A sweet celebration inspired by Roald Dahl
It’s birthday party time, and inspired by Roald Dahl’s beloved book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Miss L chose to theme her special day around the magic of chocolate!
Creating delightful invitations
For the invitations, we decided on a clever idea: we bought some chocolate bars, split them in half, and rewrapped them in aluminum foil or their original wrappers. To complete the look, we crafted printable golden ticket invitations to tuck inside the wrapped bars, using Willy Wonka’s signature candy bar wrappers.
To design the tickets, I sourced a free Willy Wonka font and created beautiful printable wrappers alongside golden tickets. These tickets can be customized with the date, location, time, and RSVP number. For an impressive finish, I printed the wrappers on plain white paper and the tickets on shimmering gold paper from a local craft store. You can find the candy wrapper templates here and the golden tickets here. Enjoy!
Hosting the party at a chocolate museum
Throwing a full chocolate factory-themed birthday party at home can be a challenge, so we took advantage of Paris’s amazing Chocolate Museum! Despite being surrounded by incredible chocolate shops, we had yet to explore this delightful museum—making the birthday celebration the perfect opportunity.
The Chocostory museum offers a special birthday party package, which allows you to host the entire celebration on-site. This includes a tour of three floors filled with intriguing chocolate history and a candy-making workshop, where kids can bake a cake, whip up hot chocolate, and even open presents!
For our celebration, we enjoyed the museum tour and then continued the festivities at home. During the museum visit, the kids had a blast learning about chocolate-making, and they participated in a Playmobil quiz along with the tour. Since our kids were older, I created a mini quiz and treasure hunt to make the experience even more engaging. You can download our chocolate quiz here.
Activities at home
When we returned home, we had a host of fun activities lined up:
- To recreate the ambiance from the book, we transformed one room with balloons, labeling it as Violet Beauregard’s Bubble Gum Room. Kids were invited to enter and find the balloon with Violet’s face taped on it!
- We prepared party favors, games, and photo booth accessories. To mimic Violet’s constantly changing gum, we mixed various flavors of gum into surprise packs. Tommy’s 2D candy turned out to be Pop Rocks.
- For photo opportunities, we created a cardboard television and crafted paper glasses so kids could pretend to be zapped into a screen. We also had a downloadable Oompa Loompa mask from the James Forward Design site.
- As a highlight, we whipped up fizzy lifting drinks using empty glass bottles. With printed labels and boba drink balls added to sparkling water and syrup, this treat was a crowd favorite!
Each child left with their special creations and a newfound appreciation for chocolate history! Overall, the birthday party was an enormous success!
Check out the chocolate museum
If you’re interested in exploring Paris’s Chocolate Museum, there’s a very special Easter activity scheduled for this Sunday at 11 AM! Be sure to call the museum to reserve your spot!
Musée Gourmand du Chocolat
28 bd Bonne Nouvelle
Paris 75010