We celebrated my daughter's 5th birthday this weekend.
I found great ideas on this web site for her Barbie Birthday Party. We decorated with the usual pink/purple ballons, Barbie poster and some construction paper flowers that my daughter and I made together. I have always loved the Barbie cake that you can make or buy with the cake being the doll's dress. I decided to do this but with Kelly dolls for each of the kids to decorate their own doll's dress. I actually had a hard time finding enough Kelly dolls when I was looking for them, but found some great little dolls at the Dollar Store that had little accessories included. I found that cupcakes were too small for these dolls, but found some mini bundt pans at Walmart and they worked perfectly and gave the dolls more of a hoop dress appearance. I baked the cakes (10 bundt cakes and 1 cup cake for the nbr 5 candle). Then placed a doll (body and hair wrapped in plastic wrap) in the center of the cake and frosted. When the guests arrived they got to pick out their doll/cake that I had prepared. I had already frosted them with pink frosting but the girls got to add additional white and/or purple frosting that I bought in tubes for ease. I also found some great pastel sprinkles in butterfly, flower and heart shapes along with the usual types of sprinkles to decorate the dresses with too. Then I put a (balloon shaped) name tag (made out of construction paper and attached to drink stirrer)in each cake. When they finished decorating their dolls they each got to decorate a Fairy Tale Princess type hat. I bought pink poster board and rolled into a cone shape. They decorated them by glueing heart, lips, and flower shaped confetti to the hat and then each girl got to choose a pink or purple ribbon of tulle to hang down from the top of the hat (I inserted the end of the ribbon through the little hole at the top of the cone and made them long enough to hang past their shoulders). We played pass the present (idea from this web site). When the music played the girls passed a present (inside a present, inside a present etc.) , when the music stopped, whoever had the present got to open it and then would be out, then the game would continue until each girl "won" a present. Then they played the Barbie clothes scavenger hunt (another idea from this site). We split into two teams. I showed the girls pictures of two very different dressed Barbies and told them they needed to find the clothes for their teams Barbie. This game didn't really work as planned, because both teams brought the clothes for both dolls and it was too confusing for me to keep track who was on which team and what clothes they were supposed to get. But they all had fun finding the clothes and I had planned for everyone to get a prize for this game anyway. Next was cake and icecream. We put all of the doll cakes on the table together with their balloon name tags (my daughters also had balloons that said Happy Birthday) and had all of the girls stand behind them for pictures. Then we sang Happy Birthday and while I was getting icecream out and serving it, my husband took individual pictures of each girl and their doll cake. When cake and icecream was over, we cleaned up the dolls and slipped them into their goody bags (that already contained the dolls clothes and accessories along with other stuff). I tied each goody bag to a helium balloon. After opening presents the girls each got to take home their goody bag and balloon. I made thank you cards with the group picture of the girls and their cakes on the front and their individual picture on the inside.