party post - Frozen themed birthday party with DIY/game ideas

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If you're a regular reader, you probably already know that I have two little girls.  This means that my house, more often than not, is filled with strains of "Let it Go" and "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?"  Accurate lyrics and pitch are optional, but spontaneous outbursts of song are not.



My eldest just turned six, and with her Frozen obsession in full bloom (frost?), she wanted a Frozen-themed party. And she wanted to invite the whole class.

Naturally.

Since we recently moved to a place where a backyard party was a viable option, I decided to go with it.  And cross all fingers and toes that I hadn't just invited twenty tiny hooligans into my house.  Luck was with me - the day was a little warm (30C), but it was a beautiful day for a party.




And while I know this is a food blog, I have to confess that this post isn't *really* about the food.  With having an afternoon party, I kept the food simple and sort-of healthy - a rainbow fruit tray (huge hit), a rainbow veggie tray (slightly less of a hit), a cheese and kielbasa tray, crackers, pretzel sticks Olaf arms, tortilla chips and salsa.  I don't have a great photo of the set-up, because I put the food out right at the last second, and it was immediately swarmed by small people.



We also had a separate bowl of Olaf noses (baby carrots) and some melted snowman punch.  Pinterest gave me a lot of ideas for Frozen-themed food, but a lot of them were either really labour intensive (there was no way I was going to fuss with making 20 individual servings of each food), or they were full of blue dye.

I try to avoid artificial colours as much as I can, so my only cave to blue dye was a splash of blue gatorade in the melted snowman punch (recipe at the bottom of the post). And the cake icing, but most people don't really eat fondant, so I wasn't too concerned.



Back to looking for party ideas on Pinterest.  There is definitely NO shortage of Frozen party ideas, and really, none of mine are terribly original. But one common theme that I found when looking through various craft ideas or favour ideas or food ideas is that many of them were either really time consuming, or really expensive.  I'm not going to lie, I did spend more than a few hours on this party, but none of the projects on their own were especially complicated/difficult, and none of the components (aside from Elsa and the cake) were particularly expensive.

What I'm telling you here is that if you like one of these ideas, you can easily do it and it won't take forever and it won't break the bank.

For decor, I primarily used balloons (made a quick garland with fishing twine) and tissue pompoms.  These are both cheap, and while the tissue poms can be a bit time-consuming, you can definitely knock off a few during an evening of netflix watching.  Funny story about the balloons - as the day got warmer and warmer, they started to self-destruct in the sun.  It was pretty funny.

 

I also stuck with inexpensive plastic table cloths, which was great because children spill everything everywhere, and this avoided a lot of clean-up woes. (As an aside, having an outdoor birthday party is the best thing...who cares about all the spilled drinks and all the messy crumbs....I shudder to think what my basement would have looked like after this party, but having it outdoors was GREAT!!!!!!).



In terms of the artwork, if I had photoshop skills, I'm sure I could have figured something out on my own.  Alas, I have no skills.  So I used instant digital downloads from Etsy - they are inexpensive and simple, as long as you have a printer.  Plus, I had slave labour in the form of an almost six-year-old so I didn't have to do that much cutting.

I got this cute birthday garland.



And these adorable food labels.



For entertainment/activities, I have to admit that I overthought this a bit and my initial plan had the kids way overscheduled.  Thankfully I came to my senses and just let the kids do their thing.

I hired a princess for our party (the Snow Queen, from OfficialPrincessParties) and she was awesome.



Most of the kids just loved her, and she kept them very well entertained.  I don't have many photos, because I want to respect the privacy of my mini party guests, but rest assured, the kids had a blast.



I had planned to do a pin the nose on Olaf game - a family member printed Olaf out for me, and I had my little slave cut out the noses.  We didn't get to the game though (kids were having too much fun playing!), so poor Olaf is still noseless.



The pinata I decided we HAD to have also went unsmashed. Again, we didn't get to it, because the kids were so engaged with the princess, that by the time she left, it was time for cake!

As for what we did do, the kids decorated Elsa crowns or Sven antlers with stickers as they arrived.  I found the printables off this great blog, and just picked up some craft foam at dollarama (I used some of the orange foam for the Olaf noses).  I had a large spool of ribbon, so I used that to tie the crowns/antlers over the kids' sunhats.



The kids also did some "frozen fractal" paintings, which was a great idea I got from this blog.  This was awesome because it was SUPER cheap and easy (I already had epsom salts, and then got paint brushes and construction paper from the dollar store) and it was a neat craft.  Here's a sample from an older guest (all my other shots have kids in them!).  It's neat to watch the salt crystals form from what looks like water at first glance. I think batman would approve.



