Rapunzel Party Part 2 The Food

Yesterday I talked all about the decorations so today I'll tell about the food.  I decided not to serve all the creative "Tangled dishes" I found when I did a Google search for Rapunzel parties.  I liked seeing so many creative movie inspired foods in my online searching.  Honestly, I wanted to have a perfect Rapunzel party but my little girl had no interest in hazelnut soup.  I couldn't find enough cast iron frying pans to use for serving plates AND I had a firm budget I had to work around.  In the end, I decided to serve BBQ sandwiches, meatballs, and PB &J.  We added chips, mac-n-cheese, veggie sticks, and pasta salad (mac-n-cheese and pasta salad some very kind friends brought to the party).

After picking the foods I could afford (and foods the b-day girl would eat) I knew I would need to "fancy up" my not so pretty looking foods.  Hot foods were all in crock pots so I played around with ways to make pretty looking PB &J sandwiches.  My 7 year old got lots of trial sandwiches packed in her lunch the week before the party.   After lots of tries, I ended up liking a simple PB &J sandwich on white bread cut diagonally and dipped into colorful cake sprinkles. They were easy to make and I thought they looked pretty standing on a plate. I didn't have to make all the sandwiches.  two of my friends put them together for me the day of the party (having helpful friends is the key when planning a party). 

To make the food counter look like it went with Rapunzel theme I covered the counter in purple cloth, added a yellow skirt, placed  paper flowers around, and made the jello boats. 

For the treat table I made 3 kinds of cupcakes, lemon cookies, sandwich cookies.  marshmallows dipped in chocolate and sprinkles, brownies, 100 cake balls/cake pops (my mom made them all for me), a lollipop topiary, a tower cake, and a candy buffet.  This table looked yummy from all sides.  I did go over budget with my cake/candy table.  I made all the baked good myself (well, my mom make the cake pops and my husband made the lemon cookies) The candy part of the table quickly raised the cost but it was worth it.  Even the adults seemed to enjoy this part of the party.  I saved some money by making my own buffet jars and cake plates.

The tower cake... This was my love/hate part of the party planning.  My daughter wanted a Rapunzel party with a purple dress, cupcakes, cupcakes, cupcakes, AND a TOWER CAKE!   That is exactly how she responded every time I asked about her party.  Purple dress was no problem.  The cupcakes, cupcakes, cupcakes were simple enough to do.  BUT!  The Rapunzel tower cake?  This part make me laugh, cry, cry some more, stomp in frustration, and pray.  I wanted to make a tower cake out of doughnuts or pecan rolls.  I found many online and they looked like something I might be able to make.  Zehira didn't like them.  I begged and bribed her but she would not budge. She wanted a tower cake it had to be cake and a tower.  I asked her if a tower out of  Rice Krispy Treats would be okay for her cake and she LOVED that idea!  I made several Rice Krispy towers a few weeks before the party trying to figure out how to build a nice tower.  They kept falling over!   It was funny at first but after the third one fell over I started to cry when I saw them fall.  I tried adding cake dowels for supports.  I skipped the butter one time (I read that would make it stronger but for me it only made a big mess in my cooking pot).   I crushed up the cereal before making the Rice Krispy Treats.... All of my early tries fell down.  The day before the party I made up another batch of Rice Krispy Treats.   I crushed up some of the cereal (smushed with my hands) before mixing them in the pot.  I used one cake dowel in the center of the cake.  I firmly pushed the rice treats onto the cake plate and around the dowel.  This was the key to getting it to hold.  I really had to squeeze the treats to mold them firmly in place.  I crushed the treats with firm hands to make sure it was stuck on the place and the dowel.  I then melted white chocolate and covered the tower.  Once the chocolate was cool it held the tower firm.  I used an ice-cream cone covered in chocolate (colored purple) to top my tower.   I used brown icing to add details.   I tried to remember the cake decorating classes I took many years ago when I added the ivy (leaf cake tip).  The sugar flowers are Wilton (found them in Walmart cake decorating section).  My girl was happy with the end result.  I feel I could have done a nicer job if I wasn't so frazzled from all the other sample tower cakes falling.  My three children had fun eating all my fallen towers weeks before the party.   The cake sat on a wrought iron stand (I think it was for potted plants).  I picked up the stand at the thrift store, I cleaned it up, and painted it purple .  

Here's the view from the other side of the table.  

This is my mom holding a cupcake with candles as we sang to the birthday girl.

 I LOVE this photo (did I mention how important it is to hire a photographer).

Class A Photography even captured the birthday wishing!

We ate cake (I'll explain why my daughter's hair is such a mess in my next post).

And we ate cookies and candy.

 Tomorrow I'll share the party activities we did (and the activities we forgot to do).

 I have to thank Class A Photography for all the beautiful photos!

Rapunzel Birthday Party! Part One-tables set.

Zehira is 5! She insisted on a Rapunzel party.   Below is the only photo I took of her the day of her party (I'll tell you more about that in a bit). She's wearing her mama made Rapunzel dress. I ran out of time so I had to skip the ribbon ties on the front of the dress (I'll add them to the dress sometime this week).

