Dora the Explorer Birthday Tea Party

I can't believe Curly is already 4! Where did the time go, I wonder? It seems like just yesterday she was a tiny little baby fresh out of her month-long stay in the NICU, and we were beyond excited to take her home, and now she's almost the same size as her older sister and brother! In fact, we have people ask us all the time how old our twins (Monkey and Tater) are (to which we reply cheekily, "5 and 7" 😁), and I keep saying that in a few more months, people will be asking about our triplets, because she's so close to their size! 😂 

But enough about that; you wanna hear about her birthday party, right?

I love birthday parties. The ones I remember from my childhood were very low-key--friends over for supper or maybe to spend the night, cake and ice cream and presents, and lots of playing and laughter--but my mom wasn't the type to go all out for fancy decorations and themed parties. And that's totally fine; she wasn't really the DIY type, and we certainly didn't have the extra money for all those fripperies.

I never really missed them growing up, but I do enjoy a good party, I love themed anything, and I'm very much a DIYer, so I try to make my kids' parties all of the above. For me, there's just something so fun and satisfying about planning little details relating to things my children love to make the day extra special for them. 

At the same time, I figured out very early in Monkey's life that it is very easy for me to plan too much and then be totally stressed out trying to finish all the details and not able to enjoy the party when it happens; anybody else do that? 🙋So over the years, it seems like each party becomes more and more low-key, because, seriously, who are we kidding? All that our kids care about is that they get to play with their friends, eat cake (and other sweet stuff) and get lots of presents. Anything more than that is just a bonus in my book.

I also try to stick to a $100 budget when planning a party. Sounds impossible, you say? Well, I have a few tricks up my sleeve to achieve this. For starters, birthday parties are always at our house. It's a free venue, and we are blessed with a ginormous playroom for the kids and their friends to romp around in, so there you are--money saved.

I like to do themed food, but I always try to pick things that easily feed a crowd on a budget; even so, most of my $100 budget probably goes to food. (I'm not confident in math, so I usually just guestimate 😉.) That's okay, because my decorating budget is usually under $20...and I count plates, cups, etc. as part of the decorations. I make most of the actual decorations (there's so much free stuff online if you just take the time to look!) and I'm not above recycling decorations from one year to the next if it fits that child's theme that year. So, let's talk about Curly's party!

Curly is obsessed with Minnie Mouse, and for the last three years, she has wanted a Minnie Mouse party; unfortunately (for her) I have a strict rule of no repeat themes for each child (what can I say? I like variety!), and we did Minnie Mouse for her 2nd birthday, so I encouraged her to think of something else. Fortunately, she also loves Dora the Explorer, and she loooves to have tea parties, so I suggested we combine the two, and her party was born!

Next, the planning stage. I love Pinterest for this. I always make a board for each child’s party, where I pin anything that has to do with their chosen theme that year, and then as the party gets closer, I cull the ideas down to what I actually plan to do. Pinterest is especially great for helping me find all those free decorations online I mentioned earlier; usually I just download to my computer, print, laminate (I love, love, love my laminator!) and then assemble if necessary. For this party, I found these free Dora the Explorer decals that I used to decorate the party favor bags and make the centerpiece for the cake. If you’re interested in them, you can find them at this website. (Spoiler alert: it's in Portuguese--you may want to translate 😏).

I’m also always on the lookout at flea markets, thrift stores, and the clearance aisles in my favorite stores throughout the year for things that I can use for the kids’ birthday parties, so I’m able to find things for very little money. For example, since Curly was having a tea party, I knew I wanted something a little bigger and more food safe than her tiny little plastic playset to use in the party, so we found this cute little sugar and creamer at a thrift store for less than $1. They were painted that horrible 1970s olive green (the only shade of green I truly hate), but Jimmy stripped them down to their original aluminum, sealed them, and turned and painted little lids to go on top (they had none), so that Curly ended up with the cutest, sturdiest little tea set you could imagine! I think they turned out beautiful, don’t you?

Where's the teapot you say? It's right here, double-serving as a vase for the strawberry roses that are one of my favorite Pinterest finds. It was also found at a thrift store (the same one as the sugar and creamer, in fact) for next to nothing, despite being made of solid silver! Score!

Another thing I like to use for parties are those tiered serving trays because they don’t take up a lot of space, except…..I don’t have any. No problem! Another Pinterest idea I found several years ago: take some glass candlesticks and some chargers in the color of your choice and hot-glue them together to make two-layer servers. The hot-glue is strong enough to hold them together as long as you need them, yet easily pops apart after the party for easy storage (because let’s face it: that is a really awkward shape to store!).

I found the glass candlesticks for $1/pair at a thrift store, and the chargers are $1 apiece at Dollar Tree, so for very little money, I’ve got something I can use year after year for multiple parties. The only downside to these servers is that both levels are the same width, but I haven’t noticed over the years anyone having problems getting to the food, so who cares?

I have learned that you can find some really nice things for parties at the Dollar Tree if you’re just willing to look and (sometimes) bide your time till the right season. I loved the Pinterest idea of making fancy tea hats at the party—because what little girl wouldn’t have fun with that?!?—fortunately, Curly’s birthday is right before Easter, so I was able to find straw hats for $1 apiece at the Dollar Tree. Add in some 97 cent ribbon from Walmart, some (on-sale) flower stickers from Hobby Lobby and some feathers from our own craft bin, and the girls were ready to go to town!

I think their creations turned out pretty cute, too!

Because this was a double-themed party, there wasn’t a ton of Dora stuff—sorry, if that’s what you’re looking for—it was more half Dora and half tea party. The tea party was the hats, the fairy bread (another recipe I found on Pinterest), the strawberry roses (Pinterest!), the flowered plates and tablecloths, the “fancy” serving trays and tea set; the Dora part was the party favors, the Jello star jigglers, and the rainbow cake.

For the party favors, more recycling. We had a Dora the Explorer coloring and sticker book that had seen its day but still had most of the sticker pages intact, so I simply cut the intact pages out and put one in each bag. Voila! Free stickers! (And much bigger than anything I could buy in a store!) I added in a balloon (because every child I know is obsessed with balloons!), some Dollar Tree toy rings, heart-shaped bubble wands leftover from Monkey’s class valentines and heart-shaped crayons the kids and I made.

These heart crayons were another Pinterest idea—one I have wanted to try literally for years! I had recently cleaned out our (very full) crayon box and culled all the broken ones into a bag. The kids helped peel all the wrappers off, and then I cut them up, put the pieces in a silicone heart baking mold and baked them on 320 degrees for about 20 minutes. They turned out so cute that I don’t even mind I can’t use that mold for baking anymore! (I see more heart-shaped crayons in our future. 😉)

Last, but not least, the cake. Three things that you see a lot on Dora the Explorer are stars (hence the Jello jigglers), rainbows and flowers, so it made sense to me to combine the last two into a cake. Plus, it was really fun dying cake batter! I’m not going to go into a lot of specifics on the cake because that’s next week’s blog, but I will tell you it was a vanilla pudding cake with strawberry filling and cream cheese icing. Yum! 😋 The flowers I made out of colored candy melts, and those were a BIG hit!

There weren’t a lot of kids at the party because, not being in daycare or preschool yet, Curly doesn’t know very many people her age, but all of her favorite people were there, so she had a great time, and that is a successful party in my book!

If you would like to see my Pinterest board where I collected all the different ideas for this party--used and unused--the link is right here. Who knows? You might find something you can use for your little girl's next party! 😉