Royal Party -6yr- Princess Hat Decorating

For my daughter's sixth birthday we had a Royal Princess party.  We plan to visit Disney next summer, so this was the perfect opportunity to dress the kids like the Disney princesses.  Since it was close to Halloween, princess attire was quite abundant in the party stores.  The birthday princess has a few friends that are boys, so they were included as princes! 

I made the invitations on Powerpoint.  I drew a simple castle by hand using straight lines and some castle turrets at the top.  In the center of the castle I typed in Calligraphy font:  You are cordially invited to attend the 6th Birth-Year Gala of Princess Molly Belle (last name) to be held the 20th day of September in the year 2003 in the castle ballroom in the (last name) Kingdom (address).  Please arrive at noon in your best royal attire for the Imperial Feast.  Chaperones are welcome if properly attired.  The celebration will continue until 3:00.  Please state your intent in coming to Her Royal Highness Queen Michelle (phone #).  Be prepared for a magical time!  This was printed on parchment paper that I found at the party store.  It had gold decorations scrolled along the top of the paper.  Invitations were rolled in a scroll, tied with a gold ribbon and delivered by hand. 

I made a beautiful (and cheap) homemade castle.  I covered the railing surrounding our deck with a gray styrofoam material and made some castle towers out of cardboard and spray-painted them gray to make the entranceway up the deck steps.  The castle towers were modeled after the castle gate sold on a website: www.birthdayzbyshindigz.com.  I had a lot of netting draping down off of the top of the towers.  This served as an excellent photo spot!  The party was attended by 20 princes and princesses, so free play was not an option. 

I structured activities throughout the 3-hour long party.  We started by making princess hats.  I used plain pink party hats.  The princesses decorated them with glitter, sequins and stickers.  I then taped colored ribbon to the point to trail behind them. (I discovered that the netting that I bought was too heavy, hence lots of leftover net to drape from the castle towers.)  Their names were on their hats in order to identify each princess!  The princes decorated shields with markers, glitter and stickers.  I made shields ahead of time out of cardboard and covered them in foil.  I stapled a cardboard handle on the back.  Those princesses that were done decorating quickly could color princess coloring pages, have their nails painted, have body jewels applied or have their hair sprayed with glitter hairspray.  Everyone decorated a large paper bag with their name on it so that anytime they won something or made something, it went right into the bag so that it wasn't lost! 

The first game that we played was Kiss the Frog.  I gathered them all together and asked them what happened in the fairy tale when a beautiful princess kissed the frog.  The frog turned into a prince!  I cut out red construction paper lips labeled with each child's name and then drew a frog on green posterboard (It turned out not to be that difficult even for an terrible artist like myself!  I drew somewhat of a 4-leaf clover, made a fat body, 2 skinny front legs with web toes, and then some back legs.  I made 2 big eyes out of white paper and glued them on.) They enjoyed watched to see where everyone kissed the frog (his eyes and his nose!) We laughed to see that one princess kissed the wall of the house!  We feasted on finger foods and drank punch out of champagne glasses that were pre- decorated in glued on jewels, sequins and their names in glitter. 

After lunch we played Hunt for Dragon Eggs.  I gathered the royal party-goers together and sat with a little stuffed dragon on my lap.  I said that the dragon had gone throughout the kingdom and left dozens of eggs.  Everyone was to find one and bring it back.  All of the plastic Easter eggs had a silver-wrapped chocolate prize and one had a special prize that was proclaimed the winner.  The winner got to keep the dragon as the prize.  Everyone received jewels from the queens treasure box for defending the kingdom against the dragons. 

The next game required teams so we picked cards that had hand-drawn wands on them.  We had a purple wand team and an orange wand team.  Each team raced to draw a princess on a large piece of paper (first person draws the head, next person draws an eye, etc, and the last person draws the princess hat).  The game could be repeated by flipping the paper over and drawing again. 

The next game settled them down for a bit.  They sat in a circle and listened to princess music while passing around a closed make-up box.  When the music stopped they got to open the box and eat one of the crackers inside.  This box came in handy while they were waiting for presents to be opened.  We passed it around again! 

The cake was a castle cake fashioned after the one on the website www.familyfun.com.  They recommended 5 square pans.  I used 3 ½ for the castle (3 for the bottom and then the ½ was cut in quarters to be one tower) and frosted the other 1 ½ with the same frosting.  I cut up these extra cakes ahead of time so that after we finished singing (or rather screaming) Happy Birthday, I took the castle away and came right back with cut pieces of cake for everybody.  I could then relax and cut up the castle at a leisurely pace for adults and extra pieces. 

The next activity was a divided one.  So we picked colored wand cards again.  Ten kids sat at one table and made magic wands out of giant pixie stix and pre-cut construction paper stars stapled to the paper tag.  They decorated the stars with glitter and stickers.  The other 10 kids sifted for treasure jewels in a magic cauldron full of black sand.  When they found 5 beads they made a necklace to wear.  When it was time to open presents, all the royalty sat in a circle and delivered their present to the birthday princess by walking down the red carpet (red tablecloth masking taped to the deck castle floor). 

For goody bags, the princes received a knight action figure set that I found at the dollar store for $1 and some candy.  The princesses received some glitter body lotion, a ring and nail polish along with some candy. 

The last activity calmed them down a bit before sending them home.  I gave them all a little wrapped gift to place on their laps.  Princesses sat in one circle and princes sat in another so that I could have boy and girl prizes.  I read the story Cinderella.  Each time I said her name they had to pass their gift around in the circle.  As I said Happily Ever After they were allowed to open the gift that they ended up with. 

It really was a memorable event for my daughter and a magical afternoon for all the princes and princesses!