Things I Like To Make: The Princess Birthday Party

For my daughter's 3rd birthday, she wanted a princess party like all little girls her age seem to want. My mission was to create an amazing experience for her and all of her guests, but keep my budge as low as possible. So I choose to make a lot of the decorations, accessories, gifts, and food all from scratch, but worked to make the most of things I already had at home. It took loads of planning and creativity, but it turned out absolutely amazing. It was also so rewarding to see how much all the little princesses enjoyed the party especially my little girl who is growing up so fast.

The Theme:

I wanted all the little princesses to feel like they were attending a royal ball. My daughter wanted bright pink and purple for her colors and I found it very easy to find and they looked very "royal" together. I really liked the idea of using castles at the party since we live in England and my daughter loves visiting all of the castles so that was used throughout the party as well.

The invitation was a purple castle with a pink drawbridge that opened up and invited the princesses to a royal ball and to come dressed in royal princess attire.

The Princess Party Dress

I wanted my little princess to feel extra special at her party so I made her a bright pink satiny princess dress. I got the pattern for $0.99 on sale back in the States and spent about 15 GBP on the material and notions for it. The nice thing was that there was lots of extra fabric left over for me to use to make little monogramed Princess Hang Bags for the guest's treat bags.

Kicking Things Off with a Crafty Bit

I prepared pink and purple magic wands for the girls to decorate with glitter glue, sparkly stars, flower, and hearts, and assorted ribbons. I set up two card tables in our living room and directed all the little guests in there to make their wands as we waited for everyone to show up.

The ball was ready to begin I lead all the moms into the "Royal Ball Room" (our conservatory). I started up the "Princess Party Playlist" on my iPod to "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast. Then all the little princesses made their way into the party room through a curtain of pink, purple, and white streamers to be cheered on by all the moms when they paraded through.

The dining room table was decorated with pink and purple with pink and purple streams draped above.

The table centerpiece was a Princess Cake that I made and put on a decorative stand which I was able to weave dark purple ribbon through. I tried to make the dress of cake look like my daughter's party dress and it was pretty close. I even found edible glitter to sprinkle all around it!!!

I made pink and purple royal banner to hang across the conservatory entry way announcing the little princess' birthday.

In our conservatory, I hung balloons from the ceiling to keep the strings up and out of sight but gave the room a floating feeling. Also a few streamers were hung to highlight the area that we would be hanging the pull string pinata.

I drew pictures of my daughter's favorite Disney Princesses and painted them to hang up around the room. I framed them off with pretty colored paper. I also hung up a couple of my daughter's princess dress up dresses for decor as well next to the princess paintings.

Our conservatory also serves as our only playroom in the house so I had a few IKEA storage units that I wanted to cover up since they didn't go with the party decor. I had some leftover packaging paper that I used to cover the units and then I painted a castle on to it. I got pink and purple wall sample paint from a home store to use as the main colors and to get the big castle to match the other castles. The rest of the colors for the trees and flowers came from my daughter's water color set.

My daughter picked out some pink and purply flowers for her party and we put them on top of the castle along with some Disney princess books that we had for added decorations.

The Party Games

I had three games lined up for the girls to play. We started out with Pass the Frog and while they ate their treats, I blind folded them one by one to play Put a Kiss on the Frog.

Finally they all participated in a pull string Castle Pinata that I had made to match the rest of the decor and the party invitation. I made the pinata myself out of old cereal and juice boxes.

Once the girls picked up all the treasure that fell out of the pinata, I handed out their monogramed Princess Hand Bags (Treat Bags) that I already put a little bag of Cadbury chocolate buttons, a candy necklace and sparkly bracelet in. I displayed the little bags on my daughter's princess tea tray.

The games were great and very age appropriate for 3-4 year olds. Also I was able to use the games and accessories as part of the party decorations.

The Princesses' Royal Table

The royal table was adorned with an off white plastic table cloth and then I found royal purple table topper squares to overlap in the middle. I then sprinkled some pink cut out flowers that I found at a scrapbook store over the top. The centerpiece of the table was the beautiful pink Princess Cake which was accompanied on either side by pots of chocolate covered marshmallows. I used a three tiered tray to display the Magic Wand Pretzels, Rice Krispy Birthday Cupcake treats and princess sugar cookies.

At each place setting the little girls each had a bright pink plate (the birthday girl got a special princess plate). On top I had rolled up a bright pink napkin to hold the fork and spoon and I tied it all together with a dark purple ribbon. Each guest also got their own royal glass with pink bendy straws and a Magic Wand Cookie.

The Princess Party Menu: