My newly turned 3 year old absolutely loves the tale of the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs! She loves it so much that she came as the Big Bad Wolf for this past Halloween. She was so cute! So, I definitely had to throw her a Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs themed 3rd birthday party. However, when I went searching for themed party decorations, I couldn’t find any. So I had to go ahead and make my own decorations. I figured I’d share all of these ideas here in case you are in the same predicament as I was and need some inspiration.
The Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs Cake
One of my favorite things to do is to make my kids’ birthday cakes. So I obviously had to make a Big Bad Wolf cake with Three Little Pigs cupcakes. When I finished this cake, my husband asked me if this was the Big Good Wolf hahah. He’s not wrong, this wolf does look like it would be nice lol. It’s the best I’ve got tho!
Here are a couple tips for baking this cake:
1. First, I always use boxed cake mix for all my kids’ cakes. It’s just easier for me and saves me some time. You, of course, can make your cake however you’d like though. For this cake and cupcakes, I used 3 boxed cake mixes to make five 9 inch round cakes and 6 cupcakes (I only needed 3 but I make a few extras just in case).
2. I added a few drops of red food dye to make the cakes and cupcakes pink. My daughter requested this and I thought it would be cool for the wolf and the pigs’ insides to be pink.
3. I frosted and stacked all 5 layers of cake. Since there were so many layers of cake, I went ahead and added a little support by inserting 2 shush kabob sticks through the 5 layers. I probably should have done 3 or 4, but 2 ended up working out fine. I then cut the end of the stick off to make it flush with the top of the cake. This just adds a little stability to the cake so it doesn’t tip over or slide apart.
4. I usually crumb coat the entire cake with a thin layer of frosting and then let it set up in the fridge to kind of harden up for a few hours before I do the decorative frosting.
5. Once the crumb coat frosting is hardened up, I used a toothpick to lightly “draw” the wolf’s face to make myself a guide.
6. Then I piped gray frosting on the cake and used a little black icing tube to draw on the black nose, mouth, and eyes. I just used the black icing tube that you can get from The Dollar Tree for $1.25. Score!
7. For the ears, I literally melted some white chocolate chips, dyed it gray, and dipped two tortilla chips in the melted chocolate. I left them to cool on a piece of parchment paper and then stuck the chips down into the top of the wolf to make the ears.
8. I used some more melted white chocolate but dyed it pink for the pigs snout and ears. I laid out a piece of parchment paper and smeared the chocolate into an oval shape for the snout and two small triangular shapes for the ears. Once they were cool and hardened, I could place them on the frosted pink cupcake and use the same black icing to create the pigs’ faces.
I hope these couple of tips help you make a cute wolf cake and pig cupcakes!
Table Decorations
I love dressing up the tables to make the birthday party more festive. This doesn’t have to be anything super fancy or expensive. I literally bought some pink plastic table cloths from Dollar Tree to provide some color (and table protection lol).
I mentioned earlier how I couldn’t find any Big Bad Wolf themed table decorations. So I went ahead and made my own. This sounds daunting but it really isn’t! I just bought two birthday party table decorations that they have at Dollar Tree. You can see what I’m talking about in the picture below.
I just buy these for the pink base part that helps it stand up on the table. The picture on the table decoration that says “Happy Birthday” didn’t matter because I don’t plan to use that.
Here’s how to make these table decorations:
1. Go ahead and cut most of the “Happy Birthday” sign off and leave only a little square that you can use to attach your new decoration to. See the picture below for how mine looked once I cut most of it off.
2. Repeat step 1 for the second birthday sign
3. Find a Big Bad Wolf picture and a Three Little Pigs picture online that you like and print them each on a standard size of cardstock paper
4. Flip the images vertically and print another copy of each image. Make sure not to resize the image, you want the two copies to be the exact same size. This second copy is going to be the back side of the sign and since you flipped it vertically it will face the same direction as the front side.
