A Cinderella Birthday Party

Back in the fall, my daughter decided she wanted a Cinderella party for her 5th birthday in March. Seeing as how that was months in advance, I was sure she would change her mind. She didn't, so we celebrated her 5th birthday in true princess fashion.

 

I made this castle out of white posterboard and blue cardstock. I got the idea here and knew I had to use it!

 

I found this glass slipper cookie cutter at a local bakery shop. I tinted the icing a real light blue and used sugar crystals on top:

 



I made some raspberry cheesecake truffles:

 



 

I used some leftover cake batter to make a few cake pops with my new amazing pan:

 



 

I found these little glitter pumpkins at the craft store in the fall clearance. They were $.10 each...score!

 

 

 

I made chocolate and vanilla cupcakes. For some of the cupcakes I made crown toppers made from sticks of chewing gum. I figured it was much faster and cheaper than fondant. I took a stick of chewing gum, cut points out of one long side, folded it around to make a circle (using a bit of water to keep it together) and then I brushed the front side with water and rolled them in pink sugar.

 

 

 

I made this simple banner the night before. I picked up silver tissue paper on clearance after Christmas. I cut rectangles, folded them in half, and cut slits on one side. They I glued them all to one long piece of yarn by folding the paper over the yarn.

 



I took our living room clock off the wall and set the time to almost midnight (and took the batteries out). I cut out silhouettes of Gus and Jaq. I got the idea for Jaq here but I decided to add Gus too...because he's a favorite;)

 



 

For party favors, I found a pack of nail polish in the Christmas clearance at Walmart and made my own labels in Photoshop. I printed the labels onto sticker paper and wrapped them around the bottles.

 



 

I knew I wanted to make Fairy Godmother wands for our guests. When I found these floral picks (5 for $1!) during Christmas, I thought they would make perfect wands. I tied on pink and silver ribbon to make them a little more special:



 

Outside, our princess guests were able to decorate their own crowns. I cut crowns out of posterboard (getting 6 crowns out of one $.50 sheet) and set out markers and stick on jewels. I got the sheet of jewels at Michael's for $1 (after a coupon) and cut the sheet into strips so each girl could have her own set. 

 

We had a great day celebrating our daughter turning 5!

 





Rapunzel Birthday Party!

This last weekend was AWESOME. My baby girl turned the big "4" and I still can't believe it.

We had a great time with friends and it was an awesome day to celebrate our princess!

I had to take advantage of our two story condo and put a long braid out the window to let our guests know where the party was!

I took two plastic tablecloths and cut them into three strips each and braided them into two long braids and then taped those braids together.

Sweets table:

I made a long braid out of some yellow yarn that I had and shaped it into an "S". I covered a piece of foam board with tissue paper and hot glued the braid onto it.

I found Rapunzel plates still in the packaging at the thrift store for $.50. I then layered them with plain pink plates.

Oreo pops and $1 pop stand:

Vanilla vanilla cupcakes in pink, yellow, and purple wrappers:

The glitter "4" candle was from Walmart and the cupcake wrappers are from Joann but I have seen them at Michael's and Walmart as well.

Handmade paper lanterns and sun bunting:

Rapunzel "hair" all over the ceiling:

Tissue paper flowers and M & Ms in candlestick serving dishes...my daughter's favorite!

I covered water bottles with pink and purple cardstock. I put some heart stickers on the tops of each lid too. Also, put out some more pascal party blowers for the kids...they were a big hit!

A while back a close friend gave me a recipe for an Italian cookie from her family. They are twisted so I thought they would be cute to go along with our theme!

All in all, we had an amazing day. My little girl was so excited about everything and that made it all worth it. I tried to just use what I had around the house already to help with my decorations. The vases for the tissue paper flowers were already on display in my living room. The gold platter for the cookies was a recent vintage find, the blue cups for the cutlery were in my cabinet, and the cake pop stand was a serving tray I've had for a while.

Her birthday parties get more and more fun each year she gets older!

I'm linked to:

Sugar and Dots

Tatertots and Jello

$1 Cake Pop Stand

I made Oreo pops for my daughter's party...and then somehow forgot that I needed a place to put them! I looked into cake pop stands online...um...no. I could have a lot more fun at Goodwill with that kind of money.

Then I priced styrofoam at the craft store.

No, again.

So, I turned to my trusty friend, foam board. It never lets me down.

Want the tute? Here we go!

