Of course she is singing in this picture, how can she NOT be singing Let it Go when looking just like Elsa ;)
We had a Frozen themed birthday party to attend this past weekend and J and I decided to get resourceful and see if we could come up with an Elsa outfit with what we had. We brushed out her seriously tangled Rapunzel wig and gave it a side braid, threw on this old sparkly dress that I had from Highschool winter tolo or whatever that dance was called and I just never got rid of it, and some blue tulle/netting from her peacock costume 2 Halloweens ago. She was pretty happy with it! For the dress I just tied up the straps in the back so it wasn't falling off of her. She's pretty excited to discover she had a "real" Elsa outfit and she didn't even know it!
J had her 5th Birthday party last weekend and it was a BALL! Literally! She requested that all her friends come dressed up as princesses and have a dance party at the ball. Here she is wearing her Repunzel dress, which I don't think I ever posted, it was my first time making a dress and I made it for Halloween to go with her GLOWING REPUNZEL HAIR which is a tutorial you can check out with a link to the tutorial for this dress at the end. The party turned out to be really fun and a everything went smoothly, thanks to having the help of my parents and brother and my awesome friend who let me borrow her folding table and a ton of strands of lights! We barely pulled it all together before the guests arrived! lol, my mom was still decorating cupcakes and the little cake as they arrived and the guys were in the basement still getting the ballroom set up!
As the girls arrived they decorated a princess gown favor box and filled it with some M&Ms. I just put down a big piece of cardboard and a bunch of crayons, markers and stickers. I found these cute wedding dress favor boxes in the wedding section at the dollar tree they came in packs of 10. They wrote their name on the bottom when they were done and took them home at the end of the party.
As they finished decorating their dresses, they came and sat in the Princess Chair, (something I picked up at the thrift store and have been meaning to give a makeover, it's in great condition, I just want to change it) and had their make up done, received a crown (those tiny comb crowns in the favor section at walmart). And then they each posed for a Princess Portrait with the Frog Prince (that frog is a puppet from my husband's childhood! They saved a lot of his toys and it's cool to see the kids play with them now)
don't look at my hair! I didn't have time to do anything with it and it was so lumpy and bumby! lol
Princess Portrait-which the guests will receive with their thank you note.
Meanwhile, as they all finished up their dresses, makeover and portrait with the frog prince, they talked and played with balloons.
Next we played some games that I came across online, I can't way where because I was REALLY tired after a long day and my dad looked up Princess Party Games on his Ipad and just started listing off ideas to me and I have no idea what he was looking at.
First we did a Princess Walk. I printed off pictures of various Princesses and related characters and places them on the floor in a circle and then had them walk around the pictures to music. Everytime the music stopped, my mom would call out a character and whoever was on that character got a candy necklace. We played until everyone got a necklace. My mom looked and saw where they were standing and whoever didn't have a necklace yet, she would just call out whatever character they were standing on. Unfortunately, not long after the girls were complaining about having sticky necks, and J kept using so many diaper wipes to get rid of the sticky feeling her neck was SO red.
Next we played Pin the Pan on Flynn Ryder followed by a Snow White Game called Pass the Poison Apple. They sat in a circle and as the music played, they would pass an apple around. When the music stopped, whoever was holding the apple had to fall asleep. At the end of the game, the last person to have the apple had to wake everyone else up with a sweet kiss...they went around and placed a little flower shaped marshmallow on the persons' lips to wake them up. Hershey kisses were suggested, but I didn't feel like messing with the wrappers.
Next we went outside to find Cinderella's lost glass slipper! I hid J's Cinderella dress up shoe it in the yard and helped them in the right direction using Hot and Cold. Here they are searching for it!
After that they came inside to do presents and cupcakes because they couldn't go to the ball on an empty stomach!
And this is a HORRIBLE picture but they all turned out blurry of the cupcake table.
After eating cupcakes and snacking on some snacks and pink princess lemonade, they all grabbed a small bottle of bubbles and went back outside. bubbles were also from the wedding section of the dollar tree you get 9 bottles for a dollar! We put a colorful heart sticker on each one so they didn't look like wedding bubbles.
They had fun blowing bubbles and playing outside some more and then it was time for the pinata...I love this picture...
The pinata was a tough one, so after each princess had multiple tries, dad came in and busted it open.
After they had collected their loot, I brought out their treat bags and we had them put everything in there and wrote their names on them real quickly and then it was FINALLY time for the ball! We walked them around to the basement door entrance and they walked in to fun music from Tangled, Enchanted, Lizzy McGuire etc. Them all dancing around like crazy in their princess dresses was one of the cutest things I've ever seen!!!
Here is a video post party showing the lights, the guys did a great job!
The party was scheduled for 2 hours and we may have gone just a tiny bit over as they were having so much fun dancing, but it was really fun. I was kind of anxious at first because I've never hosted a birthday party at my home before, the only other party we did was for her 3rd party and we had it at a big park so I didn't really have to do anything other than brings snacks and cupcakes. If my parents weren't here to help, I probably wouldn't have been able to be as organized with doing the games and getting everything ready in time and my mom surprised J with the pinata last minute when she saw it was just under $10 at walmart and we just put some of the goodies we were already going to get for the treat bags into the pinanta.
