A Winnie the Pooh Birthday Party and the Hundred Acre Wood with desserts and treats featuring Winnie and Piglet.
We had just visited Disney World before my youngest daughter's 8th birthday. She loves pigs and used her souvenir money to buy a small stuffed Piglet toy in the gift shop at the end of the Winne the Pooh ride in Magic Kingdom. She carried Piglet around the entire trip.
When we got home, she asked to watch some episodes of Winnie the Pooh. Typically children discover this show at a much younger age, but that's ok. She loved it so much, that she asked for a Winnie the Pooh Birthday Party.
In my internet searching, I came across mostly Baby Showers and 1st birthdays with this theme, not parties for 8 year olds. This presented the first challenge: to gear this theme toward an older child but still keep the whimsy of the Winnie the Pooh series.
For her 5th birthday, we did a Snow White forest theme, so I thought I could reuse some of those decorations to represent the Hundred Acre Wood. My sister let me borrow her woodland decor again, and my mom had a few things as well.
As with all of the parties I throw, I did my best to use craft supplies I already had on hand. I did purchase a few new items, like the dessert table backdrop.
This party turned out very cute and age-appropriate but would also work for a shower or younger child.
Decorations and Crafts
I centered the dessert table around a Winnie the Pooh backdrop with a birthday theme. I often find that a good backdrop can really add a lot to the theme for a small cost. I did the same with this Wizard of Oz Birthday Party.
These yellow and gold balloons hid the top of the backdrop and helped bring in more color.
I borrowed the dark green tablecloth from my mom and the woodland decor, including the faux tree stumps, owl, and large acorn, from my sister.
For the disposables, I chose this plates, napkins, cups and cutlery set because I liked the honeycomb pattern.
These cute honeycomb Winnie the Pooh disposable tablecloths were perfect for the buffet, the kids' table, and the adults' table and coordinated with the paper products.
These adorable Daisy snack plates are from Walmart and fit the forest theme.
To make these honey pot decorations, I purchased terra cotta pots, both large and small, at a hardware store. I added globs of yellow acrylic paint to the top rim of the pots to look like honey overflowing from the pot. I filled them with yellow tissue paper to represent the honey inside, then I wrote "HUNNY" with one of the N's backwards on them with black permanent marker.
For this centerpiece, I filled a large wooden oval dough bowl with moss balls, white candles, and these little felt bumble bees.
The bees are so cute that I found so many places to put them in other decor and on the dessert table.
This adorable little jar of honey was a gift from some neighbors who have bees on their property.
I had some butter mints leftover from the Parisian Cafe Party, so I placed them in a bowl with a small wooden scoop from the hot cocoa bar at the Starbucks Party.
When I can, I like to incorporate a signature drink, like this Emerald City Punch at the Wizard of Oz Party or Fancy Hot Chocolate at the Parisian and Starbucks parties.
Here, I mixed powdered Country Time Pink Lemonade with water according to the package instructions and added lemon slices on top.
For the dessert labels, I glued wooden craft sticks together and wrote on them with a thin black permanent marker. To reflect the often misspelled and backwards lettering present in Winnie the Pooh books and film, I wrote the labels with some phonetic spelling and occasional backwards letter.
I placed the signs inside tiny terra cotta pots filled with faux moss.
Dessert Table
At the center of the dessert table, I displayed assorted macarons from Costco on a clear acrylic 3-tiered server.
I placed these honey sticks in a glass mason jar labeled with light brown cardstock cut to look like a wooden board sign and attached to the jar with hemp twine.
To make "Rabbit's Keritz," I loosely followed this Chocolate Covered Strawberries recipe, but followed the instructions on the package of orange candy melts for melting them.
Typically, I do this by microwaving the candy at 50% power in 30-second intervals, stirring after each interval. You must be careful not to overheat them or they will seize up. Then, I piped on the orange stripes by placing the melted candy in a disposable piping bag with the tip cut off.
I served the "keritz" by placing them on a bed of crushed Oreo cookie "dirt."
I poured Honeycomb Cereal into this clear glass trifle dish and then placed a metal scoop inside. I attached a piece of brown cardstock for the label with some hemp twine.
I made tiger striped pretzel rods for my oldest daughter's Daniel Tiger Birthday Party when she turned 2. I decided to do these again and call them "Tigger Tailz" after seeing other examples on Pinterest.
To make them, I dipped pretzel rods into melted orange candy melts about half way up the rod. After they had set, I melted semi-sweet chocolate chips in the microwave in 30-second intervals at 50% power. I placed the melted chocolate in a disposable piping bag with the tip cut off and made stripes on top of the orange candy.
I placed these Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies inside one of the honey pots filled with brown parchment paper.
Considering Piglet calls acorns "haycorns," these No Bake Chocolate Acorn Cookies were the perfect addition to this theme. I served them on a white plate surrounded by these decorated white fudge Oreos.
When doing a lot of desserts, I like to take a few shortcuts when I can and chocolate covered Oreos (and graham crackers) are one of my favorite ways to do that.
To make these Oreos with bee details, I tinted some Easy Royal Icing with yellow food coloring gel and piped on the body of the bee, then I piped on white wings with untinted royal icing. After that had set, I piped black royal icing stripes.
For the little dashes that show the path of the bee, on some of the cookies I used a black edible food marker and some I used black royal icing. I had some trouble with the marker getting gummed up with the waxy coating on the Oreos, so that's why I switched to royal icing for some of them.
I also made Cut Out Sugar Cookies with Easy Royal Icing using a large round biscuit cutter and did three designs: Piglet's face, Winnie the Pooh's face, and a honeycomb with a bee buzzing around it. I will share more details on how to make these cookies in a later post.
Piglet Cake
My daughter wanted a Homemade Ice Cream Cake for her birthday cake. This always presents a decorating challenge.
She asked if I could "paint" Piglet on the ice cream cake. At first, I laughed and thought "absolutely not," but then I started thinking about it more.
I realized I could tint the whipped topping and sort of spackle it onto the cake like the popular palette knife cakes. I will share more details on the process in a future post.
Briefly, I froze the assembled cake with the whipped topping on top. Then, I used a toothpick to sketch out the Piglet design I wanted. Next, I used a small offset spatula to spread out 2 different shades of pink. Finally, I used black store bought frosting to pipe the details and outline.
We have this small plastic bunch of balloons that was my grandma's. She used it on some birthday cakes. I had Piglet's arm positioned up so I could place the balloons on the cake as if he were holding them. Balloons are very essential to the Winnie the Pooh theme.
Aside from the black frosting bleeding a little into the whipped topping, this Piglet Birthday Cake was quite successful.
Sources
Piglet shirt
Winnie the Pooh backdrop
Balloons
Winnie the Pooh disposable tablecloths
Winnie the Pooh plates, napkins, and cups set
Honey sticks
Felt Bumble Bees
3-Tiered server
Terra cotta pots - Lowe's
Yellow acrylic paint - Walmart
Butter mints
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