FOAM BOARD POP STAND

1 piece of FOAM BOARD

(I get mine at the dollar store)

1-2 sheets of TISSUE PAPER

SMALL SCREWDRIVER

(slightly smaller in diameter than your pop sticks)

SERVING DISH (or ribbon)

STEP 1: Take a serving dish of your choice and trace the bottom of it onto foam board. Basically you want the same shape as the inner center so the foam board can sit inside the serving dish.

STEP 2: Cut out two pieces of foam board and hot glue them together.

STEP 3: Cover the board with tissue paper.

STEP 4: Either place covered board in serving dish (keep in place with a few pieces of tape on the bottom), or cover the edge with a thick ribbon and sit on the table as is.

STEP 5: Take screwdriver and poke holes where you want the pops to go. I did this right before serving so I would know how far apart to space each hole.

That's it! You could also make this thicker by adding more layers of foam. Two layers is the minimum to make the pops stand and not fall over. You could also use fabric instead of tissue paper, you might just need something sharper than a screwdriver to make the holes.

OK, time to go make more treats that stand up!

Tatertots and Jello

Rapunzel Party: Vanilla Vanilla Cupcakes

I decided to make cupcakes from scratch for my daughter's party this year. I have never done this before..so I read a lot online and decided to go with reliable Martha Stewart for my recipes and go with a classic vanilla cupcake with vanilla frosting.

VANILLA CUPCAKES

(from Martha Stewart)

3 cups ALL PURPOSE FLOUR

1 1/2 tsp BAKING POWDER

3/4 tsp SALT

1 1/2 sticks softened UNSALTED BUTTER

1 1/2 cups SUGAR

4 large EGGS

2 tsp VANILLA EXTRACT

1 1/4 cups MILK

STEP 1: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a standard 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners; set aside. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl; set aside. Put butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer. Mix on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add eggs, 1 at a time, mixing well. Add vanilla. Reduce speed to medium. Mix in 3 batches of flour mixture, alternating with 2 batches of milk. Raise speed to medium-high; mix until thoroughly blended, 10 to 20 seconds.

STEP 2: Spoon 1/4 cup batter into each muffin cup. Bake until a cake tester inserted into centers comes out clean, about 17 minutes. Let cool in tin on wire racks 10 minutes. Remove cupcakes from tin; let cool completely. Line tin with muffin cups; repeat process with remaining batter.

 

FLUFFY VANILLA BUTTERCREAM FROSTING

(from Martha Stewart)

I cut the original recipe in half and still had enough to frost 24 cupcakes with a #12 circle tip.

2 stick softened UNSALTED BUTTER

3 cups POWDERED SUGAR

1/4 tsp VANILLA EXTRACT

1 pinch of SALT

STEP 1: Put butter in bowl of an electric mixer. Beat on medium-high speed until pale and creamy, about 2 minutes. Reduce speed to medium; add sugar 1/2 cup at a time, mixing well, about 5 minutes total. Add vanilla and salt. Raise speed to medium-high; beat until smooth, about 1 minute more.

STEP 2: Fill icing bag with choice of decorator tip and icing and frost cupcake in a spiral motion, starting at the outer edge and working your way into the center to create a point.

(Note: If you use a larger tip than I did...you may need to make more icing to be able to frost 24 cupcakes.)

I didn't have time to make royal icing flowers for the tops...so silk flowers to the rescue! Ha! I "blinged" them up by adding little rhinestones to the centers.

 

The End

:)

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Tatertots and Jello

Rapunzel Party: The Goody Bags

For the goody bags at my daughter's birthday party this weekend, I wanted to keep them fun and simple.

I found these treat bags with gold designs at the dollar store and they felt very "Rapunzel-ish" and inside of each is the following:

-Mini Rapunzel coloring book

(you can get the tutorial HERE)

-Pascal party blower

(idea and tutorial found HERE)

-play tattoos

-Rapunzel bag with pink Hershey kisses and pink Starbursts

(because my daughter's name starts with an "S")

For the mini coloring books, I printed off Rapunzel coloring pages (getting 4 images to each piece of computer paper), cut them out, and then put them between a folded piece of cardstock. Then, sew down the folded side to bind the book together. I put 8 coloring pages in each book.

The Rapunzel picture of the front of the book is from a box of valentines I found at the dollar store. I stitched it onto the front with my sewing machine.

The Rapunzel sandwich bags (for the candies) were also from the dollar store and the tattoos came in the same box as the valentines.

Each bag got tied with a "braid" that I made out of yellow yarn.

Happy Wednesday!