I forgot to take a picture of the cupcake table before the party, so this is after the fact, so there isn't as much there but you get the idea.
For the cake and cupcakes, I used the gluten free strawberry cupcake recipe from my Cooking for Isaiah cookbook with a basic vanilla buttercream frosting using vegetable shortening instead of butter and vanilla coconut milk instead of dairy milk so these were gluten and dairy free. The kids loved them, it's really a great recipe, one of my friends was so impressed because it was the first time her daughter has ever finished a cupcake!
Princess Lemonade made with pink lemonade and sprite.
Bubbles with stickers....simple, cheap, easy fun!
As they left J gave them a wand, a lollipop and the flower straw they was intended for the lemonade but we didn't end up using, along with their treat bags and candy dress boxes. They definitely didn't go home empty handed, I just kept finding cute little things that didn't cost very much that were either on sale or on clearance or were just a regular cute inexpensive item in the party favor section.
Anyways, at the end of the day, this is all you can ask for...
Rapunzel is one of our favorite movies...that's right "our"...I can't help but sit and watch it with my 4 year old! Up until about a week ago, she planned on being snow white for Halloween, which I thought was great because she was snow white last year so we already had the costume. Well, when she decided to be Rapunzel, I got kind of excited. At first I wanted to get the Rapunzel costume and wig from Costume Express when I won their giveaway recently but they had already sold out for the season. I found this rapunzel braid on Amazon Here for about $30
And then saw this awesome glowing Rapunzel hair party decoration on Etsy Here
And then knew exactly what to do for J's Rapunzel costume. Make a glowing long Rapunzel braid that glows. This was rather quick and easy to make and cost less then $5!
What you need
Battery powered short strand of mini lights
(found at hobby lobby for $1.99)
Purple ribbon
yellow yarn
(more of a buttercream yellow and the thing of yarn is 355 yards, buy 2 packs if this is for a teenager or adult)
3 ponytail elastics
scissors
Measuring
Take the end of the yarn and measure around your child's head creating a crown and then let the yarn hang down to the floor, notice where the yarn touches the floor then add a bit more length for good luck, and snip. This is your guide piece for measuring out all the strands of hair. (or however long you want it)
Making Sections of Hair
Lay the guide strand out across the floor nice and strait. Then, hold then end of the yarn and just unroll it till it gets to the other end, then hold it down on the opposite end and loop it back the other way, working your way back and forth, until you get a nice thick row of hair. I made each section of hair about the thickness of a quarter when you grab it. So Once you get a row of thick hair, repeat that process 2 more times till you have 3 rows of thick long yarn (hair). Remember you are just rolling the yarn back and forth, not cutting out individual strands
Braiding it
Carefully bring all 3 sections side-by side. Come down about 3 inches from the top and secure with a hair elastic or rubber band. Slip your purple ribbon in there with the elastic next to one of the sections of hair. Start braiding the hair all the way down, Incorporating the ribbon as you go. When you get a couple inches from the bottom, secure with another hair elastic or rubber band.
OPTIONAL: If you want the lights to be in the hair permanently, then see the step below for where to put the battery pack, and then incorporate the strand of lights into the braid as you do the ribbon, being sure to keep the wires and lightbulbs from showing as best you can. If you want to be able to take the lights off, continue below, leaving the lights for last.
Model and Fit
Get your child and wrap the braid around their head like a crown and then secure in place with an elastic, making sure to tuck the loopy ends under the braided part so you don't see it. Tie a piece of ribbon around the elastics at the top and bottom to hide them and make it pretty :) I left the end of the braid as is, but you can trim the ends if you like.
see the loopy ends on the underside of the braid where you connected it with elastic?
Make it GLOW
Lay your Rapunzel braid on the ground upside-down so the you are looking at the loopy ends that are hiding under the braid...Put 3 fingers through the loops and try to line up the loops of frabric as much as you can...mine weren't all perfectly even so I didn't get all of them, but enough to hold the battery pack. Tuck the battery pack inside those loops. Now, turn the switch to one and start spacing out your lights and tucking them into the braid to light it up. Once you have all the lights placed in the corrects areas, you can either use strands of yarn to tie the lights in place which can be snipped for easy removal later or use some small hair claws/clips to secure the lights and wires in place.
The reason you may want to make the lights removable and not incorporated into the braid is it is a little heavier with the battery pack and your little one may not always want to have that in there when playing, but for halloween and other special dress-up events, the lights just take this long Repunzel hair accessory to the next level of coolness while also making your kid more safe and visible on Halloween night!
This Repunzle braid is super fun without the lights too!
You can add fake flowers to the braid to make it more like the movie, I plan on doing that I just haven't picked up any yet. I did have one that I stuck at the top of the braid as you can see...
Let's see the battery lights were $1.99 and the yarn was $3.99 but I had a 40% off coupon so this fun repunzel braid cost less than $5 to make!
I picked up some fabric and plan to make an actual repunzel dress using the cinderella dress tutorial from make it and love it. But if I don't end up having time at least she'll have this purple dress or maybe borrow a repunzel dress from a friend and make the handmade one for Christmas....HOPEFULLY I can get it done for Halloween though!
(and apparently there are already lots of braided yarn tutorials out there, I didn't realize! Well, hopefully I inspired some new ideas by adding the battery powered lights :P)
