We recently celebrated Lexie's 4th Birthday. This year we noticed she truly got excited in her anticipation of not only the actual day but also for her birthday party. It was also the first year she was able to invite all her friends from preschool. Something she was looking forward to.
Several months ago (probably in January) marked the start of her Tangled phase. I would have to say it is the very first Disney princess movie that she was able to sit and watch from start to finish and stay totally interested. And I know why, if you haven't seen it you definitely need to. It's great! Anyways, it was at that point I suggested we could have a tangled party if she wanted and maybe she could dress as Rapunzel for the party. Well the idea stuck because it's all she talked about every time the birthday subject came up.
This year her birthday fell on a Wednesday so the morning of her birthday Trey and I gave her our present as soon as she got up.
Our gift was the official Rapunzel costume, dress up shoes and braided hair.
She also got a new Rapunzel shirt to wear to school and a new pair of princess pajamas.
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| How great is the hair! |
After work we took her out for a birthday dinner, her choice, and she chose Mexican so we went to Janitzio's, which is also the place she requested last year on her birthday. After dinner and Awana at church Mimi and Papaw came over to bring an early birthday present.
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| A double stroller from American Girl, this is what she asked everyone for, she had wanted it ever since our trip to NYC. |
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| Is that a face of excitement or what? |
Aunt Krystal and Uncle Bryan skyped with her also and so we had them "pose" with Lexie for a birthday picture. It's a little hard to make out their faces but it was really special for her to get to "see" them on her birthday.
We threw her birthday party at 11:00am on Saturday morning. The morning started out kind of brisk but by the end of the end of the party the sun was shinning and it had warmed up enough to take off the jackets, which was really good since the party was in our backyard!
To help guests find our house we tied purple and yellow balloons at the bottom of our driveway and hung a
poster like the one in the movie that read "Flynn Ryder Wanted Dead or Alive" on a tree trunk. I really wish we had remembered to take a picture because it looked cute!
Then to let guests know the party was going to be outside we tied yellow and purple balloons to golf tees and stuck them in the ground, guiding them down a path to the party.
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| I found a free template for the banner and I strung it together with yellow and purple ribbon. |
Party activities included a paint station, decorate your own crown station, dress-up, bounce house, and a princess castle pinata.
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Paint station - Trey built this awesome easel the night before the party.
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| We used the purple backdrop from Krystal's wedding to "dress-up" the mirror. |
For centerpieces we took glass containers, hot glued crayons to them, filled them with yellow flowers and sat them on top of wood pieces (made by my Dad and left over from Krystal's wedding).
Lexie prefers cookie cake to actual birthday cake, so this year we had a
cookie cake and we made Rapunzel's tower out of doughnuts and sugar ice
cream cones to display on the food table.
We took another wood platter and drilled a hole in the bottom of it so
we could mount a pipe. Then we threaded day old doughnuts (a cheaper
option since it was only for looks) over the pipe. We made the top of
the tower by stacking 4 sugar cones on top of each other and then
covered them in icing. The purple shingles were cut from a sugar sheet
(bought at Michael's) and stuck to the icing. My creative dad decorated
the tower with green icing vines and leaves. Oh, and the white ball on top is a gumball. The picture doesn't do it
justice. It was so adorable in person!
The party menu consisted of homemade chicken noodle soup, turkey sandwich ring, ham sandwich ring, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apple slices with a caramel cream cheese toffee dip and fall trail mix. I also made mini chocolate cupcakes for those who don't like cookie cake. All the sandwiches were served in cast iron skillets, because skillets are what Rapunzel used to "protect" herself in the movie. The apple dip was served in a small hollowed out pumpkin, which was placed on a skillet and then we scattered the apple slices below.
In addition to Rapunzel's tower we also decorated the table with her glowing hair. Trey and I made the hair and I'm pretty proud of how it turned out. It is made from three packages of yarn and a rope light. We cut each package of yarn into pieces and then braided those pieces. Once we had three braids we braided those braids over the rope light. Then we placed some purple flowers in it just like the movie.
Unfortunately we forgot to take pictures of the food table once we got everything set out, so these pictures don't really show the finished product. Drinks offered were bottled water, purple kool-aid and lemonade. The water bottle labels were designed by my sister and they looked fabulous!
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| The "lemonade stand" - yeah, we took this picture a little premature also! Oh well! |
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For party favors I took small white bags and stuck a sticker label to them, also designed by Krystal. It read "Thank you for getting tangled in fun with me at my party." I filled the bags with mini containers of playdough, glow stick bracelets, Rapunzel bubbles, a Rapunzel straw and a glow in the dark lizzard (I couldn't find gecko's like Pascal, but I figured lizards looked similar). The kids were also able to fill their bags with candy from the pinata.
In addition, the girls who came got a Rapunzel bow in their bag. I made the bows myself, which I was pretty excited about! Krystal designed their holder, which read "Because of you...Today was the Best Day Ever!"
The party was so much fun, here are a few pictures of all the festivities:
