October marks the birth month of my daughter, Naomi and this year she turned 3. It was the first party in our new house so I kind of went all out for it. A Frozen theme was the front runner for awhile. It’s definitely her favourite movie ever! But we had just gone to a friend’s Frozen party so I wanted to do something different. I landed on a Shimmer and Shine birthday party instead.
If you have found this post you probably have already heard of Shimmer and Shine but if not let me introduce you. Shimmer and Shine is a Nickelodeon TV show with 4 seasons about twin genies who grant wishes for their human friend Leah. It used to be on the Australian STAN streaming platform until right before Naomi’s birthday. They must have recently lost the rights. What sad timing though! If Frozen is Naomi’s favourite movie than Shimmer and Shine is her favourite TV show.
Invites
As usual the first thing to organise when throwing a party is the invites! I always like to design something special to fit the theme. But then I save money by just posting it as a Facebook event. Naomi’s little friends don’t have Facebook but all their mums do. Yes a lovely printed invite is nice… but it just goes right in the bin once they write the details in their diary/on their calendar. This is the invite I used to match the Shimmer and Shine birthday party theme.
Decorations
The area where I live has a Buy Nothing page on Facebook. If you haven’t heard of the concept, it’s a page where you can either #give or #ask. No money is involved. It kind of works like a pay it forward type concept instead. When you receive so much love and gifts, it’s not hard to give back anyway you can. When I decided on the theme for this party, I asked on there if anyone had anything suitable for decorations that I could borrow. I ended up receiving a bunch of gold fabric, gold puff ball hanging decorations, cushions and a balloon pump. I hung the gold puff balls on the main backdrop as well as over all the curtains in the house.
After that I searched thrift stores for anything else I could find as I had plenty of time to prepare. I ended up getting tablecloths and pink plastic plates, random fabric pieces and the rest of the cushions from the thrift stores. In the end, I only had to buy a few things brand new – gold cutlery (which no one even used so apparently they aren’t necessary), balloons in suitable colours, balloon arch tape and paper cups.
The black backdrop and stand I already owned for my filming studio. It worked great to drape all the fabric over and hang the birthday banner and balloon arch from. The happy birthday banner and the magic carpet place mats I printed and made myself. Again they are available in the free resource library for your use.
I used our dining table to display all the food with the pink plastic tablecloth draped over it. To add in more colour and make it looks more luxe, I used the random bits of fabric to create table skirt by attaching them to the tablecloth with safety pins. I did the same thing with the coffee table I used for the children to sit at. I’m thrilled with how the decorations turned out!
Favours
For favour bags I bought 4 light purple paper bags and 4 teal ones and glued Shimmer and Shine heads onto the front of them. You can buy specially themed Shimmer and Shine party bags online but I liked the look of these better. It would have been cheaper to go with the premade ones though. Unless you can find the bags cheaper elsewhere.
I chucked some Shimmer and Shine temporary tattoos inside with a Shimmer and Shine mini colouring in book that I made. The PDF for these are in the free resources library if you’re interested.
The bag was left mostly empty because the idea was they could fill it up with their loot from the pinata. They also got to choose a cuddle buddy from the beanie boo pets to take home. Upon entry to the party they also received either a genie circlet or a genie vest to wear which I made myself. I took inspiration from DIY with Ollie’s video to make my genie circlets and downloaded a toddler vest template from The Sewing Rabbit. Explanation sheets for Genie Headbands, Cuddle Buddy Day and the Make Your Own Genie Wrist Cuffs are also in the free resource library if you’re looking to do the same yourself.
Costumes
I bought a Shimmer costume for Naomi to wear from Big W as she is her favorite character from the show. You can also get the Shine costume there as well. I ended up buying it for one of Naomi’s friends to wear. The costume comes with a ponytail extension but I swapped that out for a pink wig I bought on eBay for $14.95 . Naomi doesn’t really have enough hair yet for a ponytail to hold the extension in it. On the day she wasn’t really too keen on putting the wig on though. She kept it on for all of about 10 mins. It’s a pity but I plan to get a second wear out of all our costumes for Halloween.
I wanted to dress up as Princess Samira for the party. But there were no pre-made adult costumes of her available anywhere so I had to make my own. I ended up buying purple wide leg pants, a purple corset, a pink mesh top and pink flats from Shein. That was the extent of my plan. But then the purple of the pants and the corset didn’t match at all.
They looked a bit strange so I decided to make the skirt cape thing Samira wears around her waist to hide the transition of purples. I made it myself by attaching a couple of panels of blue and pink fabric I got from Spotlight to a white elastic belt I had lying around. It turned out better than I thought it would. I also bought a mint green wig off Ali-express for me for $70. I used a purple Pony O to create a fluffy pony tail on the wig just like the character from the show.
Husband’s are harder to convince to dress up so I kept it simple for him. I made him a blue vest with gold trim that matched the other little boys vest, to wear over a neutral outfit. It was comfy enough that he was happy to wear it. He fitted in nicely with our costumes though as well.
Naomi had the absolute best time ever at her Shimmer and Shine birthday party, as did everyone who came. It was a lot of effort for sure but I think it was worth it. I started planning and preparing almost 3 months in advance though. That was what allowed me to source everything so affordably and DIY most of the elements myself. I wouldn’t recommend trying to do all this in a couple weeks. You’ll be stressed out of your mind! If you use any of the elements I designed for this, I’d love it if you tag me @stylewithingrace on social media. I’d love to see how your Shimmer and Shine birthday party goes! Good luck!
This is just the first in a series of posts about this party because there was seriously a lot involved. Stay tuned for my posts about the themed food, drinks and cake I served as well as the crafts and games we played.
