Caleigh's Princess 4yr - Castle Cake

We just had a princess party for my daughter's 4th birthday.  For INVITATIONS:  I made cut outs of tiara's for the invitation.  I used pink card stock and put little sequins on one side with a glitter line along the bottom and a few glitter swirls in between the squins.  Then on the other side I cut out a lighter pink card stock and put the party info on it, then I glued it on.  My daughter's favorite color is pink. 

FOOD:  I didn't do too much food.  All we had was chips, pretzels and two different kinds of cheese chunks.  The DRINKS:  I wanted to stay with the theme and color pink.  I had bought pink juice and cherry 7up(it's pink), the grown ups had tea.  The PARTY SUPPLIES:  I bought the disney princess theme heart plates, table covers and pink forks.  I also bought little wine cups(plastic).  I used glitter to put swirls around the bottom part of the cup.  They were for the kids, they loved them.  The grwon ups wanted to use them too.      

DECORATIONS:  I used dark and light pink streamers in the kitchen were the food was.  In the living room where most people would hang out I hung regular pink plastic tablecloths.  I put two at the doorway from the kitchen to the living room.  Then I hung two criss-crossed(X) in the center of the ceiling in the living room and left about a foot and half dangle down.  It was to resemble a ball room.  I hung a ballon from each corner of that.  I printed off the net a bunch of princess pictures.  I hung them on all my picture frames in the living room and a few in the kitchen.  GAMES:  I took a picture of my daughter in her princess outfit she wore for halloween and I blew it up bigger.  It still fit on a regular size paper.  The top half of her.  I used that for pin the tiara on the princess.  I outlined where her tiara was and made copies of her tiara to pin on it.  The tiara's were about 2 inches big.  That game was for the little kids.  The bigger kids I had them do a different game.  They had 3 minutes to come up with as many words as they can for the words PRINCESS CALEIGH( my daughter's name).

The GOODIE BAGS:  I made my own bags out of white paper.  I printed a template off line. (dltk-kids.com) I then  used a tiara stamp (michael's $.99)  and stamped pink tiara's on each side.  I put a line of glitter around the top of the bag and swirls on the sides.  For the girls: I bought flashing tiara's (walmart $.88 each), then got gold cardboard stars (party city $1.79 for a 5 pack) and pencils from there too.  I hot glued the pencils on one side of the star with some pink curling ribbon. There you have a little princess wand.  I bought princess tattoos (party city $2.99 a pack) and princess gummy bracelets (walmart $.98 a bag, candy aisle).  For the boys:  I went to Burger King and got the crowns there (free), I bought little swords (walmart $.88 for a 2 pack), I got spiderman tattoos (party city $2.99 a pack), they also got the princess bracelets.  Plus they all got 2 pack of smarties.  I saved the best for last. 

THE CAKE:  I spent the most time on this!!(about 12 hours all done on Saturday)  My daughter wanted a castle cake for awhile.  I am not a baker, I can bake cookies.  Just to give you an idea if I can do it, you can too.  The  more pink it was, the better.  I spent about two weeks looking online for tips, ideas and pictures.  Then I drew some pictures(8) freehand just to come up with how I wanted it to look and what colors to use. (i.e.; square cake on the bottom with round cake on top or square on square and where to put the towers, etc.)  I finally figured it out.  I used two 9x13 cake pans (8x8, 9x9 looked to small), then I bought a pryex glass bowl (walmart $4.99 I can reuse it, it came with a lid) to bake the round cake on top with.  It had to be big enough so it didn't look silly or out of place.  First I frosted the cake with a thin layer of crumb frosting (to help keep crumbs from being on the final icing), I let it harden, actually overnight.  Then I frosted it with pillsbury vanilla icing tinted pink (with pink paste, paste doesn't make your icing runny), then took three toilet paper rolls frosted them with a white layer of icing also, because they are a little dark to cover up, then I put a layer of pink icing on them.  I took 7 regular ice cream cones and turned 3 (front and center towers) of them upside down (the part where the ice cream goes against the table) then frosted the wide part of them with pink icing, then slipped the toilet rolls over the cone part.  I let them harden.  I took the other 4 cones (they were the back towers) and turned 2 upside down and put icing on the bottom tip and put the other cones right side up (trimmed to sit level on the cake) and "glued" them together, then let them harden before I frosted them with pink icing.  I took 5 sugar cones and star tipped a darker pink colored icing on them.  Left about an inch unfrosted so I can pick up and put on the regular cones.  I put the cake together, I used 5 cut straws to support the round cake which sat on a piece of cardboard I cut out.  It sat right above the bottom cake, barely touching. Then after it was together, I finished the star tip on the sugar cones, and put one purple star tip icing on top of the sugar cones (made with purple paste).  I then put a dark pink border around the round cake and the ice cream cones except the two front towers.  I also put the dark pink icing around the bottom edge of the rolls to hide the edge(on the two front ones and the center one).  I put a green grass border around the bottom of the cake.  I used the purple icing for the little pathway in front of the door with grass at the edge of that.  I star tipped the door in dark pink.  I put windows on it with dark pink.  I couldn't find the platic princess dolls to put on the cake so I printed the same picture from the game out and made it about 3 inches tall laminated it and put a toothpick on it and stuck it in the cake and I made a little banner that said " Happy 4th Birthday Caleigh"  put a little princess sticker on each side of it( I printed them off line too) put toothpicks on it and stuck it in the cake also.  I had also bought the little hard sugar decorations (2 crowns, 2 carriage and 2 castles) (walmart forget how much, under 2 bucks)  I try and come up with different unique ides for my son and daughter's birthday parties.  I try and make alot of stuff too (it might be cheaper sometimes) plus it's not the "store bought theme" items.  Everybody loved the cake.  My daughter couldn't wait to eat it.  It took along time to put together but only 2 minutes to destroy.  I did take lots of pictures of it though.  Hope this helps give someone some ideas.