventing room. Each child got a silicone chocolate bar mold (the ones we used are listed here). I had a muffin tin with all kinds of different things they could put in their chocolate bars, such as marshmallows, Junior Mints, mini M&Ms, Reeses Pieces, white chocolate chips, peanuts and coconut. It was so fun to see each child’s unique creation! Since they made break apart bars, they could do different combinations in different squares. We put them in the freezer to ensure they’d harden by the time the party was over.
After we finished making our chocolate bars, we played Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Mad Libs. Claire has loved Mad Libs for years, so I knew it’d be a hit with her. We had some younger children (a few 3 and 6 year olds), so I made sure to review what nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs were every time I asked for one. I was only planning on doing one or two, but they kept begging for more.
After much giggling, we moved into the living room to pop Violet Beauregarde! Technically, Violet went to the Dejuicing Room after she turned into a blueberry, but doing water balloons would’ve been way too messy inside.
After Violet was completed “dejuiced,” we passed around a toy squirrel (like the one Veruca Salt wanted!) while music was playing. If the music stopped while you had the squirrel, you got to pick out some candy! I had Everlasting Gobstoppers and Nerds – both Wonka candies.
Lastly, we had a “photo booth.” I made a WonkaVision TV from poster board and drew the designs on it. I also bought some photo props to make it even more fun! The kids enjoyed it so much! I intend to put pictures of Claire with her friends in the thank you cards we send out.
After taking pictures, we enjoyed some cake (or cupcakes) and ice cream and Claire opened her gifts. It was a wonderful party! Claire loved having all her friends there and all the kids had fun. It might be my favorite party I’ve ever thrown.
Do you like to plan themed parties? What are some of your favorite themes you’ve done?
