Irish Dance Birthday Party

It is no surprise that when I asked my daughter what theme she might like for her 8th birthday that she said Irish Dance! Most of her friends are girls that she dances with (and those that are not she has taught all the dances to at school!), so I thought perfect!



It was a pretty easy theme to come up with ideas for, but a little hard to shop for. Since her birthday is at the beginning of January, it is hard to find Irish stuff since the stores don't start putting it out until the mid-end of January. For some reason Halloween starts getting put out at the end of the summer, but St. Patrick's Day stuff won't see daylight until mid-January!

Anyway, I wasn't really throwing a St. Patrick's Day party, however, there are so many cute ideas that can go for both an Irish/Irish dance theme and St. Patrick's Day. Sarah and I decided that we would clean out the garage and let that be the spot they could dance. I had the Irish jig music playing in there and they had an open space to move around.


We then decided to do a couple of crafts and a game. We choose to do "decorate your own Irish dance solo dress" as one craft. Sarah and her friends do this activity at Irish Dance camp in the summer, but they only get to color the dresses. I thought it would be fun for them to get to actually decorate them with crystals, too, since that is what the dresses are really like! I thought the girls might be a little bored with this activity, but they really took to it and we had some amazing designs! For the other craft, we did "make your own lucky charm bracelet"! I basically cut green ribbon and knotted one end. Then they could slip on the concho beads and the charms how they like, and I just knotted the other end when they were done.

The dress outlines I got from her drawings from Irish dance camp. The colored pencils and sticky back crystals came from Target and Michael's.

The ribbons and beads you can get at Michael's and I ordered the charms from Oriental Trading.

For the game we did "hot potato"! Get it, potatoes, because they are Irish! Again, thought this game might be too young or too boring, but they so got into it! They LOVED it! We played it so many times that I ran out of prizes to give to the winners!

For food and drinks we kept it simple. The party was midday so I didn't have a full meal planned. We just had snacky foods and cupcakes! Her are the details:

*I did popcorn in a pot to resemble a pot of gold*
* Rainbow of fruits*
*Veggie plate with cheese in Irish Flag colors*
*Spinach & Parmesan dip with Tortilla Chips* (from Costco)

For drinks I had mini water bottles, Capri sun lemonades, and my Leprechaun punch!
(It is just lime sherbet and 7-up!)

I made the cupcakes at home. Sarah wanted green icing. Flags I got from Oriental Trading and Shamrock toppers from Michael's. Sarah and I had a hard time deciding on what to put in her cupcake, so we chose a green candle, and orange candle, a shamrock and rainbow candle, and a #8, of course. All of which I got at Party City.

Other party details are as follows:
These were the favors. I simple got green gift bags and affixed the "Keep Calm & Jig On" logo I found online.
Inside the bags were ghillie socks I bought at a local Feis, rainbow pops from Oriental Trading, green glow sticks, and green swirly straws.
For party hats I found the cutest leprechaun hats from Party City. I ordered them, but you can get them in the store. They are more St. Patrick's Day than Irish dance, but Sarah LOVED them!


I also had other ideas that I did not do. Only because it was getting over the top they were just a little more complicated than I wanted to take on. Here are some of those ideas:

*For the charm bracelets I could of used real lucky charms, like the cereal ones, but they were sort of hard to find at a good price. Most of what I found was already affixed in a bracelet anyway.
* I could have given small boxes of Lucky Charm cereal away in the favor bags.
*I thought about having the party start mid morning and do an Irish Breakfast for food. Not a typical Irish breakfast, but breakfast foods that kids would like and just call it an "Irish Breakfast". I would have done pancakes, fruits, yogurts, donuts with green sprinkles, and hot chocolate.
*We wanted to give away these cookies as favors, but I could not find the cookie cutters. They seem to be discontinued, but would have been perfect for the theme!
www.reelyclever.com
*I also thought about giving out chocolate gold coins as prizes for games.
* You can also do a cute little "photo booth" or decorate a cute St. Patty's day back drop and have the kids hold these for cute pictures!
Go to www.paperandcake.com to purchase!

So all in all it is a super fun theme and there are SO many great ideas! I have to say the party was a success, but the best thing of all was the fact that Sarah got her first custom made solo dress from Ireland delivered on her birthday! It was so perfect and so exciting!