Cinderella Party
Little E turned three!
Little E has loved Cinderella for a long time, pretending to dance with her prince, lose her glass slipper, and battle it out with mean stepsisters over and over again, so it’s no surprise that we decided to make Cinderella the theme for her third birthday party (see how I’ve learned from Cinderella in another of my posts here). I found some cute handmade invitations online and modeled my invitations after them.
I found inspiration for the wording from the movie itself.
What’s a Cinderella party without a clock tower? It was convenient that I already had a clock hanging right there. The rest of it was made from cardboard wrapped in wrapping paper that I had. The fleur-de-lises on the top were leftover from the capes I made for the boys that I will show below. The windows were cut out of cardboard and wrapped with foil.
Pink and white meringues–this was a good excuse to make them! Too bad they turned out so sticky. I’m really glad that my friend helped me out by dipping all the pretzels and marshmallows and making pigs in a blanket! We had a lot of sweet things–even the popcorn had melted pink candy drizzled over it.
There were several times while I was making this cake that I thought it was going to be a complete disaster. It was made from two yellow cakes (from a recipe that called for eight egg yolks each, which is another reason why I had meringues) with strawberry filling. I’m glad it ended up ok (for an amateur)! I know that Cinderella is normally marketed in blue, but if you watch the movie closely, you might agree with me that her dress looks more silver/white than blue! Besides, silver and white went better with pink, Little E’s favorite color.
I found these little guys in a Google search for Jack and Gus, the Cinderella mice. I printed them on white card stock and cut them out by hand. Since I didn’t have much to cut, it didn’t bother me. If you have a Cricut, you can buy the Disney princesses cartridge, and that would be a lot easier, but I wanted to do it the least expensive way. I got this idea from a much more beautiful party than mine.
I did the same with Cinderella. I had a Fairy Godmother, another Cinderella, and the Prince under the clock tower.
That’s how I made these, as well:
I had pink, white, and silver tulle for these curtains (mostly leftover from a relative’s wedding) and for the canopy hanging from the fan. The silver tulle was covered with sparkles that fell off and shimmered all over everything when I unrolled it. I didn’t realize until this party how much my husband hates sparkles!
I was just recently given a sewing machine, and I’m in a sewing group on Tuesday mornings, so I decided to make my main favors for this party, so that I would have a project with a deadline and so that I could practice sewing. My favor for the boys was the palace guard cape. If you’ve seen Cinderella, you might vaguely remember a bunch of scary looking men in black on horses chasing after Cinderella after she rides away from the palace, leaving her glass slipper. Those men were the palace guards, and I figured the boys coming to the party could better relate to them than to the mice or even the prince (although apparently I was wrong about my own son, who chose to be a prince for Halloween this year), so I gave each of them this cape and a foam sword. My mother-in-law helped me a lot with these capes, teaching me all kinds of new things, for which I was very thankful!
The boys had a little too much fun with their capes and swords–it’s a good thing those swords were pretty light-weight and harmless!
For the girls, I made little bracelet purses, which I thought were easier to make than the capes, believe it or not! They’re reversible, which I think is so much fun! I filled them with all kinds of girly trinkets and placed them on a table set up to be The Royal Salon, an idea I found on this Etsy site.
At The Royal Salon, girls could take a purse and doll themselves up with earrings, a necklace, rings, body jewels, a bracelet, a tiara, and nail stickers. I thought I was going to do their hair, too, but that didn’t happen. Instead, they spent time decorating a Melissa and Doug girl on a piece of paper with nail and jewelry stickers.
They also lined up to go outside and get glitter sprayed into their hair, which ended up all over the house, much to Greg’s delight. I’m not sure why one of the boys ended up in this line!
The girls came already beautified in their princess dresses, so they didn’t need much help! I was amazed at the diversity of princesses–we had Jasmine, Rapunzel, regular Cinderella, bride Cinderella, Belle, and a couple generic princesses, including my Little E.
When the girls weren’t getting pretty, and the boys weren’t beating each other with their swords, they colored,
or watched the movie Cinderella in Little E’s room. Little E and her good friend watched it alone together for a long time with the door closed before anyone discovered there was a movie going on in there.
The kids also all played freeze dance to Disney music for their “ball”, which was hilarious to watch!
And the men watched football, which probably made for the perfect princess party for them!
Of course, we sang happy birthday and cut the cake, which ended up being much easier to cut and serve than I thought it would. Do you think I have enough small princesses surrounding me as I get ready to hand out the cake?
Little E was scared to blow out the candles, but she did enjoy eating the cake! After cake, of course she opened up her presents, when she received many great things that she loved from her friends!
Update: after the new Cinderella movie came out, I wrote a post about how to find glimpses of Jesus in the story of Cinderella, which can be found here.