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Tatertots and Jello

Rapunzel Party: Sun Bunting

It's birthday week here in our house! Wa-hoo! My daughter is getting SO excited for her party this weekend...and to be honest...so am I!

If you have seen Disney's Rapunzel (about 500 times like we have!) then you know there is a sun theme in the movie. I saw ideas like this online that were done with paper. When I got to the craft store, felt was cheaper than paper...so felt it was!

SUN BUNTING

1/4 yd PURPLE FELT

5 small sheets GOLD FELT (9x13 size)

1/4" GOLD RIBBON

HOT GLUE GUN

MARKER and PAPER

(NOTE: You can find felt by the yard in the fabric section and felt sheets in the craft section of Joanns)

STEP 1: Cut purple felt into triangle shapes (I made mine more curved at the points).

STEP 2: Print out sun image onto paper to make a template (I Google imaged "Rapunzel sun"). Trace onto gold felt and cut out. I also cut out the centers and trimmed down the circles.

 (I got 4 suns per small sheet of felt.)

STEP 3: Hot glue suns and centers onto purple flags. Also, hot glue a long piece of ribbon to the top edge of each flag to join them. You can make the bunting as long as you want.

I ended up getting 18 flags and 3 rows of bunting out of my materials.

PRICE:

purple felt   $.75

gold felt sheets   $1.25

ribbon   $.20

TOTAL: $2.40

I'm linked to:

Sew Much Ado

Tatertots and Jello

Candlestick Serving Stands

Since we are just having dessert at my daughter's birthday party, I have been thinking up ways to display all the sweets without just putting them in plain bowls. I came across these two glass candlesticks at Goodwill. I don't normally gravitate towards things like these, but I thought they looked so beautiful and elegant...perfect for a princess party, right?

I bought a set of two clear plastic bowls from the dollar store. I cut out pieces of white felt in the same circumference as the candlestick tops. I hot glued the felt to the bottom center of the bowls and then glued the other side of the felt to the top of each candlestick. I put felt in between because I knew the hot glue wouldn't stick to the plastic long, but it sticks to felt really well.

You can't see the felt when the bowls are filled either.

Fill with your favorite candy! M &Ms are one of my daughter's favorites.

I think they will look so pretty on the table with the tissue paper and tulle flowers I made earlier. Not too bad for about $1 a piece, right?

SOME NOTES: The bowls should not be much larger in diameter than the candlesticks, otherwise they could get knocked over more easily. Try to also keep them the same weight as the candlesticks. The glass of these is very lightweight, so plastic bowls were perfect on top. Basically, don't put a heavy bowl on top of a lightweight base, mkay?

Also, obviously you can't soak these in the sink to wash out, so only put in food that can be wiped out later with a damp cloth.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, to achieve the pink and purple small M & M bowl, I combined two packs of Valentine's M & Ms, one in milk chocolate variety and the other in dark chocolate. I just picked out the red ones. I also bought a back of Valentine's peanut M & Ms and also picked the red out of those.

 Don't ask what happened to all the red M & Ms...:)

I'm linked to:

I Gotta Create

Tatertots and Jello

Creative Me @ The Southern Institute

Tissue Paper Flowers with Tulle

Planning for my daughter's birthday party is well under way. First I saw these flowers from The Craftinomicon and loved how simple and delicate they looked. Then once I saw these flowers from Greedy For Colour, I knew I had to combine the two into simple sweet decorations for her party.

STEP 1: I cut out 4" squares of tissue paper (all these colors came in one pack from the dollar store...score!). Then I cut out three pieces of matching tulle that were about 3" square.

STEP 2: I folded all the layers accordion style, making sure the tulle side was facing in at both ends. Then I took a green pipe cleaner and twisted it around the middle of the paper.

STEP 3:  I rounded both edges with scissors and pulled each layer towards the center, starting with the tulle first.

I put the flowers into some vintage vases that I had on display in my living room and that was it! Easy table centerpieces that look ever so lovely;)

I'm linked to:

I Gotta Create!

Tatertots and Jello

Creative Me @ The Southern Institute

Sew Much Ado

Rapunzel "Hair" Party Decorations

This was the first year I wasn't going to do a theme for my daughter's birthday. I was just going to put together a bunch of desserts she loves and have a good old fashioned party.

That was until my (almost) 4 year old set me straight. She asked ever so politely if she could have a Rapunzel party, and when she said, "Please Mama? PLEASE??"...then how could I say no?

So, there will be a theme, and that theme will be Rapunzel. I have to admit...it's one of my favorite Disney movies too and planning a princess party has been pretty fun:)

In lieu of just buying every licensed product at the party store (which is crazy expensive), I wanted to make some fun decorations that were unique. One thing that you think of when you think Rapunzel is long hair...and we will have plenty of that!