5. Cut around the edges of the images but leave some paper at the bottom of your picture to be able to attach it to the sign. In the Step 1 picture above you can see where I left a square of paper underneath the Big Bad Wolf to attach it to the sign.
6. Using a glue stick, apply glue to the back of your image and glue it to the square of sign from step 1.
7. Flip your sign over and glue the mirrored image to the other side making sure to line up all the edges.
8. Repeat these steps to create a table decoration for both the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs
Check out the picture below to see how our table decorations turned out
I placed these table decorations on one of the kids table. Then on the second kids table I placed the Three Little Pigs houses with standup figures of the pigs and wolf. Check out the picture below to see these adorable standees.
I did not create these standees. I printed all of them for free from the website that I linked below.
http://teachersmag.com/posts/three-little-pigs-paper-standees-houses-template
Plates and Napkins
I found some super cute little pig napkins on Amazon. They were too cute not to get! So I got them and figured I had to use them as a table decoration too. I went ahead and just set the table with my pink dollar tree plates, a pig napkin on top of the plate, and a plastic fork beside it. Check out the picture below
I have linked the pig napkins here that I purchased off of Amazon!
Goody Bags
The goody bags are always a fun way for me to dress up another table. I knew I had to have some pig goody bags to go with our Three Little Pigs birthday theme but I couldn’t find any pig goody bags anywhere. So I made some! I know…it sounds kinda daunting too but it really didn’t take that much time or energy (especially if you have a Cricut).
To make these goody bags you’ll need:
On each of the items listed below, I have linked the products that we used. So you can click the link to check out our recommended products.
- Pink bags
- Black sheet of colored cardstock
- Pink sheet of cardstock (this needs to be a different shade of pink than the bags)
- White sheet of cardstock
- Pink party ribbon – check out this adorable sparkly ribbon linked
- Glue dots
- Cricut or Silhouette or just scissors – I absolutely love my Cricut! It’s definitely a great tool for any DIY birthday party like this one and can save you lots of cutting time. I’ve linked an awesome Cricut bundle.
- Hole puncher
Here’s how to make the goody bags:
1. Using the black sheet of cardstock, cut out ovals for the pigs eyes. I used my Cricut for this, but you could use a Silhouette too or just scissors.
2 Using the pink sheet of cardstock, cut out the shape of a pigs snout. I also did this on my Cricut.
3. Then use the glue dots to glue the eyes and snout onto the pink bag. I love using glue dots because they’re so easy to peel off and place!
4. You could just stop here if you wanted. The goody bags are super cute just like this, but I also wanted to add a cute little thank you note that’s in the shape of the Big Bad Wolf’s head. Check out the picture below to see the Big Bad Wolf thank you note that I created.
The little note says “Thank you for coming to celebrate my birthday. You put a grin on my chiny chin chin.” I’ve created a PDF of these with 12 to a page for you to download and print off for FREE if you are interested. Just click on the download button right below.
5. Print these off on the white sheet of cardstock.
6. You could then cut these out with scissors but I uploaded it into my Cricut and did the print and cut feature so that the Cricut did all the work for me.
7. Then put a hole punch in the wolf’s ear. After the fact, I realized that I should have just put the hole punch in it using the Cricut too. So save yourself a step if you are using your machine.
8. Use the pink ribbon and tie the wolf thank you note to the bag strap
9. Then use a pair of scissors and run it along the ribbon to make it curly. Check out the picture below to see how adorable these decorated goody bags turned out
10. Then fill you bags with all the cute pig and wolf themed goodies. I have linked below several of the adorable pig and wolf products that we purchased off of Amazon for our goody bags like pig pens, pig stickers, wolf masks, and some squeaky pig bath toys. We, of course, threw in some candy and jumbo rings that we found at Dollar Tree too.
Since me daughters birthday party was at a gymnastics place, I didn’t have to come up with any themed games! So I was mostly able to stick to planning the decorations. I hope you enjoyed all the ideas! Check out some more of our creative activities linked below!
