Our Taylor Swift-themed 8th Birthday Party

I have to say, the planning process for this was one for the books. My daughter let me know pretty early on she was thinking a Taylor-themed birthday, as she – like pretty much all the girls her age – is obsessed. Plus she was a little bummed she didn’t get to go on the Eras tour, which was my fault but I didn’t think she’d know about it (boy was I wrong!). But she didn’t let it bother her, and just kept her happy face on, saying she understood she was young and it was really pricy.

If you know my daughter, you’ll know that she is truly one of the sweetest, kindest, and humblest persons in the world. It isn’t easy being the middle child, especially a particularly well-behaved one, as it’s all too easy for her siblings who have a lot of demanding needs to get so much more attention. Which is why I have no qualms about really making her feel so celebrated on her birthday. I never want her to doubt how much we appreciate her and want her to feel lavished on, especially on her special day.

When I plan parties, I always start by considering some of each child’s favorite things. With her, the list was arts & crafts, dance, sparkly rainbow colored things, strawberries, cheese, and red velvet cake. She also always asks for those little muffins and stroopwaffles but I never give those to her because of how loaded with sugar they are…but birthdays get a pass!

And then the theme, and how to weave it all together. There’s a lot out in Pinterest-verse as everyone loves Taylor, so inspiration was pretty easy to come by. But of course I always like putting our own spin on it and tailoring it (no pun intended) to my kids.

Since I was also planning my toddler’s party and had booked a character for that one, I wondered….and googled…and sure enough, I came across a TSwift impersonator :). I mean, why not?!

Alright, so this is how it all came together! For crafts, I incorporated friendship bracelets (of course) and the new craft this year would be denim jacket patches! This idea was inspired purely opportunistically when I was shopping for my son at Old Navy, which was having a sale at the time. So I snagged them at 40% off months prior – so yes, the craft was built around the sale.

To tie everything all together, I decided to make stations themed by Taylor Swift albums. This is what I came up with. And thanks to Canva which makes designing so easy these days, I designed little custom signs and printed them out for display at each table!

I laid out patches all over the table and in alphabetical order for easy access. Do NOT buy the aqua ones – they were terrible to work with and did not stick at all. The other ones were great though! Here are the links: Taylor patches, colorful image patches, emoji and cartoonish patches, pink and white letter patches.

The four themes were:

1989: Design your own denim jacket
Lover: Make a friendship bracelet
Red: Decorate a red velvet cupcake
Midnights/Bejeweled: Get bejeweled glam station

Our “Get Bejeweled” station, where the kids could get dolled up! These face rhinestones were SO EASY to use as they come on one piece of clear adhesive, and these hair extensions were super fun as well.

Our “Lover” station: I included a sheet I pulled together of bracelet inspiration to jumpstart their creativity, which the girls appreciated! I used this bead kit since it was a pretty good price for all the pieces it came with.

Our “Red” station: We baked the red velvet cupcakes together before the party, and purchased a variety of cake decorating supplies from the local grocery store…as many red ones as we could find of course.

For decor and I wanted to incorporate lots of shiny and sparkly items, we went with more of a disco/dance theme.

A purple sequined table runner, disco ball ornaments, shiny pink star plates, and this iridescent table plate set brought it all together.

I also have to put a huge plug in for this friendship bracelet birthday banner kit. I was going to make my own, but ran out of time. I’m glad I didn’t though, because this was so cheap and easy, and the quality was a lot better than I expected!

Our cake topper was from this talented vendor on Etsy! The cake design was inspired by something I saw on Pinterest, and executed by Jenny Wenny Cakes. Red velvet inside of course. The disco balls were added manually afterward (same ones as on the table). And our lovely birthday banner and the easy-to-use pink fringe backdrop added a sweet touch.

The other tricky part was figuring out where “Taylor” was going to perform. We ended up moving some furniture out of our living room to make space, and I used this garland set to create a backdrop. For the balloons, believe it or not, they were donated by another family who had just had a party the day prior and was trying to get rid of them!