I did get a few licensed products from PartyCity (the Anna/Elsa stand-up, and the table decorations, as well as the pinata, plates and napkins).  You can probably find these things at any party store!



I came across this beautiful cake idea on Pinterest, and as soon as I saw it, I knew it would be perfect for the party.  I liked the idea of a fondant cake on a hot day (to avoid melted icing) and I thought the little figurines were really cute on top of it.  I got the cake from Cakeadoodledoo and she did an awesome job, and saved me a lot of work.  I feel like this type of cake could probably DIY-able for someone with fondant skills, but I don't have those skills, and I always find cake is stressful, because you can't do it up in advance AND it makes a big mess in the kitchen. I had a 6" white cake on top and a 10" chocolate cake on the bottom and it was deeeeelicious.  And so cute, right?



For favours, I wanted to keep things simple.  We had a no-gifts party, and I didn't want to send kids home with an armload of plastic trinkets (i.e., exactly what we wanted to avoid with the no-gifts party!), and when I came across this recipe for glitter playdough, I thought it would be perfect.



It came together really well, and Z was able to help me make it.  I used a combination of blue liquid and gel food colouring (didn't have to add any yellow, surprisingly), and I bought glitter caddies from the dollar store and used blue and silver glitter in it.  I found the chevron tape at Staples, and then the cute little labels on top were from Etsy, and I just shrunk them a bit and cut them with a scalloped round punch I already had.  I made two quadruple batches of the dough and it easily filled 24 1/2 cup mason jars.  The dough is super soft and my kids have really enjoyed playing with it.



I hope the ideas help those of you who might be planning Frozen parties for your Frozen-obsessed kids.  My bottom line advice would be not to overplan the activities (just let them play - we have a playstructure/sand box and that was the biggest draw of the party!). And write their names on their cups.  Just trust me on that one.

Melted Snowman Punch
(slightly lower in sugar/dyes than most punches...but still sugar and dye)
1 L sprite
1 L club soda
1 cup blueberries
1 cup frozen mini marshmallows
1/2 c blue gatorade (just enough to give a blue tinge)

guilt, precedent and birthday parties...

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I often feel pretty guilty that I don't post more on this blog.  In theory, I'd love to be a blogger who updates 2-3x a week and has great content each time.  But the reality is....life is busy.  It's really busy.  I think most people who've been reading a while already know this, but I have two kids and a full-time job, and I also try to be a relatively balanced human being who makes half-hearted attempts to clean her house a bit and workout once in a while (my love of food does nothing to help the fit of my clothing).

And to top it all off, I'm generally a bit on the lazy side.

So finding time to do all of the things that I'd like to do (in theory) is a challenge.

R, my smallest mini-foodie, just turned two.  She is a giggly little sweetheart who brings joy and smiles to everyone she sees.  Of course, two weeks before said birthday, I realized I had done a whole lotta nothin' in terms of planning/inviting/etc.

And I've set a bit of a precedent for myself in terms of having parties for my mini foodies.

i.e., this cake (I didn't make it, btw - from The Girl with the Most Cake):


This pink decor (and yes, the white balance is terrible here.  There is a cute little pink rose cake under that dome though, made by yours truly.  Tutorial here.)  First appearance of poms, backdrop and ruffled tablecloths.


This pink, aqua and red decor (and yes, we got glorious new floors - reclaimed pine from Logs' End - and painted and all that fun stuff in the year between the pink photo and this photo....I seem to remember that we actually started ripping up the carpet the night after the party, and I spent a fun evening pulling staples).  This was my first attempt at a two tier cake and I went with a ruffled cake, tutorial here.


This turquoise black and white decor (the year I ran out of time before doing something with the balloons, hence why they are seated on a light fixture oh-so-randomly:


And so...yeah.  Given the labour-filled precedent I had set for myself, I knew I had to do something for this delightful small person - something that would be cute and fun. And also try not to go insane. Oh, and we've moved, so our house is mid-reno, which always makes for fun times.  Hubs has been working crazy hard to get everything done!

I did what any logical person would do - I outsourced about 80% of the work, spent $10 on classy dollar store decor and sent out my invites via paperlesspost (I've used them for every kids party for the last five years and I LOVE them.  So much cuter than typical e-invites and very cost-effective and easy to track your guest list).

