I love planning birthday parties with unique themes. So when B started watching Bob Ross on Netflix and flipping through my old art history textbook for fun, I knew what direction to go for his next birthday. We decided on an art themed party where the kids made melting bead art pieces, the walls were decorated with printed photos of famous works of art, and the kids got to take home a full art set where all they had to add was paint to paint along with Bob Ross themselves. Due to needing to have the kid party and our family party on the same day, I decided to go with times for the party where a full meal wasn’t necessary. But what then do you serve that captures the spirit of the art world? A build your own sundae bar! For more information about other parts of this party, see these blog posts (links to come!)
Start with What They Like
One thing I always like to do for a birthday party is serve some of the birthday person’s favorite foods. B loves having ice cream and especially loves adding special toppings. He could eat an entire quart of ice cream in one sitting if we let him. A sundae bar seemed a perfect way to let everyone express themselves with food and highlight one of his favorite foods. I luckily did not have any food allergies to worry about so I got to have a lot of fun with my selections, but if you need to address any special dietary needs know that a simple selection of maybe 5 safe ingredients can have the same impact as a whole table full. I made sure to select options from a variety of ingredients so that everyone would hopefully be able to find something they liked.
What to Choose…
You have many different directions you can go when picking your options; beyond the dietary concerns outlined above, you may also want to consider limiting choices if you are working with younger kids who may not be able to make decisions quickly. You can also do a themed sundae bar as well, think chocolate lovers, fresh fruit selection, etc. I looked at lot of different sources to try and get a complete list of all popular options, but I would have been able to cut my list in half and still have made everyone happy. I would recommend not going as all out as I did because it made things a bit complicated. Below is a list of everything I had but you can personalize it to your tastes and budget. I would suggest 5-10 choices and one or two flavors of ice cream. We had a lot of these things in our pantry already so I mainly had to buy the fresh and specialty ingredients.
- Vanilla Ice Cream
- Baked Goods: chocolate chip cookies, brownies
- Fruit: bananas, blueberries, strawberries
- Syrups: Chocolate, fudge, pineapple, strawberry, caramel, marshmallow, butterscotch
- Peanut Butter and Chocolate Hazelnut Spread
- Candy: chocolate rocks, Resse’s Pieces, gummy worms, Carmel MMs, red hots, Snickers, Heath pieces, Butterfinger Bites, MMs, gummy bears
- Toppings: peanuts, pretzels, coconut, potato chips, graham cracker crumbs, Oreos, pecans, cone pieces, cherries
- Chocolate Chips and White Chocolate Chips
- A selection of different sprinkles
- Whipped Cream
Setting Up Your Bar
You have a lot of choices when it comes to the vessels you will use for the toppings on your sundae bar. I used some bowls and pans from my cupboards and a pack of treat cups I found online. We borrowed some reusable plastic bowls from my parents and mixed together the leftover silverware and napkins from several previous year’s parties. I like to keep any leftover items from parties in my party closet so I just rounded up anything that there wasn’t enough of to throw another party. Since it’s an art party the mismatch look worked really well. We kept the gallon of ice cream in the empty sink (you could surround it with ice if you are having a longer serving period) and the syrups in a cake pan filled with warm water to keep them thinned out. When the kids went through the line an adult helped each of them make their bowls so we did not have to worry about anyone snacking along the way. We had all of the kids eat at the kitchen table and the adults ate in our living room as we don’t have a ton of space and to make it easier to clean up any messes. We used a disposable table cloth on the table so that we could just wrap up the mess and through it away after, which makes clean up a breeze.
Make Your Own Masterpiece
We capped off the party with a candle in a small cake I made for B with “Happy Little Trees” and spilled “paint” down the sides. He loved that his favorite artist was a part of his party and everyone really liked the sundae bar. You could tell people appreciated that they were able to make exactly what and how much they wanted. I think this food option would work well for lots of different party themes, especially as it is so easy to get color coordinated candy these days. Tell me below what ice cream toppings you can’t live without and what you would want to have at your birthday party sundae bar!
