My daughter just turned 3! When I asked her throughout January, what kind of birthday party she would like, she repeatedly informed me “Butterflies!” So I was all set to go with that theme. Ada loves bugs and exploring in nature, and her favorite color is purple, and she’s just so dang happy most of the time. It seemed perfect. Then one day while FaceTiming, my mom asked her what kind of birthday she was going to have. When Ada again answered “Butterflies!” my mom responded with, “Don’t you want a Bluey birthday party? You love Bluey!”
And with that, everything changed. Ada started asking for a Bluey party. But since a 3 year old isn’t really able to articulate specifics beyond “with a cake!”, I decided to try to combine the ideas. Flappy, a dark blue and turquoise butterfly, appears in 2 episodes of Bluey, including a very poignant 28-minute episode, called The Sign. (Most are 7 minutes long.) Bluey & her family are facing moving away from their home in Brisbane, and are all looking for signs about whether things will turn out well. Flappy helps them figure some things out.
Decorations
For decorations, I decided to go with Flappy’s natural environment; Bluey’s backyard. The whole show is a color palette I would call ‘deep pastel’. Not quite baby-soft colors, but everything has a touch of white in it. I found some beautiful tissue paper flowers on Amazon, in the exact right shades. They came in several sizes, and had an inner layer of shorter pale cream petals which look like the stamen and pollen, and longer colorful petals on the outside. They took a while to fluff up each one, so I did one any time I had a spare 10 minutes, over the last month or so. I also found some awesome blue butterflies in the floral section of Michael’s, and picked them up. They are made of painted feathers and built onto clips, so I was able to clip them to the other decorations.
Any good garden party should have bunting. Since I didn’t have time to make a whole adorable scrappy bunting (the kid rarely naps anymore! 
), I ordered this purple one from Amazon. I was honestly impressed with the quality for $16, and can see using it again for a tea party or other springtime event. A few clip butterflies made it onto some of the pennants too!
The Happy Birthday sign was from Walmart, and isn’t all that impressive, but I was leaning on the bunting and flowers to help elevate the banner. It did help to bring in a touch of kid-recognizable Bluey-ness.
Next we needed special guests! I found the giant Bluey & Bingo balloons, as well as the blue butterfly balloons, on Amazon. They were the easiest part. Just 10 minutes of blowing them all up with a straw, and some tape to get them to stay on the walls. I worried they wouldn’t stay up, but I hung them last Sunday morning, and they are all still there.
The final items were butterfly crafting blanks that I painted. The ceramic dishes were from Joann’s, pre Liquidation announcement. They got a few coats of paint, and several of sealer. I filled them with gummy candy butterflies. (All the kids loved running in to pick out a favorite color gummy, and stare longingly at the cake, before running off to play some more.) I had intended to hang the wooden butterflies around the room, but was out of Command hook pads, and kept forgetting to pick up more of them, so they just never got hung up. I ended up placing them all around the table, in between dishes of food. (One did make it as far as hanging off the chandelier!)
Clothing
I had no idea what I was going to dress the kiddo in. I had seen plenty of shirts you can order on Etsy, saying things like “This Episode of Bluey is called Ada Turns Three!” But they felt a bit cheesy, and would she really wear it again later? I looked for regular Bluey outfits, but they didn’t go great with the purple & butterfly theme. (Most were blue.) Then while walking through Target in February, I bumped into this purple tee, with a lace butterfly on it.
Nearly perfect! I grabbed some fabric paints, and painted in the sections, to look like Flappy’s coloring.
Ada picked out a little floral skirt to match, but she can be mercurial about her clothes. Sometimes she loves skirts and dresses, and sometimes she wants jeans. I figured I’d let her decide what to wear on the day, and I’m glad I did, as she decided jeans were better to play with all her friends in. But I added a final touch, of a pair of Bluey ears from Walmart, which she loved, and has been wearing again and again.
Cake & Treats
Speaking of treats…
Since I knew I’d be busy with all the other preparations, I ordered the beautiful decorated cookies from a local business called Fairytale Sweets. Brittany does an absolutely stunning job. She made cookies for our last two birthdays too, and every year they get more lovely. (I took a class in cookie decorating with her at our local library, and she’s also a great teacher.)
Here are details of my two favorites, Flappy and the “Wackadoo!” ones. There were also paw prints, bones that said Three, flowers, and dancing Bluey & Chili.
For the cake, I made a 4 layer white cake, with buttercream frosting, and a layer of blackberry jam. Upon personal reflection, there was too much frosting! I should have done 2 layers of jam filling, and just 1 layer of filled frosting. But Ada mostly just wants to eat the frosting, so she’d probably disagree with me.
The flowers and butterflies were premade candy decorations that I found at Joann’s.
