How We Roll 80’s Rollerskating Party Ideas

Par­ties are obvi­ous­ly big ’round these parts, but when it comes to my daugh­ter, Anabelle’s birth­day, it’s the biggest cel­e­bra­tion of the year! Last year, her An Amer­i­can Girl in Paris par­ty was a big pro­duc­tion. To com­mem­o­rate her 9th birth­day this year, she specif­i­cal­ly request­ed an 80’s roller­skat­ing par­ty, which made me so proud! If you’ve fol­lowed along for awhile, you know I ♥ the 80’s, as I declared in my Grow­ing Up 80’s par­ty from a few years back. So I was total­ly game with this year’s theme!

We start­ed off with the invi­ta­tions, which just had to be made like Trap­per Keep­ers like I’ve done in the past. This time around, I made them a lit­tle younger with a Lisa Frank feel with the most adorable clip art from Jes­si­ca Weible Stu­dios! All the par­ty infor­ma­tion was includ­ed on “note­book paper” inside the fold­er that closed with vel­cro, just like the real thing!

I was so excit­ed to work with the 80’s theme again and imme­di­ate­ly remem­bered all the fun plas­tic neck­laces, bracelets and charms I had seen at Michael’s!!! Remem­ber these?!?! Anabelle and I had a blast pick­ing a bunch of charms to make her a neck­lace, as well as favors for all her guests. She total­ly dressed like an icon­ic 80’s girl for her roller­skat­ing par­ty with her hot pink tutu dress, den­im jack­et, fin­ger­less gloves and leg warm­ers! And we could­n’t for­get the side ponytail!

We usu­al­ly have Anabelle’s birth­day par­ties at a park, but since she want­ed to roller skate, I found a local roller rink that we could rent out. The only stip­u­la­tion was that it had to be dur­ing non-peak hours, which meant we were hav­ing a morn­ing par­ty! Plus, unlike the park, we had a lim­it­ed time to set every­thing up {approx­i­mate­ly an hour}, so we decid­ed to keep it sim­ple by set­ting up a food table and some addi­tion­al activ­i­ties. To play along with the light­ing at the roller rink, we used mar­quee lights in the decor, from the This Is How We Roll mar­quee sign to light up let­ters and icon­ic 80’s lips!

In addi­tion to some fun, Lisa Frank inspired bal­loons I got for dec­o­ra­tions, I also fol­lowed the tuto­r­i­al by Oh Hap­py Day to make a huge roller skate pina­ta to match Anabelle’s skates! It was per­fect to add some decor to the roller rink and was great for pho­to opps!

Since the 80’s roller­skat­ing par­ty was tak­ing place in the morn­ing, we decid­ed to focus pri­mar­i­ly on break­fast foods, though we just could­n’t have a par­ty with­out the amaz­ing cook­ies by my incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed friend, Casey from Case Bakes!!! Casey made the most fab­u­lous 80’s roller­skat­ing cook­ies for Anabelle’s An Amer­i­can Girl in Paris par­ty that com­plete­ly stole the show and, as you can see, she did not dis­ap­point this year! I could­n’t even com­pete with my fon­dant top­pers, so I did­n’t even try this time around!

Instead of a cake, Anabelle specif­i­cal­ly request­ed donuts instead, so we set­tled on a donut cake! We tiered three glass cake stands and piled up the donuts on each lay­er. I then topped it with a ban­ner I made {includ­ing some roller skate charms} and a can­dle! It came out super cute!!! In addi­tion to bagels, cream cheese and fruit, we also set up a cere­al bar with lots of fun neon plates, cut­lery and decor!

With all the 80’s-inspired charms we bought, we decid­ed to make sta­tions for the guest to put togeth­er them­selves {rather than just hand them out}, giv­ing them anoth­er activ­i­ty dur­ing the par­ty. The girls were able to add roller skate, head­phones and friend­ship heart charms to put on bracelets, while the boys could add gui­tars and skate­boards to back­pack clips!

In addi­tion to roller­skat­ing and charm-build­ing, we also had the priv­i­lege of hav­ing Chelsey Kuzyk do some total­ly tubu­lar face paint­ing for the guests! Chelsey did such an amaz­ing job draw­ing roller skates, skate­boards, rain­bows and ani­mal prints and her neon face paint was so awe­some it glowed! If you are in the Las Vegas area, I would absolute­ly rec­om­mend her services!

The main event was, of course, the skat­ing! Since we had rent­ed the entire rink at Crys­tal Palace, we had it all to our­selves and the kids {and adults!} did­n’t have to wor­ry about bump­ing in to oth­er skaters. It was total­ly worth it, espe­cial­ly since a lot of the guests were young and new­bies to rollerskating!

Since the kids received most of their favors dur­ing the par­ty, we just want­ed to send them rolling on their way with a lit­tle some­thing small, so we gave every­one rock can­dy on a stick with the sen­ti­ment, “YOU ROCK!” attached on tags. Anabelle and her guests had a total­ly rad time at her 80’s roller­skat­ing par­ty! Quite hon­est­ly, I was a bit wor­ried, as we have nev­er had one of her par­ties at a loca­tion, most­ly due to the time lim­i­ta­tions, but it turned out being one of the eas­i­est par­ties I’ve ever thrown and SOOOOO much fun! I even got to par­take in the fes­tiv­i­ties rather than run around like a crazy par­ty plan­ner! Now, what to do next year…

Merci Beaucoup!

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