Before I talk about the food, I wanted to talk a little bit about a couple of things you can do with dollar store materials to dress them up.  The first thing I make are these tissue paper pompoms.  They are super easy to make, very inexpensive, and when you fluff them out, they really dress up a room.  In the past, I've strung them on fishing line across my living/dining room, and this year (new house), I just covered up my ugly light fixture with them (for safety reasons, I elected not to turn on the light - nothing was touching the bulb, but I didn't want to take any chances!).  Your local dollar store likely has tissue available in most colours - you need 8 sheets for a pompom - I made some ombre poms, which involved using different shades of pink and white, and I made some solid ones.  I just tied mine using dental floss (in the name of full disclosure, I actually made these all at my desk at work during my lunch breaks, and then fluffed them out at home while watching terrible TV on Netflix - working mom multi-tasking FTW).
You can see Roomba doing his part in that photo too, hehe.

I also find that cheap crepe paper streamers are another good way to make your room look more festive.  I just twisted white/pink streamers in from the corners.  The more streamers you have, the snazzier it will look, but I ran out of both time and energy, so I just did four.  I think it was cute.  I also added some balloons in the corners, but you'll notice that one set fell down before the party started (oops).  I'm pretty sure no one really noticed that much.

One last little dollar store trick is the plastic tablecloths.  Being the queen of all things lazy, I love these for parties.  I can pick up one or two and have a cute, colour-coordinated table for $2, and then instead of washing, I can toss it at the end.  Landfill gods, please forgive me.

You can dress these bad boys up too.  For the under cloth (the white one), I ruffled the edges, which is SUPER duper easy.  You just keep your cloth folded in half (because it's half the work that way) and you gently pull along the edges, creating little ruffles.  You have to be careful not to pull too hard because it will tear, but no one will notice a tear or two.  For the top cloth (the pink one), I like to gather the edges - I've used safety pins in the past, but this time, I just used a needle and a bit of thread (dental floss will work too) and gathered it up at the corners.  In retrospect, I can see it wasn't terribly centred, but I think it looked cute anyway.



In terms of making a table look good, you can't go wrong with bright, fresh ingredients and white or glass platters.  As I mentioned earlier in the post, this was very much a case of outsourcing - I bought family shawarma platters from my local shawarma place (SO GOOD!  SO much delicious fresh food).  I bought two and really should just have purchased one. A single platter is about $44 and comes with a lovely tray of fresh shawarma veggies (grated carrot, red cabbage, pickled turnip, pickles, hot peppers, salad, tabouleh, spiced onions), a tray of rice and chicken, a tray of garlic potatoes, and separate containers of both hummus and garlic sauce, as well as pitas.  It's a great deal and easily feeds 8 people.  I wouldn't call it health food because it's certainly high in sodium, but as an alternative to pizza or other takeout, I much prefer it because there's so much variety in taste and texture.  And it's just delicious (did I mention that?).

I

I also did two trays myself - a rainbow fruit tray and a rainbow veggie tray.  This was pretty quick to put together, and I always like to make sure I have a nice variety of food at my parties, including lots of healthier options.  Especially when there are kids.  I certainly do NOT ascribe to the idea that all food has to be dumbed down to kid level.  We had several young children at the party eating this food and they all LOVED it.

I love these particular platters too - they are large white squares and I think they were about $15 when I got them.  They are absolutely my most-used platters - you can't go wrong with white.



Finally, the gorgeous cake (hint: I didn't make it).  I met the baker through an Aqua BootCamp class and when she mentioned she was starting to make cakes, I took note and liked her page on Facebook (you can too!).  Her cakes are beautiful, and she was so wonderful to deal with - and you can see for yourself how sweet and pretty the end result is.  What I also loved about ordering a cake was that instead of fussing last minute, making icing, re-making icing and then doing a messy, rushed result and having a virtual explosion of powdered sugar to clean up (ARGH), I could instead be more relaxed and spend time getting the house ready, chillin' with the mini-foodies and just generally being less stressed.



You'll note in a few of the photos that my house is quite obviously in a state of renovation.  That theme is likely to continue, but I do plan to post photos of some of the completed projects, as we finish them.
Last, just a quick pic of two of my favourite little people. Sometimes it can be exhausting trying to keep life on track, but the smiles and love from these two always help remind me of what's the most important part of these parties - fun times enjoyed and memories made with family and friends.

 

Thanks for reading!  Would love to hear any of your tips for having a great party without driving yourself insane with the details!