A TANGLED Success!

Wow! What a crazy week I had.  Who knew planning (and actually following through) your picky 8 year old daughter's would be?!?!  A couple months ago, my lovely daughter presented me her theme for her birthday party.  TANGLED.  Honestly, I am sick of the princesses! Her room is covered in pink this and that.  Cinderella, Belle, and Ariel are everywhere.  We had done the Disney Princesses theme parties for the last 10 years!! (hahaha)

With the help of some of my Facebook followers, and the trusty search engine GOOGLE, I started researching how to make my baby girl's party truly special and ECONOMICAL (I am not a fan of the "birthday in a box" type parties - they just lack originality).  Here is what I came up with:

It all started with a HUGE yellow braid that took my mom and I over 2 hours to braid.  This sucker was over 40 ft long and started (or ended) at the location of the presents and at the other end was the entrance to the party (my front door).

I had purple printed a purple pendant banner to be put up to make it more festive and is similar to that as in the movie.

For crafts, I printed a template on card stock for Rapunzel's crown (the make your own crown kits at WalMart "are not the right shape Mom". So, the kiddos just cut them out and decorated them with jewels and glitter glue.  They then attached their own yellow yarn braid to it.  They also made a paper lantern and decorated it (also movie inspired).  Yes, I could have purchased a plain paper lantern from sites like Oriental Trading, but chose to be more frugal and put that package of card stock to use. (Did I mention that I used card stock to print her party invites?)

The cake itself was the most stressful, but messy and fun task that I have taken on in a long time.  I think it turned out cute though!  Although 50% of the "cake" was not edible (styrophome base that was covered in craft moss, and wooden dowel), you really couldn't tell.  I did make cute cupcakes topped with silk flowers and was an elegant touch.

Other little touches:  I printed several WANTED posters for Flynn Rider throughout the party zone.  For food, I made it kid friendly but kept it similar to the Tangled "festival theme" food - I baked homemade french bread and served it with homemade jams.  There were also fresh veggies and fruit.  I placed whole apples intermingled with the serving items in remembrance of Maximas and his apple fetish in the movie. Oh, and we had PIZZA!

Happy 8th Birthday my sweet baby girl! :-)

Party ideas and inspiration came from the following sites:
Supermommomments
Ohamanda
Family.go