Amanda's Princess Party - Princess & Pea

My daughter wanted a princess theme for her sixth birthday.  I really liked the idea and let my imagination run wild. I traced one of my high heeled shoes and cut it out to use as a template for a glass slipper.  I cut this shape out of both white paper and plastic laminate.  I glued the two pieces together with silver glitter glue so the glitter would show through the plastic and outline the shoe.  I glued this to a piece of antique white paper so it would look like parchment.  The invitation was printed on the paper and read:  Her Ryal Highness, Princess Amanda, requests your presence at a rotal ball given in honor of her sixth birthday.  All princesses are asked to wear their finest royal dress-up clothes for a fun filled day at the castle.  Please come and join Princess Amanda for some jewel hunting, frog kissing, dress-up fun.  It included date, time info.  I rolled the invitations up and tied them with pink and silver curling ribbon, tucked a string of pearls under the ribbon and hand delivered them to the ten little princesses invited. 

The decorations were awsome and so much fun to make.  I used cardboard from refrigerator boxes (free from appliance store) to make a castle for the front of our house.  I painted it like grey bricks with turrets and flags and dressed up our front door to resemble a drawbridge.  A knight on a horse( drawn and painted on cardboard) greeted the princesses as they arrived.  They walked up the sidewalk which I had covered with a red carpet remmenent and entered the castle through the "drawbridge".  Each girl came dressed as their favorite princess and I had available a trunk full of old prom dresses and costume jewelery for anyone who needed them. 

I had a craft table set up with everything they could possibly need to make and decorate their own royal crowns.  Crowns were precut out of white craft foam and I provided feather boas for trim, glitter, plastic jewels and beautiful beads for decorating.  While the crowns dried, we played some royal games.  First game was the Princess and The Pea.  I read the girls the story of the Princess and The Pea, then pulled out four small throw pillows and a small bouncy ball.  I asked the first girl to turn around while I hid the ball under one of the pillows.  She then had to sit on each pillow and try to guess which one hid the ball.  They loved this game and had several turns each.  Next came Pass The Pearls.  The girls sat in a circle and passed a string of pearls around behind their backs while I played and stopped a little Mozart music.  Each girl that got caught with the pearls, was given a pink feather.  The game continued until each girl had a feather then the feathers were traded in for a string of pearls for each girl to take home.  Everyone is a winner at my games!  Next came Kiss the Frog.  I had painted a huge green frog on a piece of cardboard complete with a crown set at a jaunty angle on his head.  Each girl was given a pair of pink lips made from craft foam with sticky tack on the back.  I covered their eyes with a silk scarf and spun them around.  The girls tried their best to have their lips come the closest to kissing the frog and turning him into a handsome prince!  This was another favorite game. I hid plastic jewels in a tray of sand ans each girl took a turn trying to find the hidden treasure.  Each found and kept five jewels.

By now the crowns were ready ro wear and lunch was ready to be served to our royal guests.  I had made ham sandwiches, peanut butter sandwiches and cream cheese sandwiches cut out with heart shaped cookie cutters.  These wrer server on clear plastic plates with pink doilies for placemats.  There were pink heart shaped sugar cookies, pink lemonade served in plastic wine glasses.  I had made a canopy with heavy guage wire made into a circle and hung from the ceiling.  I wrapped the wire in silver garland left over from Christmas and draped it with panels of pink and white tulle attaching the end of each panel to the back of a chair abd fastened with an artificial flower twisted to hold the fabric.  The girls ate under this canopy.  I served a castle shaped cake and each girl took home a cupcake decorated to look like a princess.  These were made with doll picks I found at a cake shop.

Goodie bags were cloth bags made from bridal satin I found on clearance.  I made simple drawatring bags and filled them with heart shaped candies, candy necklaces, ring pops, hair ribbons, butterfly hair pins, lip gloss, small mirrors, little hair brushes and of course their crowns.  I purchased paper mache photo boxes from Oriental trading and decorated each one with glitter and jewels.  I took a polaroid picture of each princess sitting on our home made throne(high backed chair covered in dark red fleece and trimmed with gold braid) and trimmed the picture to fit in the photo box.  Each box contained a thank you note for attending written by my daughter lying on top of artificial rose petals.  I had strung white Christmas lights around the house and added pink, white and royal purple balloons for fun.  Artificial rose petals were scattered on the table and floor where the girls played their games. The girls had a ball at the party and I hope it was a day my daughter will never forget.  After two boys and eighteen years, I finally have the chance to play dress-up with my very own little girl!