I wanted to string a bunch of "hair" all over the house, but I had to think about what materials to use that would be durable and cost effective. At first I braided together yellow crepe paper...but it wasnt the right color...and my daughter ripped it.

Then it hit me...yellow plastic table clothes!

I found this perfect yellow color at Walmart in their party section for $.98, cut it into 12 long strips and then made 4 long braids out of it. I taped together the ends and covered those spots with purple ribbon that I found at Michaels for $1.

To braid each section, I took 3 strips, taped them together with clear tape at one end, taped THAT taped end to the top of a door jam (so the strips could hang down easily), braided them together, and then finally taped the end of the braid with more clear tape.

One tablecloth makes 36 feet of "hair"!

I will be showing you more of the DIYs for the party as the weeks go on:)

I'm linked to:

Sugar and Dots

Friday Fun Party @ Craftionary

Vintage Mickey and Minnie Birthday Party

My daughter's 3rd birthday was back in March and we had a vintage style Mickey and Minnie party for her. I'm going to be honest and confess that I haven't posted these pictures because I wasn't really happy with the way the party turned out. We had the party in February and I was still a mess (read the above "miscarriage" label if you care to know more) and had just gotten over a flu bug that week. Oh yeah..and I was also pregnant again...but I just didn't know it yet! Now I can look back on the pictures and be happy with it because it made my daughter happy. Sometimes we need not be our own worse "mommy critic", right?

For dessert, I made cupcakes for everyone. They are the easy way out and I love them for it:) No cutting cake and hoping there is enough for everyone!

I found the cute blue polka dot wrappers at Michael's and made little paper flowers for the tops (make sure to let everyone know not to eat them!). The ears were thin mint candies and I just used canned chocolate frosting and a large star tip to ice them. I was going to punch out little "buttons" for the front of the Mickey cupcakes...but didn't have time.

I just ordered some pizza for lunch and this was our "dessert" table:

I drew the Mickey and Minnie myself and put out my daughter's favorite sweet treats: licorice, M & M's and Hershey Kisses.

The cake for her to blow out her candles with was just something simple I whipped up. I baked half a cake mix in a bowl and then flipped it over and iced it. The "ears" are two rice cakes (also iced) and pressed into the cake with toothpicks. Then I just added the silk flower for an embellishment.

I made a Mickey tray for the candy but gluing two small black paper plates to one large one creating a Mickey silhouette. I bought the red and silver Hershey kisses after Valentine's day and picked out all the red, yellow, and blue M & M's from regular bags. (BTW: There are a LOT more green and orange ones compared to these colors. A weird fact that I now know...)

Oh, and the "cake stand" was a round cylinder Tupperware container that I covered with some blue and white polka dot material to look like Minnie's skirt.

For decorations I got some coordinating latex balloons, grouped them together, and taped some Mickey and Minnie pictures to the strings.

I used black paper plates, blue polka dot napkins, and red cups for lunch. On the red cups, I cut out white circles (from sticker paper) and made "buttons" for the front to make them look like Mickey's pants.

I also printed out some personalized labels for the water and juice boxes for the kids.

For my daughter's party outfit, I made her a little dress out of the same material that I used on the cake stand and pulled the red bows off the shoes she wore with her Minnie costume.

Lastly, my party favor bags were super simple. They consisted of handmade coloring books (seriously the BEST favor idea I have ever seen that I found at Prudent Baby), crayons, and little boxes of candy. I found the candy at Walmart during Valentine's Day.

For the coloring books I started with these books I found in the $1 section at Target. Let me tell you, I was SO excited to find an all vintage Mickey coloring book right before my daughter's party! It was meant to be:)

I tore out the pages and trimmed the edges (to get rid of the copyright stamps at the bottom).

Then I made a folded flap for the side out of card stock and used a zigzag stitch to sew them together. I didn't take the time to put covers on them...but I actually liked them that way.

For the crayons, I bought a large box of crayons and divided them up into different groups. I made the little bags by sewing together a little pouch made of wax paper. It was just a nice twist on a traditional crayon box. I then put all the items in fun polka dot party bags that I had found on clearance at Target.

So...that was our fantastic vintage Mickey and Minnie party! I'm glad I finally shared it on here. My daughter STILL talks about it...so I know she was happy that day and that's all that matters.

Plus, now she is already planning her Tinkerbell party for next spring...yikes!