The Cinderella Birthday Party

So, I wanted to have fun planning a themed party, but do it on a budget. A very small budget, since it was for a 3 year old. We do have bigger birthday parties than I remember having, mainly because right now Kalaya doesn't have a huge opinion on who is invited to her party. Once we start preschool in the fall, I think this will change. I still make the guest list at this point and it consists of a lot of family and some close family friends. I wanted a simple, home made cake, themed snacks, simple games/activities for the kids and a favor to take home. Here's what we did.

The theme was, by Kalaya's choice, Cinderella.

For a gift/outfit to wear to the party, I found a knock-off brand Cinderella dress, that was $9.99, instead of the Disney brand costumes that were $35+ on Amazon. She loved it!

The activities and games were practically free! The first was dress up for the ball. I drew the wall picture of Cinderella myself and we already owned the dress ups!

I drew Jaq and Gus and cut out the keys to hide around the house. (the kids weren't very interested in this one, but that's okay!!)

I drew this picture of Cinderella and cut out outlines of glass slippers for the kids to decorate and put on the poster.

This was the biggest hit: Fairy Godmother wand making and crown decorating:

 I drew the Fairy Godmother and created the demo wand. The supplies came from the Dollar Tree (foam sheets that I cut with a star die cut at my mom's school, glitter glue, curling ribbon, foam stickers and princess crowns) and Home Depot (dowels that we cut and sanded to the right length) Total cost: around $7. The kids had a blast making them!

Here's a sign I hung at the front door : )

The decorations consisted of the drawings I made hung up, a Disney princess table cloth and birthday banner, some Cinderella dress blue latex balloons and white streamers. (the pics had weird back light with them....)

I don't know WHY I can't get this picture to rotate, but here's the snack table

The snacks all had a Cinderella character picture and description with them: Princess Punch (cherry 7 Up with pineapple juice concentrate), Bibbiti Bobbity 'Bobs' (skewers with fruit), Jaq and Gus' cheese and crackers, the Prince's pizza puffs, the Duke's dip (OMG, SO GOOD!!!) and chips, Stepmother's veggies, and Lucifer's cat treats (Goldfish crackers).

And, here's the cake!

I was inspired by this idea and made it into my own. I baked 2 different boxed cake mixes (Kalaya chose yellow and chocolate) in bundt pans and inverted them on top of each other. Then I tinted 2 cans of cream cheese frosting and decorated with blue icing. The wheels are cookies and the decorations are from a Disney playset and the castle is from Disney.com.