My When I asked my daughter what theme she wanted for her 11th birthday party she said she wanted Paris, baking, and a fashion show. My daughter has been challenging me with multiple themes that don’t seem to go togther at first glance for years. Her bedroom afterall is Paris, unicorns and ballerinas. But when you think of Paris don’t you think ellegance and magical – and nothing is more ellegant than ballerinas or magical than unicorns. So, how did I tie her 3 ideas together this time? A Paris Cupcake Wars party with a DIY fashion show finale. Boom!
Once again, I rose to the challenge successfully. The girls all had SO much fun, and my daughter said it was her favorite birthday party ever, so that’s a win in my book! It was also very inexpensive. I’m thrilled to share with you our Cupcake Wars in Paris themed birthday party – keep reading for ALL the party details, plus some FREE party printables that I created and am sharing with you!
Table of Contents
Cupcake Wars Birthday Party Invitations
If you’ve seen Cupcake Wars, you know that it’s a fast-paced cupcake baking competition. Four teams compete in three challenges and one team is the ultimate Cupcake Wars champion. I modified it by doing just two teams of 3 girls.
I didn’t spend a ton of money on expensive invites because they just end up in the trash. For these invites I used Canva and printed them out at Walgreens for under $3 for 10 invites. I got 10 so if one invite was declined, we would send a invite to another girl on Livi’s list. Initially we were going to do 2 teams of 5 girls but at last minute 2 girls weren’t able to come but we rolled with it.
The great thing about Canva is that they have tons of premade templates to choose from and customize with the color, font, text and images of your choice. You can opt for the free version or the paid version. Of course, with the paid version comes more features, watermark free images, fonts and photos which if you are like me you’ll find it worth it since I use it quite frequently. But, if it’s just to make invites for your upcoming party then the free version might be a better fit.
Party Favors
On Cupcake Wars, sometimes team members will wear matching outfits. I thought it would be fun for the girls to all have matching personalized cupcake aprons. I found some black ruffled aprons on EBay, then added a cupcake patch that I also found on EBay. Lastly, I added each girl’s name under the cupcake with iron-on letters from AC Moore. For the birthday girl I found a special pink and black polka dot apron which I thought tied together the color theme and made her feel even more special. It also made it easy to identify the birthday girl in pictures without explaining.
The girls LOVED their aprons! They were so excited to put them on, and were extremely excited that they got to keep them. They were the perfect Cupcake Wars party favor and a great idea to keep the girls clean when it got messy and it defintely got a little messy, lol.
Cupcake Wars Party Decorations
Eiffel Towers
Remember my daughter said she wanted Paris? I brought Paris to her by decorating our kitchen to look like a french bakery complete with Eiffel Tower. Seriously can you even have Paris with the landmark Eiffell Tower? So we made sure to create an an Eiffel Tower or two or maybe – ten. I created a giant 51″ Eiffel Tower, a 19″, two 11″ and 6 miniature ones to mark their seats at the bracelet beading table. I will upload the printables shortly. In the meantime you can click here for the Eiffel Tower DIY 51″ Standup
Pink and White Striped Awnings
These were easy and fun to make. I used poster board and pink wrapping paper. The wrapping paper was cut into strips and the poster board was cut to fit each window and the entry way to the kitchen. I then folded the kind of the poster board at the top to go through our windows and at the bottom to look like an awning when looking at it front on. Everything to make these were purchased from our local Dollar Tree. Note: when attaching the strips on the awning take in consideration the fold because it will tear if you don’t.
Signage & Poms
I printed a Black and white Audrey Hepburn blowing pink gum. I just felt like Audrey Hepburn fit with the theme (even though my daughter had no idea who she was at the time) and her blowing gum made it fun. A couple other signs I made and framed was a sign that read, Keep Calm and Bake a Cupcake and another one that read Girls Just Want To Bake, Bake, Bake it off. We got hot pink, light pink and black poms from th Dollar Tree and just put them different places in the kitchen.
Baking Supplies
Since the majority of the party would be in the kitchen I used the baking supplies as decorations. Mixing bowls, cupcake pans, cooling racks, hand towels, utensils, ingredients, pink and black table cloth and Cupcake boxes for taking home cupcakes. Even the ingredients were nicely displayed on the island in our kitchen. Rather than bags of flour and sugar we divided the flour and sugar into seperate clear containers that looked really nice. Eggs were placed in a white bowl, sticks of butter in clear butter containers and a decorated tray full of extra ingredients they could use.
