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Kung Fu Marley

Description

“Planning this party for my Marley actually started way back in April of this year before the sequel of the first Kung Fu Panda movie even came out.  Last year we had a sweet shoppe party for Marley because she was really just the sweetest baby ever.  Well, in year 2, she has turned into a true spitfire with tons of spunk!  So it hit me to do a Kung Fu Panda party for her, but of course with a twist.  My challenge was how I could make this party fit for a little girl because the theme traditionally seems a bit boyish!  Changing up the colors did just that!   The invitation was the starting point for the party and I wanted it be Kung Fu Panda but different, so adding the hot pink pagoda is where it started and went from there.  I love pink and green, so I added a touch of black to complete the color palette.  A little glitter to the pagoda was the finishing touch.

Design Inspiration

Marley's 'spitfire' attitude!

Decorating Style

The party guests were greeted with kid sized wooden Po figurines from Kung Fu Panda in three different moods.  My brother sketched these out by hand, my dad cut them out and then my husband painted them.  It was truly a family working together to create something beautiful.  We were able to get photos of the children with Po as they arrived.

Project Details

My very first vision for the main prop for this party was to have a kid sized hot pink pagoda.  My husband kind of scratched his head and looked at me like I was crazy and then my brother-in-law said he was up to the task and got to work immediately.  We got free wood off of freecycle.org and he built it from the ground up.  It was truly a work in progress and took months to perfect.  We painted it hot pink added some glitter and Chinese writings, including Marley’s name in Chinese.  The project probably cost us about $25 total but lots of love and care went into creating it.  The children (and adults) were amazed by it. Planning the activities for this party wasn’t hard at all and was really important to me.  Children need appropriate activities at a party.  At the end of Kung Fu Panda 2 (spoiler alert) we see Po’s father living in a panda sanctuary where the pandas are harvesting bamboo.  I instantly knew that I wanted a panda sanctuary incorporated into the party somehow.  So I created a panda stuffing sanctuary using some greenery and canvas board.  The children stuff small panda bears from  The Party Animal .  The panda stuffing sanctuary was a huge hit; the children (and adults) loved stuffing the panda bears and of course throwing the puffy filler all over the place. We also had a ‘Panda Art’ station where each child received a Kung Fu Panda 2 coloring book with markers, crayons and glitter glue to decorate the pages of the book.  Throughout the room we strung lanterns in pink and white from corner to corner to add some festive décor.

Favorite Items

Hot Pink Pagoda!

Advice

My family always comes together to make sure that our girls have the best parties... my advice, tap into the creative genius of your family members...you might be surprised at what they create...just take a gander at the hot pink pagoda my brother-in-law built!

Paula

Monday 16th of January 2012

Fabulous theme!

Ebony {Sparkling Events & Designs}

Tuesday 10th of January 2012

MarissaS,

Marissa,

My brother in law did this for us...and he gave it his best shot and we were happy with it..that's gotta count for something right? ;)

Ebony

MarissaS

Thursday 5th of January 2012

The pagoda cookies look great. And I love the panda sanctuary concept. Seems like you really went all out for this party. I find the Chinese writing funny, though. I've studied Chinese before and couldn't read what you wrote. It was only when I saw that it was supposed to be Marley's name did I get it. It seems you tried to copy the characters and didn't know how to execute it. Written Chinese is really difficult.