Putting the WOW WOW into a Wow Wow Wubbzy party

by Summer
(Lisbon, ME)

I have one child, so I always love to get creative with my decorations and birthday party favors. He usually picks a theme over the summer for his next birthday party, in November, and last year was no exception. However, for the first time ever, he threw me a theme that I had no idea how to pull off.

He'd been watching Nick Jr. and decided that he just HAD to have a Wow Wow Wubbzy party. If you're not familiar with the show, Wubbzy is a little yellow creature with bear like ears and a long “kooky” tail, who goes on adventures with his friends Widget, Daisy and Walden. It's an adorable show, but I had no idea where to begin!

I did a search online and looked and looked but was not seeing anything that interested me. I was able to find some stickers, napkins and cups, but nothing to use as party favors. However, inspiration hit when I went to Dollar Tree and saw that they had bright yellow buckets and I quickly picked up 20 of them. At least the buckets were the right color and I figured I could fill them with the typical birthday party bubbles, candy and other novelties. I liked the idea that our guests would have something “tangible” and not thrown away right after the party, which feels so wasteful.

I had already blown up a picture of Wubby's face to use as a pattern for my son's birthday shirt and I found myself thinking about ways I could use the same pattern using the buckets. That's when I thought of using simple black contact shelf paper to make the facial features onto the bucket. It was SO easy and it literally took me about 15 minutes to decorate the buckets. Our guests loved them and were so impressed by my creativity.

The buckets looked great on a table at the party venue. The kids had fun finding their name on a tag with a character sticker on the back of it. I filled them with a variety of items that were all yellow, including yellow glow necklaces and bracelets, mini bottles of bubbles, and a box containing a cupcake for them to take home, that were iced to look like “kickity kick balls” (Wubbzy's favorite toy). They came out fabulously and more than one parent asked me where I bought the “Wubbzy buckets”. No one believed that they were home made and were so cheap and quick and easy to make. I'd do something like this again in the future, but if you're planing a fall birthday, you'll want to get the buckets over the summer.