Narnia Party -6yr- White Witch Tiggy

NARNIA PARTY - 6yo Girl's Birthday   I had planned for some months to have a narnia-themed party for my daughter so I was able to collect lots of supplies when they became available as the film was released. I bought up on McDonalds toys when the narnia theme was around and also Narnia notebooks, pencils, erasers and activity sets from Kmart. These were to be prizes. I wanted to create a snow-scene in one room so I bought "let it snow" partyware from a uk site online and collected a range of other snow-featured things from other party websites.  

We used printed narnia invitations and invited 13 children to dress as their favourite character, animal, lion or creature from the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. My daughter dressed as Lucy with a Lucy dagger, vial and cape I had given her for Christmas. We ended up with several lucys, one Susan, a couple of Peters, one Edmund and several white witches.

On arrival the children waited in the hallway until everyone had arrived - we took photos during this time against a Narnia poster I had put in the hallway. When everyone had arrived we asked people what they knew about Narnia and I asked the children how to find the way into Narnia - they pointed to the double doors into the loungeroom. We opened the doors and the children had to climb one by one through some coats on a coatrack which were in the doorway.  

In the loungeroom I had a fire burning and a neighbour who very cooperatively dressed as Mr Tumnus. I made this costume using fun fur to make a pair of brown shorts - cut ragged at the knees with a drawstring waist - brown cardboard horns covered with fur and a brown curly goatee (made of fake dolls hair from a craft shop). These items had to be glued on with gum-based glue after double sided tape failed. He also wore a red scarf I picked up and carried a set of pan pipes - couldn't find any real ones but i glued together some bits of bamboo with black wool dipped in PVA as the string holding them together. 

The birthday girl as Lucy got to sit next to Mr Tumnus who welcomed the children to narnia and invited them to have tea and toast. I had made the toast just as the children were arriving as I didn't want anyone to open the doors to the next room as you will see in a minute. I collected all my daughter's tiny china teacups and served them on a silver tray from the second hand shop. Then Mr Tumnus told them a little about Narnia, how the white witch had made it always winter and how children needed to break the spell with the help of of Alsan the lion.

He warned them against the white witch who puts children under her spell with hot chocolate and turkish delight. I had considered making the party follow the story of Narnia more closely but in the end it got so complicated that I just used the general themes and characters. Also last year I had scared some children almost to death acting out the Wizard of Oz so I thought I would avoid any emotional trauma. For a smaller group of older children you could be more imaginative but with this group which included a few younger children it was hard enough to keep them focussed.  

Mr Tumnus then organised the children into a game of pass the parcel. Between each layer I put a lolly snake and a Narnia pencil, pen or eraser. The final prize was a Narnia diary. For the music I downloaded from the internet some pan pipe music which I played from my MP3 player. It was a bit stop-and start but that was part of the fun - especially as the pan pipes didnt really play. 

After the game Mr Tumnus invited the children to go outside so they opened another set of sliding doors into the dining room which I had decorated as a winter scene. I had put a lot of work into decorating this room which looked pretty special. I had used those vinyl scene setters which wrapped around the room to create a winter look in blue and white snowflakes and snow covered trees. These covered the window as well so an eerie blue light came through. I used a ceiling hanger with snowflakes which hung across the ceiling. We had a dozen foil snowflake shaped balloons filled with helium and other balloons on the floor in pearl and blue. I used the "Let it snow" tablecloth and had put foil coloured crowns on the table along with glue sticks, plastic jewels, narnia stickers, butterfly and star stickers and other decorations.

I asked the children to write their names inside their crowns and then decorate them. While they did this I went off to dress as the white witch.   I had made an outfit out of a long piece of cream satin - 3m basically folded in half with neck holes and arm holes and hemmed down the side - then i got some pale blue chiffon with silver stars on it - I made this drape over the dress like a tunic, attached at the top of the shoulders and cut in a zig zag pattern at the bottom. this sort of wafted around. I had a big piece of off-white Fake Fur which I used as a cape and made a crown from a tall piece of silver cardboard cut into icicle shaped points, made into a circle and stapled. I painted my face white with face paint - on reflection some silver sparkles would have looked good as the photos showed me looking about 70... also long silver eyelashes.

