Needles and a Pen » Knitting, Sewing, and Nursing School

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  • Welcome to my blog!

    Hi! I'm Traci. I'm a Registered Nurse who loves quilting, knitting, cross stitch, and the great outdoors. In my pre-scrubs life, I owned Real Photography, and you can still see my old wedding and portrait photography site here .

    I've created a map that shows links to our camping/hiking/general family fun review posts that you can find here. It's pretty much the coolest thing on this site. Thanks, Google!

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Spa Themed Birthday Party for Girls

For Ellie’s 8th birthday party we threw a Spa Birthday at home.  She loved it, and I think it will be a theme we likely revisit when she is older!

Party Favors:  The biggest plan-ahead part of this party are the spa robes.  These make a surprisingly affordable party favor at $3.75 each as long as you have at least a month to allow for shipping from China.  I purchased mine from this ebay seller, but there are many different ones to choose from on ebay.

I also made little makeup pouches for the girls using this perfect fabric (the blue is now out of print).  They are loosely based on the Cash and Carry pattern, but are unlined, the sizing is different, and they are made only of one fabric (basically I use the pattern as a tutorial for putting in the zipper).   The girls also got to take home their crafts (placed inside the makeup pouch).

Activities:  We made bath bombs, lip scrub, and lip gloss.  I was very glad to have Nic’s help for the craft portion.  The older girls (5th and 6th graders) had an easier time than my younger second graders, so don’t try to do this with young ones if you don’t have an extra set of hands!

For the bath bombs we used this recipe (funnily enough, even though I had googled recipes I ended up finding a recipe from someone I knew in my scrapbooking days–I got to do a few sample pages for her book).  For supplies, I used these molds and kid-friendly scents from Amazon as well as this citric acid.  Everything else I picked up at the grocery store. I was nervous that the bath bombs wouldn’t fizzle and would be a bust, but they worked out really well.  We even hid rings in the center of them so they would have a bath bomb surprise.

The lip scrub and lip gloss were based in coconut oil, with a little almond oil thrown in.  The lip scrub had brown sugar for its scrubbing base and for the lip gloss we used koolaid for color/flavor.   To hold the lip scrub and lip gloss, I got these little containers.

Along with the crafts, we also had face masks and pedicures set up.  The girls paired off so that one could receive her pedicure while the other girl did the pedicure.  This foot scrub made them all giggle and squirm.

Some of the biggest hits were the hot lemon-scented cloths and the punch.  I bought a bunch of cheap white washcloths and put them in the crockpot with water and lemon essential oil.  The girls loved them!

Treats: The punch was delicious.  Orange and pineapple sorbet, fresca, and frozen pineapple and lime juices with lemon slices.

The cake is based off one I found on Pinterest.  It’s two cakes baked in 8″ round cake pans fitted together (you’ll slice a section off one of the cakes so it nests against the other).  We used two tubs of white frosting and dyed one of them pink.  We dragged a fork through the towel for texture and then added sprinkles for texture (I think the sprinkles made a huge difference in ‘selling’ the towel portion of the cake).  My big recommendation is to wait until the last minute to place the cucumbers on the cake.  Even though I dried the cucumber slices, over the two hours between making the cake and serving the cake, the cucumbers began to weep and it looked like our spa lady was crying.  🙂

We used these marshmallow and tootsie roll nail polish treats for our centerpiece and they were both adorable AND easy (Ellie made most of them)!  Spray marshmallows with water, roll in sprinkles and set aside.  Poke a toothpick halfway into the center of a mini tootsie roll and then place the marshmallow on the other half of the toothpick.  Voila!

Cathi Murray - Oh my! This is the cutest thing I have ever heard of! What an awesome idea for a little girls party.