Karaoke birthday party

Hi friends! I hope your weekend has been good. We've had such a full weekend of fun, celebrating our eldest daughter's 9th birthday. That's her above, wearing the dress she and my husband picked out for her birthday (it's an annual tradition called Daddy-Daughter Dressy Day that they've been doing since her first birthday).

One of my daughter's dreams when she grows up is to be a pop star or a songwriter, so I thought a karaoke birthday party would be the perfect theme for her. I kept it a secret from her right up until the morning of her party, when I started slapping American Idol signs around the place. She didn't actually know what American Idol was, so I had to explain it was a singing competition and that we were going to be doing karaoke for her party.

I would have done something more current for the theme, like X-Factor or The Voice, but my daughter had picked blue for her party colour scheme and that perfectly matched the American Idol logo, so that was the theme I ran with. Together we had made a balloon arch out of dark blue and light blue balloons tied together with fishing twine. It was pretty simple to make (we watched a YouTube tutorial) and looked really striking.

Party guests signed in as competitors at the door and got an American Idol contestant number stuck to their chests.

We'd borrowed a karaoke machine from my lovely neighbour and we hooked it up to our iPad so we could play YouTube karaoke songs. It was a neat set up because the kids could search for any song they wanted to sing.

We didn't actually hold a singing competition during the party - I thought that would end in hurt feelings, so the American Idol concept was more thematic, although most of the guests did have a go with a microphone at one point or another.

I kept the party food fairly simple - vegetable crudites and hummus, a fruit platter of pineapple, grapes and strawberries (man those strawberries went fast), sausage rolls, cheerio sausages and potato chips.

The birthday girl has been learning cursive for homeschool, so I had her write her guests' names in vivid on individual glasses so they could reuse their glasses throughout the party. We served juice and water infused with strawberries and lemon for party drinks.

My daughter doesn't really like cake, so we have got into the tradition of making her ice cream cakes for her birthdays instead. My talented sister-in-law, Mandy, assembled this cake for us, which was made with salted caramel ice cream on the bottom and peppermint chocolate chip ice cream on top. She decorated it with mini flakes and MnMs for a splash of colour.

As well as the karaoke entertainment, we ran a few classic party games: pass-the-parcel, musical-cushions (although we had to cut that one short when my son got landed on), and chase-Paul-to-rip-the-lollies-off-him.

Paul then took all the kids to the local playground for a run around, and we finished the party with a spa in our lovely neighbour's spa pool.

It was a really fun day and we were lucky that the weather was beautiful for it too. My daughter was so happy with how it all went and had an amazing time with her friends and family.