Some of you might know that I can go a little crazy for birthday parties. When you mix that tendency with the fact that my daughter chose to skip a birthday party last year, in favor of a trip to the American Girl Doll Store and Coco Keys Water Park, and that she requested Frozen for her birthday party theme this year.. well, you can imagine what happened!
I started planning a month or two ago, trolling Pinterest for the best ideas that also seemed do-able. As is my habit, though, I left a lot of things to the last minute and there was an excessive amount of rushing around this morning. Part of it was due to the fact that the weather forecast was so confusing. It was supposed to rain all day, it had poured the day before the party, and our backyard was soaking wet. Our plan had originally been to set up a 20'x30' canopy and several long tables and chairs that we had rented. Biggest waste of money! I had to readjust on the fly, setting up in my tiny house.
Here's how I set up most of the stuff, in our bay window that usually houses the plants (and cats, which is why we had to remove the hairy curtains for the party). Instead of making a traditional banner, I just glue-dotted the 'flags' of the banner along the top of the wall. Note for the future: glue dots don't work that well for this, the flags started falling down about five minutes after the picture was taken. A lot of the paper fans and paper goods came from Oriental Trading, one of my favorite shops for parties. I was a little disappointed that the tissue balls didn't come with directions, because I've never done them before, but we figured it out in the end. Unfortunately, guests had already started arriving so we used them as 'centerpieces' on the table instead of hanging them from the ceiling.
Here's a slightly closer shot of the spread. The big number 6 was made from two pieces of foam board I cut out and taped together to get the desired thickness, then wrapped in tulle (and some extra sheer fabric I had lying around underneath), and embellished with some snowflake buttons.
The DIY Network has instructions on how to make glittery trees (for Christmas, but whatever). We made our own simpler version to go with the decorations. Then lots of shimmery powder blue gumballs and sparkly branches from the floral section at AC Moore completed the decor of the food 'table'.
For some reason, I thought the cake wouldn't be enough to feed everyone, so I made cupcakes, too. As always, I overestimate how much food we need - there's half a cake and six of these cupcakes in my fridge right now. I sprinkled Wilton Cake Sparkles on them, and everyone said they were delicious.
We got the idea for Frost Bites from Around My Family Table, but changed it a little bit. This snack was really easy to make. First, I knew I wanted to display them upright, but I didn't have any styrofoam or floral foam to set them in while they dry (which is how I've done them and cake pops in the past). Luckily, I had an empty cereal box so I just poked holes in it, and it held the marshmallows up just fine! So anyway, all you have to do is stick a lollipop stick in a marshmallow, dip them in bright white chocolate candy melts, and then immediately sprinkle them with whatever color sugar sprinkles you want. The chocolate solidifies pretty quickly. Who's ready for a sugar rush?
I have snowflake cookie cutters and was going to make snowflake sugar cookies and ice them, but that seemed like a lot of work when I was already running behind. Thankfully I remembered seeing melted snowman cookies on Pinterest, so we made our own hasty version with leftover candy melts, marshmallows, mini Hershey kisses, candy corn, and pretzel sticks. I wasn't sure how they'd taste, but everyone liked them!
What's a Frozen party without some Olaf noses, right? I have to admit, this healthy food option looked a little out of place amidst all the sugar (and a lot of kids skipped right past them, to be honest), but Fiona took a big handful, so I was happy.
I saw these adorable cheese-stick-snowmen on It's So Very Cheri and loved them! I ended up using ribbon instead of paper for the scarves. Super easy, and the kids loved them.
Olaf loves warm hugs, and so did the kids at Fiona's party! Super easy snack, and awfully cute, too.
I couldn't think of anything cool to call the fruit salad, but we decided on Coronation Fruit Salad. Because that totally makes sense. However, I did overhear one little girl asking her mom for more Coronation Salad, so yay!
For the main course, we had "We Finish Each Other's Sandwiches". I wish I'd had time to neatly fold all the turkey and ham, but I didn't, so I'm just glad my husband took care of setting it up for me.
We also had "Troll Rocks". My boys wanted to call them "Troll Balls" but we vetoed that. Saucy Asian Meatballs from Gimme Some Oven.
One of the favorite parties I saw was on the Hostess with the Mostess website. I loved the water bottle labels, so of course we had to come up with our own. Ours read "Melted Snow" and "Some People Are Worth Melting For" and featured a picture of Olaf.
Hopefully you noticed the little name tags with each of the food items. I got the best idea to make snowball tag holders. It was really easy - I just cut styrofoam balls in half, made a little slit in the top, then used spray adhesive and glitter to make them extra sparkly. Idea from Paging Supermom, where I also got a lot of ideas for Fiona's Tangled party two years ago. We also got the idea from them to do "Ice" bracelets - lots of clear plastic beads, and the kids had so much fun pretending they were actually freezing cold.
And here's a picture of the cake. It turned out really cute, and thankfully wasn't that time consuming. It's a tradition of mine to stay up until at least 2am working on the cake, but I was done and cleaned up by 12:15am. It was a Frozen Miracle! I picked up the little pearl strands in the floral section of AC Moore, after getting the idea from the cake on It's So Very Cheri. Thankfully we managed to find some Frozen figures after stalking Toys R Us, and Fiona didn't mind sharing them with me at all.
One of our activities was making Olaf in a Mason Jar. Or Olaf in a Blizzard, since he swirls around like he's experiencing some strong winds. I got the idea from 30 Minute Crafts and only modified it a bit. Lots of different kinds of pompoms (white for the head, black for the mouth/buttons), brown pipe cleaners, googly eyes, lots of glitter, and carrot noses I made out of Sculpey. After filling them up with water, we sealed the lids shut with E6000.
Here they are working on their Olaf Jars. Out of all the boys, only Colwyn was a good enough sport to participate, but that was alright. More room for the girls! Also - Colwyn obviously picked out the least girly shirt he owns. Of course.
We also did a photo booth activity. Some of the girls had a great time doing this! I cut out a bunch of props with my Silhouette - the kids could pretend to be Olaf, a troll, Elsa, and Sven. Very cute.
Quicky sign thanks to the Silhouette and leftover scrapbook paper.
For favors, I wanted to do "Snow Dough" - glitter play dough. I was going to make it myself, but lucked out and found some in the store. I whipped up my own labels and Doug put them on - ta-da! We also gave out squirt guns (an activity we were planning on doing if the weather had been nicer), and everyone got to take home their Olaf-in-a-Jar and Ice Bracelets, too.
I'm completely exhausted, but it was great fun. Fiona had so many friends to play with, and I know she felt really special today. We made sure the boys had some friends, too, and they definitely appreciated the chance to spend time with their new buddies.
