Drinks

Party Recap

I threw this Nancy Drew Mystery Party for my daughters' 8th birthday. The guests had to solve "The Case of the Purloined Party Favors."

If you'd like to create your own mystery party, you can purchase my $19 birthday PARTY PLAN or PARTY KIT from my Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/DoubleTheFunParties.

DECORATIONS
The extremely talented and very sweet children's party printable designer Lindi Haws of Love the Day created the printables just for this party. The collection Lindi designed is inspired by the yellow binding of Nancy Drew books plus a punch of gray.

Since I love the Nancy Drew books of the 1950s, I went for a certain amount of patina with this party. On the front door, I had a paper cone wreath made by Simple Joys Paperie from the pages of an actual Nancy Drew book.

From my local antique store, I rented a vintage typewriter, rotary phone and a typewriter case to elevate my cake stand.

To designate the favors and detective capes areas, as well as the secret passageway, I used pennants from the Love the Day collection and added my own letters.

MANTLE
One of my favorite decorative elements is the Nancy Drew portrait that anchored the mantle. This was as simple as having my local copy store blow up the cover of a Nancy Drew book. Around it, I added:

- Vintage Nancy Drew books
- Goodwill clock that I spray painted oil rubbed bronze
- My daughters’ initials made from white wood letters from Michael's and covered in patterned paper from the Love the Day collection
- Large 8, which is actually an old gas station number I found on Etsy
- Fabric strip bunting that I made in shades of yellow and gray. (You can purchase this in my shop.)

SOLVING THE CASE
When guests arrived, they found a ransom note left at the door with footprints leading away. I outfitted each guest in a detective cape made by Cape Adeline.

Detective kits included everything the guests needed to solve our mystery, including flashlights, magnifying glasses and fingerprint kits.

To decorate the area where the detective kits were displayed, I made a Happy Birthday banner from the pages of a Nancy Drew book.

I planted a variety of clues around our party space - each one identified as a clue with a "CLUE" circle from Love the Day.

When the guests solved the crime, they "called the police" and spontaneously decided to lock our criminal in the bathroom. Fortunately, my nephew's fiance was a really good sport!

TABLE SETTINGS
To dress up the folding chairs, I purchased pillowcases from Dollar Tree and slipped one over the back of each chair. To each pillowcase, I pinned a yellow tissue fan and added a party circle from Love the Day.

Table were covered with a yellow chevron runner and topped with white milk glass vases. For a centerpiece, I stacked vintage Nancy Drew books and added a candelabra that I "tarnished" with a marker.

DESSERT TABLE
Our menu included:

- Chocolate and vanilla cupcakes topped with fondant cleverness from Edible Details. Brittany created a Nancy Drew silhouette, footprints and magnifying glasses on a yellow background.
- Question mark cookies from Sweet Goosie Girl.
- Lemon flavored cakepops by CakePops by Jen embellished with spiderwebs because one of my girls said, “We HAVE to have spiderwebs, Mommy!”
- Chocolate skeleton keys from The Frosted Petticoat.
- Yellow gumballs from The TomKat Studio.
- Swedish Fish (These are my “red herrings” … I know the kids didn’t get this joke, but it made me happy!)

BIRTHDAY CAKE
Our cake had to make two birthday girls happy, so we served a three-layer (chocolate, vanilla, chocolate) cake with white buttercream icing. Amy from Scrumdiddlyumptious Bakery piped “subway art” with mystery words on it. For the cake topper, I made a paper pinwheel from the pages of a vintage Nancy Drew book and finished it with one of Love the Day’s party circles.

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Party Helpers

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1 comment

  • no photo

    Kat C wrote:

    Hi This seems like an awesome party idea. How did you set up the clues and crime scene? Where did you find the fabulous party theme items.