I had intended to put the painted wooden Flappy that’s standing just to the left of the cake, on top, along with the little figures of Bluey & Bingo wearing flower crowns (from that same episode The Sign). But I couldn’t have fit the cake in the fridge with them on top, so I set them aside. When I pulled the cake out of the fridge on Sunday, the frosting was stiff enough that I couldn’t get Flappy to nestle in, without smooshing the frosting, and I feared if I did so, he might not stand up. So rather than possibly ruining my well frosted cake, I just put the figures all around.
Since I wasn’t sure how many of the flowers or butterflies I’d use, I had bought plenty, and was left with about a package of each one. Fearing a few picky eaters, and the possibility of not having enough cake for the number of people attending, I made a last minute batch of chocolate cupcakes, and decorated them with the leftover bits, and the half-batch of frosting I had left. This actually worked out great. One family with a 3 year old, had to leave early, before the cake was cut. Heartbreaking for a kiddo, so I was able to send them home with several cupcakes. Another friend who doesn’t like crowds wasn’t able to come, so I was able to send some home with his mom. I might normally be a bit embarrassed that I didn’t do a better job on these cupcakes (not thrilled with the icing swirls, but I made them at 4:00pm, after working on the cake decorating all day. I was of the opinion that “Done is good. Done is beautiful.”
The purple frosting came out a bit darker than I had intended, but the kids seemed to love it anyways, and the decorations stood out well against the deeper color.
My final bit of homemade insanity was Fairy Bread. For those of you not from Australia (or sometimes the UK), Fairy Bread is a staple at kids birthday parties there. It is white bread, buttered, then covered in Hundreds and Thousands (nonpariel) sprinkles. Since I’m always a bit Extra, and because I can’t let go of a good theme, I also used a cookie cutter to make them into butterflies. (For the record, I refused to eat one of these, and have no idea what I’m going to do with the leftover white bread, which no one in this house eats. 
)
Other food treats included Australian Tim Tam cookies found at Aldi, fruit salad, hummus, naan, and crudités, a cheese board with bread and crackers, spring rolls (Bandit and the spring rolls!), the closest thing I could find to Sausage Rolls (a Bosnian variation I found in the freezer section at Gordon Food Service), Spinach & Cheese Rolls, and soft pretzel bites.
Activities
Our friends in town have kids in a range of ages. Ada is the youngest at 3, and our neighbor’s have a 3 year old girl, but the rest range from 4 to 13. I knew that the older kids would feel a bit out of place at a toddler party, but that (since they still occasionally bring favorite stuffed animals to my house) they might actually have fun with craft projects too.
Pass the Parcel
We played Pass the Parcel, a staple at Australian & UK birthday parties. Similar to Musical Chairs, the kids gather in a circle, and music is played. The kids pass the wrapped gift around and around until the music stops, then whomever the parcel lands on opens one layer of wrapping paper. We did not play by “Lucky’s Dad’s rules” . I bought little gifts for each layer, and I kinda cheated. Since the kids were different ages, I bought a range of items, then carefully made note of what was in each layer (what color the wrapping was), and I stopped the music on the right kid for that gift. So the 13 year old that still likes art and Harry Potter got a grown up HP coloring book, and the 4 year old got the ‘big prize’, a big Bluey coloring book and a set of blue silk dress up butterfly wings to wear.
Suncatchers
Next I set up the cutting table in my studio to paint butterfly sun catchers. The blanks and the paint (which comes in little squeeze tubes like glitter glue) came from Walmart, and were pretty darn affordable per person at $1.37 each. I bought a few extras, and the adults jumped in to make some too! My favorite is Mothra, made by middle-schooler Miss Nora. This activity did permanently stain Ada’s new butterfly shirt, but oh well. We all make sacrifices to the crafting gods.
Tie Dyed Shirts
Our weather has been warmer and lovely lately, so I hoped we could spend some time outside with bubbles and sidewalk chalk. Our front yard is roomy, and our street is a quiet cul-de-sac with a grassy park in the middle that the kids could run around. (Plus there’s a tree swing!) I thought if the day was nice, we could do some tie dye. That ballooned into picking up about 20 colors of dye, and shirts for EVERYONE attending, about 28+ people. Instead we got terrible storms, including Tornado sirens going off just before the party. There was rain all afternoon, so we ended up doing all the dyeing in our garage. Here are some of my favorites.
Favor Bags
I wanted to keep the favor bags free from plastic garbage the parents would just have to throw out, and include things that would be interesting to a range of ages. I used these pretty striped bags from Michaels, and filled them with Bluey fruit snacks (even teens like fruit snacks), blue butterfly stickers, flower seeds that should grow well in this area, and blueberry & pomegranate Wiley Wallaby Australian style licorice. And each kid got to pick out their favorite of the decorated cookies to take home.
I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but that’s all right. We were finishing off treats and party foods for a few days, and we spent Monday just recovering from the festivities, and it’s taken a week to write up this post. I’m off to find another cup of tea. 
My favorite detail has to be that masterpiece of a cake! Blackberry jam sounds so good 
It sounds like you had a fun time with the challenge and it sure turned out wonderfully!