It is so hard for me to believe my baby is 5!   She told people for months "I've been 4 years old for a very very long time. Yeah, I've been stuck on 4 forever".  She's no longer stuck on 4 and very happy to tell the world she's now 5.   She had the "best day ever" (just like Rapunzel) she celebrated with family and friends.

Before I share all the party details I should thank Class A Photography, he did an AMAZING job capturing this special day!  I suggest if you're planning a big party hire a photographer and do that FIRST before any other birthday plans!  I WILL remember this for all my future parties.   I had my camera and thought I'd take photos myself.  I was party planning on a budget and own a nice camera so I thought DIY photos wouldn't be too hard (I was wrong).  I was so busy the night before and the day of the party (I was a walking zombie running on 2 hours of sleep the day of the party) I would have struggled taking my own photos. I don't think I would have had time parties move at such a fast pace I never had a chance to finish my sandwich.  Trust me this will happen to you if you go as DIY crazy as I did!  I snapped under 10 photos with my camera (all before the party started) around photo #10 my camera battery went dead! I was heartbroken and frazzled to say the least.  Mike Maxwell saved the day for me.  Mike is the father of 3 children at the party and he jumped right in to save the day for me (I will forever be grateful for all his hard work).   OH! He's on facebook so go take a look! He's from NEPA if your wondering.


This was a very big DIY party (reason I'm posting it to my "craft blog").   I made over 200 paper flowers to decorate tables, chairs, and walls. The photo below shows some paper purple and yellow flowers with pink paper roses in a jar.

I made centerpieces from twigs painted white, with paper flowers attached, stuck in a mason jar. My cousin tied  paper flowers and some tulle on the back of every chair (having helpful friends and family is the key to a good DIY princess party).

The hats I made from scrapbook paper.  I had some Martha Stewart velvet baby paper on hand.  I turned the velvet baby prints to the inside of the hat to use the solid, stripe, and dot side of the paper (used what I had to keep cost down).  I made them a lot larger than normal party hats.  I embellished hats with tulle and or tissue paper.   A friends daughter decorated small picture frames (with window markers) to label who the table was set for.

We had 2 princess tables.

A table for prince and knights. I used inflatable swords for the centerpiece for this table.

 A large table for kings and queens (parents)

a candy/cake table

An activity table,

And a gift table.  I wanted to have a skirt on this table but I ran out of time.

I have so many more photos I think I need to split this party into a few parts.  The party decorations were very thrifty (but took forever to make).   I spent under $20.00 on tissue paper.  To make my flowers I made them just like the jumbo flowers but I cut the paper packs in quarters so I got 4 flowers to every ($1.00) pack of tissue paper.   I then cut the fourths in fourths to make the tiny flowers on the back of chairs and on the twigs ($.25 a piece).  The tiny flowers I made 16 out of ever pack of tissue paper. Some flowers I didn't put as many sheets of paper in and that gave me even more flowers for the money.


The tulle I bought online by the bolt and the same for the table coverings.  Hats I made with what I already had.  I love how it turned out.  Tomorrow I will blog about the food and candy buffet.  

More Dresses

Are you getting sick of looking at dresses yet?  I hope not because I have more to share with you.   I will have summer clothes other than dresses ready to share by next week (I can't put it off much longer my girls need things for summer).
 This purple dress is one of my favorites!  I'm not a fan of the color purple BUT purple always looks so nice in photos. 

 I put this Dreaming Daisy Princess Dress on Pinterest a few weeks ago and over night it got over 100 repins and 50 likes all by people I've never met before!  I was speechless!

Here's the daisy dress on my older daughter (she'll be 7 in a couple weeks). Demi hasn't been my model much lately because she's in school most of the day.  She helps me design at night.  I'm sure when schools out I'll have a lot more photos of her wearing mama made dresses.

 

Zee loves pink...

One can never have too many pink dresses

I do have more princess dresses made (I went crazy creating lots of different styles).   I thought I had photos of my dresses in one file on my computer but I see I'm wrong.  I'll share them soon.

I'm linking up with...

I hope you're all having a happy time crafting!

New princess dress designs

Hello, have you missed me?   I've been very busy sewing.   I gone princess crazy and created a line of one of a kind princess, birthday party, tea party, flower girl, play in the mud dresses (yes my girls play in the mud in satin tutu dresses).  My girls are very happy with me right now!   I'm having so much fun designing, sewing, and photographing dresses. Honestly, I LOVE making dresses for my little girls.  I hope they let me do this forever!  They both love wearing dresses that they helped design.  I hope they keep a love for designing dresses.  If they asked me for store bought dresses I'd be heartbroken. Here are some photos of what we've been making. 

 This blue dress with lilies is one of my favorites right now.]

I love the little train on the back of this blue dress.

This is another favorite of mine.  It's decorated with a yellow rose and rose petals.

 

 

 

 

I will try to post more of them tomorrow.  Right now my sewing machine is calling my name.

I've linked up to