A Despicable Me Minion Themed Birthday Party

Last week my youngest daughter celebrated a birthday and she settled on a Despicable Me "Minion" theme.  Thanks to Pinterest I had no shortage of great ideas for her party!  :)

For her invites I turned to this fabulous idea pinned HERE.  I made a few tweaks, but stayed fairly true to the original inspiration piece.  My main changes were shortening the overall card and hair so that it would fit in an A2 envelope and rounding the top corners to form my Minion head.   I also decided to play around with some basic circle and rounded square shapes on my Silhouette software and was able to replicate the "Gru" symbol with the help of same black vinyl.  If it's possible I just fell a little deeper in love with my Silhouette.  ;)

For our cupcakes I made the ever so popular minion cupcakes that are all over Pinterest.  My craftiness sort of stops in the kitchen.  I'm by no means a great cook or baker, but I found these pretty easy to execute.

I enjoyed the video found HERE.  While my daughter wasn't interested in using a banana flavored recipe I just used a standard yellow cake mix and a tub of blue Pillsbury frosting so I didn't even have to mess with dyeing it.  I was also pretty stoked to find pre-made eyes by Wilton at Michaels!  And while I'm rambling, can I just say how thankful I am for the comeback of Twinkies?!  None of the kids at the party knew what they are, but the parents were excited and they made the perfect minions.  :)

For my treat bags I was inspired by the treat bags pinned HERE and the cups pinned HERE.  I searched all over online for affordable yellow bags and finally settled on some from Oriental Trader, but I was not impressed.  They were quite small and had all sorts of quality issues.  Right after I placed my order I found some at Michaels that were larger, much nicer and would have been about the same price with a coupon.  :(

AND lastly I decided I would challenge myself to hurry and put together another digital layout (for my Christmas gift albums) to share with my post today. I kept it pretty simple with another awesome sketch by Allison Davis at Scrapbook Generation.  

As you can see from the party pictures we rounded out our minion theme with a pinata from Walmart.  The pinata was a pull-the-string variety and it seems like when we've done these in the past it breaks open with the first or second string pulled and several kids are always sad they didn't get a turn.  This year my sister had the bright idea of having everyone grab a string and pull together on the count of three.  They almost pulled her right off the bar stool she was kneeling on and the Minion lost his legs in the process, but I thought it was a clever idea.  :)

To create my layout I used the following kits available for purchase:

• Echo Park Summer Days Paper Pack
• Frosty Paper Pack by Lori Whitlock (for solid blue & blue polka-dot)
• Masking Borders 2 by Lori Whitlock
• Label Brushes Set A by Lori Whitlock
• Miss Kate's Yummy Ice Cream Cone (comes with both .png and .svg files).

Thanks for hanging with me!  Next up on my list are some quick thank you cards, but just between us I think I'm going to cheat and try my best to dress up some clip art.  ;)