Then I went and got a silver platter I had prepared with individually wrapped turkish delights and a silver tray of tiny glasses of hot chocolate which I had had someone pour out in the kitchen - then carried these in to where the children were making crowns. I was pleased to say that my daughter didnt recognise me. Some (not all) of the children took the hot chocolate and turkish delight after I reassured them they would not be under my spell....  

Then we went outside and played "White Witch Tiggy" which I found on this website - I went first to demonstrate and my daughter was Aslan - I touched people with my wand and they would freeze - then Aslan would come along and breath on their legs and they could run again... This entertained everyone while I went inside to set the table for lunch.  

I had removed the crown stuff and set the table with snowflake plates, cups and serviettes from the "let it snow" partyware. I tried to make almost all the food white so we had: white bread cheese sandwiches cut into stars with a cookie cutter - all went immediately so despite all the bread you waste kids do eat them - marshmallows which I dipped in melted white chocolate and rolled in coconut, plain biscuits with snowflake patterns piped in white icing, white sugar coated gingerbread biscuits, and pale blue patty cakes with silver baubles on top. The only things not white were fruits skewers - i tried to make them look like wands by putting star fruit on top but this fruit was so hard to find I needn't have worried. Also served mini pizzas but brought these in later. The table looked great. Served fruit juice in all the cups as the kids had enough sugar!  After eating we played "pin the tail on Aslan". I painted a picture of a lion and then cut out some tails for them to stick on. The winner got another Narnia diary.

Then we went outside for a treasure hunt. I got pictures of all the Narnia characters off the internet and made them all the same size, 7 including the 4 children, Aslan, White Witch and Mr Tumnus - then put them in rows so there were 4 rows of 7 per page. I laminated these and cut them into cards. I put the treasure out by scattering the cards face down all over the back yard - not trying to make them hard to find but quite visible. Also scattered some more of the turkish delights. Earlier Mr Tumnus had shown the childrne a page of the photos. I told them they had to find one of each picture and one turkish delight. The first person to complete the hunt won another prize of a Narnia note book and pens. This took quite a while as the children enjoyed finding and swapping the pictures and running up to check if they had found all the pictures. 

After this we played another game of white witch tiggy and then came inside for birthday cake. I had made a large rectangular chocolate cake and a small ring-cake (left over patty cake mixture). I put the chocolate cake on a tray and cut the circle in half and put this against one end. I iced one half of the chocolate cake with chocolate icing, then rolled out white packet icing (like marzipan icing but not almond flavoured) to look like snow and put this over the semicircle and half the rectangle. I had got a white castle (this was from a fishtank shop, and I had sprayed it white (5 coats!) and sprinkled with silver glitter). This was the white witch's palace.

The glitter fell off a bit so I made sure the children didn't eat the cake from this end. I found some white chocolate mint leaves so I stuck them on toothpicks to be trees. I had a set of the McDonalds narnia figures so I put the white witch and Edmund on the white icing. I made a rough edge to the white so it looked like the snow was melting as it did in Narnia. I put Aslan, lucy, susan and peter on the Chocolate side and put green mint-leaf lollys on toothpicks for trees. It looked the the characters were about to face each other in battle. I also found a great polar bear (by Schleich) which I put next to the White witch. This pretty much filled up the cake. We sang happy birthday and then while the children were eating I hung up the pinata.

I made a pinata to look like a lion's head - some said it did look like a lion. Basically cut 2 face shapes out of yellow cardboard, made them into a flat box which I put string through and cut a hole for the lollies. Then made a kind of nose shape and cut yellow and other colours (gold, brown, red) of tissue paper into fringes and wrapped them around .. Stuck eyes, nose and ears and whiskers on. Anyway it worked ok and when all the kids had had a go hitting it with swords we just ripped it open. Lots of lollies inside so we gave the children their lolly bags to fill up. I had prepared the lolly bags with a few extra things such as lollys that couldn’t fall on the ground from the pinata and also the McDonald's toys and booklets. Most people got Aslan, a few got Peter.  I also gave them the prizes from the treasure hunt as every child got a prize but I saved them till the end of the party so noone lost their prize. These were Narnia activity packs with notebooks, puzzles and crayons in -also from Kmart.  

I spent ages organising this party but it ran really well to time and was over in 2 hrs. We waved everyone goodbye and breathed a sigh of relief!!  PS I am selling the costumes, decorations and left over partyware on Ebay to recoup some of the costs of the party as it wasn't cheap but I bought items over a long period of time so it was not a great expense at the time.