Lily's Princess Party

Boy, did I not know what I was getting myself into! Lily turns 3 on Sunday, and we decided to throw her a birthday party. Adam and I started discussing it the last week in October, and upon consulting the calendar, found that the first weekend in November was the only free one we had for the month. Yikes. I had little more than a week to plan a party. Seeing as her current obsession is princesses, I decided to do a princess themed party. After researching online I came up with some ideas and started amassing all the necessary supplies. I think Lily, Gemma and I lived in the car for a week with all the errands we ran. Adam and I were up until 2 a.m. or so cleaning, decorating, and setting everything up. We decked out the basement, which is a perfect place to let 9 2-4-year olds run wild.

Everyone was invited to attend in princess attire, and we began by having them decorate some foam tiaras with gemstones and markers while everyone arrived.

After that it was on to the first game. The fishing game. Adam didn't know what I was talking about when I told him we were doing this. I said, "Haven't you ever been to a school carnival before?" I loved this game when I was a kid!

I had to give him a basic rundown on it since he was going to be the man behind the curtain, so to speak.

Next we went on to our second game--a variation of pin the tail on the donkey (which nobody had ever heard of, but hey, they're like 3 and 4 years old). I had two stations set up, since little princess have little attention spans and can't wait for their turn for too long. :) We did pin the glass slipper on Cinderella and pin the crown on Princess Aurora.

After that, it was upstairs for the Princess Song Identification Game. Each child had a set of 9 popsicle sticks with the pictures of different Disney princesses glued to them. I played clips from songs that each princess sings and they had to identify the singer by holding up which princess it was. I must say, Lily was really good at this game--so good that I think we might have to cut back on her TV watching. :)

While we prepared lunch, everyone headed back downstairs to watch Beauty and the Beast.

We had peanut butter and jelly and grilled cheeses sandwiches in the shape of princess tiaras, with some Goldfish crackers, pretzels, and grapes.

Afterward we enjoyed some princess cake and ice cream.

And then everyone put on their tiaras so we could get some good princess poses.

And yes, Lily is slipping a nip in both pictures. Let me tell you what I learned about birthday parties--you will be outnumbered and will need more help! Thankfully, I have good friends who were more than willing to lend a hand. Gemma was pretty much forgotten about because she was handed off for the duration of the party. Other parents helped run the games, make lunch, serve cake, and do dishes (I didn't ask her to do that--I caught her at it as she was finishing up). It was a lot of fun, but I'm thinking a party every other year sounds like a good idea. :)