Parties Part 2: 4-year-old girl

Yes. I actually attempted the PARTY for Pukasaur's 4th birthday. For her 1st b-day there were two guests, 2nd b-day was at playgroup, 3rd b-day, 1 guest. This year it was a total of 7 little girls in my tiny apt. I got great ideas from the web and from brainstorming with Pukey (herein referred to as D1). Here they are:

I had two goals:
1. I wanted every girl to feel comfortable, included, a winner and of course a princess. For many of the girls it was their first "drop-off" party. To make them feel at ease I had happy nanny and her friend be grown up princesses. My mom sent me a few of my old prom dresses, so they were in dress-up too. The princesses welcomed them in and got them started on creating their own foam crown. D1 also greeted each girl at the door and gave them a necklace (mardi gras beads from Claires) upon arrival.

2. To teach D1 that parties were about friendship and fun. I asked for no gifts please (half of the girls did not comply), and I tried to come up with ways that we could prepare for the party together. I had her decorate the outside of our front door with photos pertaining to our princess theme. We also decorated the goodie "bags" (purple plastic chinese food containers from Michaels) with stickers and filled them with goodies. I would run ideas by her ahead of time: What do you think of this game? How about this for lunch? etc. This way she was looking forward to socializing and not: PRESENTS! PRESENTS! PRESENTS!

Ideas:
1. Crowns: We made these first so that the glue would dry, turns out we never LET them dry, the girls wore them right away.

2. Nails: When the girls were done with their crowns I painted their nails with Loreal JET SET. That was fun. All this we did around a round table in D1's room, and watched a little Disney Sing-Alongs while the nails were drying.

3. Schedule: I posted two Schedule of Events on the walls so that my husband and adult princess helpers could anticipate what was coming up next.

4. Lunch: We sat around the coffee table on the floor in the front room and ate D1's fave foods: Macaroni and Cheese and Strawberries. And yes I made HOMEMADE yummy Mac n Cheese...not Kraft and not even the usual Easy mac.

5. Games: We played buried treasure game. Each girl was blind folded and plunged their hands into a bowl of rice that was filled with jewels. Once they found two, the next girl got a turn. We strung the jewels on a string for a necklace.

We played the Princess and the Pea. I told the story and then each girl took a turn hiding the pea (a green super ball) under one of three pillows, and each girl got a chance to guess which had the pea. Everyone got a prize of a ribbon wand which came in handy for...

Freeze Dance. We played Abba and then paused and had to freeze. This was very simple, fun and a good way to work off lunch.

We ended with sitting on the couch (this was a great photo op) and playing Guess the Princess. I just printed small photos of each Disney princess and held them in my hand. I gave clues and they guessed. Everyone had fun guessing and winning a feather boa to finish their princessy look. The girls enjoyed keeping the little pictures too. Who knew?

6. Cake was of the ice cream variety and so very easy for me. That was the last event of the party, followed by some more photo ops.

7. Decor: I had Cinderella playing on the tv on mute as part of the decor. A few times we turned up the volume...slicing the cake, waiting for lunch to be served, waiting for moms.

I also had ironed a few pieces of dress up in case any girl showed up with no dress up clothes, and ended up hanging them on my book shelf and curtain rods as part of the decor. I also lined up the goodie bags in the window for decoration. I used a pink tablecloth for lunch on the coffeetable and then spread it on the floor for the Buried Treasure game.

It was a success. For photos click here.