Tangled Birthday Party Preparations | Brantford Photographer

I’m not sure what I was thinking when I thought I would have extra time this month to catch up on things. Wrongo! Schoo is out, but I have been busy as a bee with shoots {which is awesome! thanks so much for your support!} and prepping for summer break, and planning the twins’ sixth birthday party. Every year we usually have a big family party in Windsor, where hubby is from. This year we decided to stay home and invite school friends for the first time. We still had to have a theme. We’ve done a lot of Disney (Princess, Lilo and Stitch luau)…because we are Disney addicts When I suggested Tangled the girls were all over it. We all loved the movie instantly when we saw it in the theatre.

So here is a post about the preparations we’ve been making for the party on Saturday. I did research {big researchers, us} and found ideas from:

SuperMom’s blog http://www.supermommoments.com/2011/01/tangled-party-decor-food/

Disney http://family.go.com/disney/pkg-disney-character-fun/pkg-everything-tangled/

and I totally stole the cake idea from a friend of my boss at school. Thankyou!

There might also be some other tidbits picked up from random websites, so if I stole an idea from you, contact me and I’ll credit you here

I haven’t done all the ideas I found as some of them seemed too much work or too commercial. We {I? let’s face it…control freak here!} like to go with authentic whenever possible. I love planning and doing the crafts with the kids, but on the day of the party we like to relax and enjoy it, not be running around prepping food or fussing over games and such. So I try to come up with activities that are easy, fun and run themselves. Food I tried to keep simple, because honestly, little kids don’t care what they eat at a party, and they don’t often eat that much of it!

The party will be three hours. It may seem long, but these are school friends and they fill time with each other daily, with no toys or climbers to play on. They’ve been missing each other and I wanted to make sure they had plenty of time to just play together, and not be rushed through lunch, cake and presents.

Here we go!

Decorations:

We simply had to have the purple bunting with the yellow sun that they show at the festival. You can print it off one of the sites above, but I elected to make mine. Try finding purple paper! It’s wrapping paper and I traced the sun shapes on and hand painted them in. We bought purple and yellow table cloths and streamers. The dollar store had paper lanterns {no purple } in pink and orange. I got big ones, then wised up and found a whole string of smaller ones in one pack. There will also be wanted posters around the yard.

We decided to turn the play structure into the tower, so we’re covering the roof with the purple table cloth, adding purple curtains from some fabric I had hanging around, and decorating the railing with fake flowers {also stuff I had already}. Won’t hubby be glad I cleaned some craft stuff out!

We’re wrapping yellow streamer around the rope swing to make it look like Rapunzel’s hair…we’ll see how it holds up to swinging!

We made a braid for the front door out of streamers and added flowers to it. The yarn braids look great, but I this was easier {ie, didn’t drive me completely insane} and the kids still think it’s great!

Activities and Games:

When the kids arrive, we’re going to have the girls greet them and take them to one of the wanted posters to sign their name and draw a nose on Flynn. The posters are from the Disney site. Once everyone arrives…it’ll be playtime! Each child will have a stick horse Maximus and the girls will have crowns. They can chase each other and play on the climber. Chalk will also be out so the kids can draw pictures all over the fence in the yard {like Rapunzel paints her walls}. Chalk is much easier cleanup than painting, and they can come and go at it as they please. Grown-ups too!

~Lunch, cake and presents come here! ~

Another activity is the jewel hunt. This takes prep time but after you say ‘go’ just sit back and watch them scatter. We bought a big pack of those decorative glass thingies {stones?} to hide around the yard; they’ll search them out like Easter eggs and put them in their sun bags {paper bags stamped with a sun…I made the stamp from foam and a piece of wood. I had planned to use if for the bunting but the purple paper was shiny and it didn’t work on it}.

If we have time, we’ll do freeze dance and/or dancing with balloons {purple and yellow of course}. It is my experience that balloons, music and kids are just a natural firework ;D

If it rains, we’ll be inside, and if worse comes to worse, we’ll put the Tangled movie on and make popcorn ;D

Food:

For lunch we are having roll-ups. PBJ for the kids {no allergies…woot!} and ham and cheese for the adults. Also some party mix {chips, pretzles, corn chips etc.} since I figure that qualifies as ‘pub grub’. Juice boxes and cupcakes round out the rest. Oh, well, I did make these chocolate braids….I had the idea and bought the stuff {I hate when inspiration strikes in the grocery isle!} so I had to do them. They are the crescent roll dough {not sure I should have gotten whole wheat} cut into strips and spread with Nutella as I braided {braid, get it?}. We’ll see how they go over. And that’s it. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.

Can I add that we are also serving BBQ supper to all the family who is staying all day, but even if we weren’t I’d still do the same lunch.

Favours:

So I may have gone a bit overboard with the favours, but oh well. Each child gets to keep their Maximus horse and the girls their crown. They also get the jewels.

There are also cool Pascal party blowers {from the Disney site} that they get to keep. Don’t bother making these from foam; paper glues easier. Googly eyes are also easier. And we premade these because I dislike running crafts at a party, and we won’t have any older cousins to do it for me Also, dollar store blowers are not the best. I got these from the 88 cent party store and took off the butterfly decorations that came on them. They are not only pink for the tongue but sturdier and last longer.

Lastly, we made golden flower sugar cookies to put in their bags on the way out. I put foil covered cardboard in the bag to help keep them whole till they get home, and the little tag has some of the healing song on it. I realize it is not the correct order of the verse, but it’s the part we like the best that I could fit on the card The back says, “Thanks for sharing our day!”

Keep an eye out for post #2 after the party to see how things went and for photos of all the decorations. And, of course, the cake!

Update: Someone asked about the tower in the first picture. The girls and I made them one day because they have all the little polly pocket sized Princess dolls (not Rapunzel…yet…shhh!) and no tower to play in. They are made from a Pringles can and a dollar store funnel covered with foam shingles that are hot glued on. I had everything but the can and the foam lying around. Well, no, neatly put away in the crafting drawer and baskets ;D The girls painted them and I glued the flowers on for them and made the braids. They are very fun, no?