We celebrated today though, with a princess party with some friends. We had party prep last night and Nana slept over to have a special visit and help wrangle the kids while we got some things finished. I had been able to finish the marshmallow wands but needed the majority of the night to work on her cake. My first foray into fondant was... exciting. I was caught unprepared a few times and had to make a few quick design changes, but ultimately I was pleased. Homemade marshmallow fondant covered a funfetti cake frosted with buttercream.
It's amazing how many imperfections you can hide with flowers.
This morning I headed out to the restaurant before everyone else to start setting up. Our first "girls only" party, I was able to pull out all the frilly stops and pinked-out our restaurant.
The wildflowers came from our backyard!
I got the craft/baby table set up and moved on to setting out the food.
We had chocolate nutella scones, crackers with meats and cheese, chicken salad sandwiches, fruit skewers, mint lemonade, strawberry wafer cookies, and the birthday girls' junk food of choice -- cheese puffs. Arguably the most popular food at the party.
We brought all of the girls princess dresses and hung them up to share so every guest was able to wear a beautiful dress (or two or three). The last thing to set up was our princess play table. We brought every castle, tower, and house we had along with a bin full of princesses and furniture for free play. This was a last minute idea but probably the best one I had. There was rarely a time when the table wasn't occupied.
Our guests arrived as we hung the last decoration. We said goodbye to the guys (who went bowling instead), and set to getting everyone in their proper princess attire. Once dresses were donned we moved to the craft table to decorate princess hats! My sister supplied the idea and my Silhouette cameo made short work of cutting out the paper hats.
Crayons and glittery foam stickers were flying as they worked, making their own beautiful accessory. Next up was face painting! Hearts, rainbows, butterflies, ladybugs, and robins' eggs decorated a dozen sweet cheeks.
All that creativity worked up an appetite so we headed to the table for lunch as Beauty and the Beast played in the background.
After some serious munching and a bit of running around outside we started some games. First up was The Missing Slipper. The girls were told that Cinderella had visited but had lost one of her slippers! I showed them the one we had and set them off on a hunt to find the other. Team work prevailed and they were all eager to play again. After a few hunts we sat down to play Pass the Poison Apple; a new twist on one of our favorites, hot potato. We passed a ruby red apple around in a circle and when the music stopped whoever was holding the apple fell asleep!
(Many thanks to my awesome sister, Meg, for brainstorming with me!)
As everyone started winding down we pulled out the cake. The girls came to the bar as we sang Happy Birthday and Juliana blew out the candles.
Pieces were passed around along with cups of ice cream, just to push the sugar rush over edge. ;)
As our guests readied to leave we handed out treats of a pink star wand, marshmallow pop, and strawberry cookies to each pretty princess. We so enjoyed sharing this special day with wonderful friends.
