May 11, 2011

Sassy's Tangled Birthday Party: Prep

Oh, Sassy's 5th birthday party...

Where do I even begin?

From the start, we had decided as a family that Sassy would not have an extravagant birthday party this year {for reasons undisclosed at this point}.

All along, we told her that she could invite a friend or two to a movie or for a sleepover or something like that. Then, at just about a month before her big day, she came to me with a really sweet notion and a request to have a small birthday party with some school friends.

She wanted a Rapunzel birthday.

Her Dad and I talked things over and came to an agreement: she could invite a few friends from school and a few friends from dance, and we'd call it a day.

Well, let me tell you how that worked out...

The wheels in my head began to spin, and they quite possibly became just slightly out of control, as they so often seem to do. Weird.

Anyway, before long we had a guest list of 18 kids and it was crunch time.

While I was brainstorming ideas that would fit the circumstances, I thought it would be really fun to offer the girls glitter hair extensions. They all go gaga over them anyway, and it does align nicely with the Rapunzel theme. I contacted our hair girl, Nikki on a whim. Knowing full well she was int he midst of opening her very own salon, and with no idea of whether a 5-year-old birthday party was something she would even consider, I didn't exactly have high hopes.

Guess what?

She {bravely} jumped right on board.

I secured a room at the school I worked at to best fit our group. It was free to us, which was awesome! I ordered some garden flower & butterfly cupcakes from Sams and had plans to serve up a bunch of pizza to the princesses.

I found most of my party inspiration from Supermom Moments. We followed her invitation tutorial here, with these results:




We took the braid & jello boat ideas from this post and went to town. You should have seen the three of us (Tyler, Bastian, and myself) trying to braid the yarn in the backyard... it was EPIC.



The jello boats turned out adorable, and went along nicely with the boat scenes in the movie:



My Mom replicated the pin-the-frying-pan-on-Flynn-Ryder seen here. Frying pan template can be found here.



One of the really large undertakings that we decided to go for on party day was a variation of the Rapunzel tower seen here and here. Oy! Tyler constructed the dowel rod platform and we began stacking donuts and willing Lynzee's Pampered Chef tiered plates to stay upright. My Mom was responsible for 100% of the icing...



I wish I could have captured better pictures, but the lighting in the library hates me I'm not that good with my camera yet, unfortunately. The donut tower was something magical, if I do say so myself. So glad we went for it!



The main downfall of using the library {besides the yucky lighting} was the fact that there were many, many scenery distractions. We tried to liven things up a bit by throwing up some paper lanterns, a la the movie...



For favors {besides the glitter hair}, each girl got to keep the nail polish that was used for her manicure, a spa mask, and a princess lip gloss. Sassy and I also made Pascal Party Blowers for each girl to take home.

The plan was for the girls to enter and sit around the SMART Board screen to watch Tangled and enjoy pizza & juice. One by one, we pulled the girls aside for Nikki to place their hair extensions & make-up and for us to pain their nails.

To round out the activities, we had a table of Tangled printable coloring pages to complete and we made a Tangled may pole in honor of Sassy's real birthday- May 1st!



All in all, things came together quite nicely for throwing together a party in about 3 weeks. Having said that, I wouldn't suggest it. HA! I need more time to get things in order.

Stay tuned for pictures from the actual par-tay!

11 sweet tweets:

Unknown said...

That looked like a wonderful party, especially the "Tower"! Sassy is so lucky to have such a creative Mom :) On a side note, Catie would be so jealous, Tangled is her favorite movie!!

Sherry said...

I have to be honest here...after reading your first couple sentences I thought to myself, "there is NO way Heather is just going to let Sassy pick a couple girlfriends to have over and call it a day! No way!" And as I kept reading (and seeing the awesome party deco and favors!) I thought that was much more your style! Let me just say, you are creative and have an awesome support system (my husband is willing to blow up a couple balloons and maybe toss a tablecloth on a table) to help you with such an endeavor. :) My boys are simply not getting such a cool party because frankly...I'm not that creative AND I don't want them to expect it year after year...after year. :) Looking forward to the party pictures!

Kendra said...

OH MY WORD!!!!!!!!!!! What a party!! That tower is amazing!! How fun to do the hair extensions for the girls, I bet they were all in Heaven!

Sassy is so lucky to have so fun parents! =)

Anonymous said...

Too bad sassy had to settle for a small, simple little party this year, huh? HA! Everything looks great!!!

Crystin said...

Fabulous job! Wow. I love it!!

stephanie said...

oh. my. goodness. this is seriously amazing. good job momma!!!

Jami said...

That is amazing!!!! Can you do my kids parties? ;)

Shelby Rooney said...

Seriously, how freaking awesome was this bday party!?! Ava is OBSESSED with Tangled! I think I need to hire you for our next birthday because I am seriously lacking in the creativity department. Also, what program do you use to edit your pics? The new pics you posted of the girls were priceless. I just got a new Nikon camera and Im figuring it out, but photoshop is SO confusing to me!

Danica said...

What a great party! I love the doughnut tower. Thanks for showing me how it turned out! I am excited to see how the hair extensions turned out. What a fun idea.

Sue said...

I'm in love with your cake tower! Lovin' the braids too:)

cajungal01 said...

HI!
I too am planning on trying the donut tower for my daughter's upcoming "Tangled" party. Yours looks GREAT!

Can you tell me what size dowel rod you used?
Also, is yours placed inside a wooden block? (it looks like a small cake)
:0)
THANKS!
~robin