Pancake & Pajama Party

Happy Monday! We’ve been busy here at our house over the last week celebrating our middle daughter’s 7th birthday. This year we chose to throw a family party with a very low-key, but still very fun theme: Pancakes & PJs!

Ironically, this theme was perfectly fitting for our daughter, who loves to sleep in and snuggle up in her jammies. Guests were told to arrive casually in the morning still in their pajamas, robe & slippers and to come hungry!

We served up a hearty breakfast complete with scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, mini pancakes and sausage biscuits. My hubby is an excellent cook in this department! He loves serving up this kind of meal.

But we also had some healthier options, like these fruit and yogurt parfaits.

And what kids’ breakfast party would be complete without cereal & donuts? Bring on the sugar!

I found an adorable set of glass milk bottles with reusable straws and thought these would be great to include for the milk lovers at the party. These will be fun to have and use again for future parties too. (The set was on sale for $19.99 when I purchased them back in January. Right now they are out of stock online and it looks like the price went up a bit, but if you keep checking, it might go back down once their inventory is replenished.) 

We even had a “Pancake-Cake” (if there is such a thing?) which was made by combining a Funfetti cake mix with a pancake recipe. We made 7 huge pancakes on the griddle, then stacked them up with homemade vanilla frosting in between each layer. We then mounded the top with whipped cream and sprinkles, and served it with fresh strawberries. It was delicious!

I went pretty simple on our decor for this party. We hung red & purple streamers and some blue and purple tissue balls from the ceiling. I know I’ll be able to re-use these tissue balls for another party or occasion down the road.

I found a quirky and silly “Happy Birthday” banner from Amazon that fit my daughter’s personality spot on.

And did some original chalk art welcoming everyone to “Sofia’s House of Pancakes.”

Then I covered the counters and tables in brown kraft paper and had my creative sister-in-law help me out by “doodling” all over the areas where food items and place settings were. She did a great job, just winging it with some fun expressions and festive artwork.

Since this was a party with mostly grown-ups in attendance, we didn’t exactly plan a whole lot of games or activities, but we did still include a few.

I bought a plain white cotton pillowcase and laid out some fabric markers, asking guests to sign a birthday greeting or love note to our birthday girl. I know she’ll always treasure having something so heartfelt and one of a kind from her family.

For the littles that were there, we had string and fruit loops available to make an edible necklace. Even some of the grown ups were kind of excited to make one!

We also played a coloring contest game. I found a cute blank pajama printable coloring sheet from SproutOnline.com and printed off enough copies for everyone in attendance.

Guests were told to design their own pajamas, but not to include their names anywhere on the page.

After all the pages were colored, we laid them out for judging, and my daughter choose a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winner.

Here she is with her cousin who won 1st prize. The award? Epic bragging rights, a $42,000 gift card to Dave & Busters…and a Fruit Loop necklace! (Those first two things are kind of inside jokes from the movie Pitch Perfect 2…my husband and I were both in collegiate singing groups, and we are sort of a bit obsessed with these a cappella-inspired movies!) 

Our little Sleeping Beauty had a great time with a lot of people there that love her so much. It was a blast getting to throw such a different style of party for a change; definitely one I’d love to repeat again sometime. I mean, come on…who doesn’t love the idea of partying in their PJs?