The Food
We had the girls choice what kind of pizza and ordered 4 boxes. We also displayed snacks on tier platters. I went with inexpensive fancy snacks. Pink wafers, jelly rolls cut into slices in mini cupcake wrappers, chocolate covered strawberries, grapes, chips, Pepperidge Farm cookies and pink macarons.
We also made a punch bowl filled with a mock cocktail and placed plastic wine cups for serving. I accidentally forgot to take it out the freezer and it was like a slushy but the girls loved it and did a birthday cheers to Livi.
Cupcake Wars Party Activities During Down Times
Parents thought I was insane to have a party go for so long and at drop off they told me to call them if the party ended early. I planned several activities to fill in time. One was the beading station where girls could make beaded name bracelets or additional bracelets of their choice while waiting for the other girls to come. Girls could go back t
o this station if they wanted to while they were waiting. This was actually a hit station with the girls and also made another great party favor. I got all the supplies for the bracelets on EBay for cheap.
While the cupcakes were baking I had two areas set up for the two teams to work on their cupcake displays and then these areas would be where they worked on decorating their sheets for the fashion show finale. I used crafting scraps I had and asked friends for crafting scraps to keep my cost down. You would be surprised how much crafting scraps people have laying around their homes and willing to donate to the cause of making little girls happy.
Cupcake Wars Party Prep and Ingredient Ideas
To get ready for the party, I printed 3 binders (one for each team and one for the judges). Inside the binder their was the rules, schedule of events, scoring cards, measuring tips and recipe for either vanilla or chocolate cupcakes and buttercream frosting. In addition to the recipe ingredients we bought extra things like Oreo cookies, M&Ms, Raspberry preserves, marshmallows, food coloring, sprinkles, Twix bars, gummies, cherries and flavoring. The sky is the limit with options but be careful because you can easily blow your budget here.
At the start of the party, the girls picked out their team name and one of the coaches explained the rules and how Cupcake Wars works, just in case any of them hadn’t seen the show. The coaches also helped with going over each of the cupcake tools and supplies and showing them how to fill the disposable icing bags, how to add the tip, how much flavoring to add to the frosting, how to add color to their frosting and was available to answer any questions the girls had.
Judging and Winners
My sister, friend, and myself were the official judges for our Cupcake Wars competition. At the beginning of the competition I reminded the girls what the judges would be looking for and stressed a clean station was part of their score (call it sneaky or clever but it really helped with the after party cleaning, lol). While the judges were tasting their cupcakes and filling in scorecards the girls were able to play in the yard with bubbles and sidewalk chalk. At one point, we looked up and saw all the girls looking through the window at us judging. After we finished tallying our score cards we called them all the girls in and announced the winning team. For us Team Chiplets won!
The Cake
The girls were able to all try each others cupcakes before we brought out the ice cream cake. I kept the cost down here as well as I just picked a simple pink and white ice cream cake from the grocery store added one of the Eiffel Towers on top and some edible pink butterflies I found on EBay. We opted for ice cream cake since the girls were going to be eating their cupcakes and Liv’s birthday is in the summer so the weather was really hot.
Fashion Show Finale
On the invitation we asked the girls to bring a sheet and/or pillow case. For the fashion show we set up 2 stations where the girls could cut and decorate their sheets the way they pleased. This was even more fun to watch as the girls got very creative with their creations. Prior to the party we created a photo backdrop with balloons to look like sprinkles for the girls to strike a pose.
It was crazy how time just flew by with this party. At drop off parents were asking if I was sure I wanted the party to be that long. I assured them it would be fine. Parents actually arrived early thinking they would “rescue” me. But they were all shocked to see the girls heavily engaged in helping each other with their outfits. The girls begged their parents to let them finish. This was definitely hands down the best home party I have ever done.
More Pics From The Party
Cheers To A Great Party
I’m not going to lie, it gets VERY messy, so be sure to have lots of paper towels and a plastic tablecloth to help with the messes but it was worth it! If you have any more questions about our Cupcake Wars birthday party, just leave a comment and I’d be happy to help!
I hope this helps you plan your own awesome Cupcake Wars inspired birthday party that is as memorable as ours was – Cheers!
