Frozen Fever

If, like me, you have a Disney's 'Frozen' Fan in your home, why not throw them a 'Frozen' themed birthday party? My Daughter wanted one for her 4th birthday party last year. Unfortunately her birthday is in July so we melted a little! Here are a few tips to make your Frozen Party sparkle!

Decorations

-Plan ahead! If (like us) you have a child whose birthday falls outside of the winter months, try to stock up in advance. Now is the perfect time to start planning because at Christmas time the pound shops have loads of great snowy decorations which are just the ticket for decorating your 'Frozen' party room. This frosty wreath would look great on the front door to welcome guests and the icicles look effective around the edges of tables. The paper snowflakes are great to hang around the room and are 3 for £1 (all from Poundland and available at time of blogging)

 
- If you have left it too late and your party is after winter time, never fear! There are plenty of online sites with downloadable decorations for a small price or sometimes even free! www.homeketeers.com have some great frozen party items to download I downloaded a free set and then I paid for some extras. Here is some bunting and a garland I downloaded and printed out (I laminated them too so they'd last longer) :

 

In the free kit I got: Cupcake toppers, cupcake wrappers, invitations and straw flags. In the add-on kit that I purchased were: Bag toppers, banners (above), cake toppers (large) garlands (above) mini candy bar wrappers, treat boxes and water bottle wrappers (above). this kit cost $1.99 which is about £1.30 so well worth the outlay!  They are definitely worth a look!

Party food

        

    

I also downloaded these little labels to give the food fun 'Frozen' names but I can't remember where now! They were probably in one of the kits mentioned above but I can't be sure.
We used pom bears as 'snow bears', Monster Munch as 'Yeti Feet', carrots as 'Olaf Noses', Sponge fingers as 'Anna's Frozen Fingers' and made 'Snowman Sandwiches. You can find many more fun 'Frozen' food ideas on pinterest!
The cupcake toppers above were not the ones in the kit as I had already purchased some from eBay. These ones are printed onto rice paper so they are edible!

Speaking of Pinterest, that's where I found this great idea! Get some Cheesestrings and then, using a black and orange Sharpie, draw Olaf faces at the top and buttons down the middle. The children LOVED these!

Party Games

As well as the usual Musical Statues, Pass the Parcel etc. I decided to do a few 'Frozen' themed party games too!

Pin the nose on the Olaf!

                       

I had a large sheet of white sugar paper on which I drew an Olaf without a nose (if art is not your thing you could always print one out and have it blown up on a photocopier). I then drew one nose for each child onto orange card and wrote their names on so we could see whose nose was closest to the spot!

Frozen Fractals

As it was a warm summer's day I thought this idea I had seen at Happy hooligans would be a lot of fun! Visit their page if you want lots of details (and amazing photos) but the general gist is that you fill lots of different shaped ice cube trays and large containers with coloured water and pop them in the freezer. Once frozen turn them out and give them to the children, along with water and brushes. Each child should have one large block of ice (I used food storage containers to freeze these). They then 'paint' water onto the smaller ice shapes and press them onto their large block. As the water freezes between them it sets them in place and the children can create beautiful ice structures!

Party Favours

Personalised chocolate bars

Although I did get candy bar wrappers in the Homeketeers kit I had already ordered pre-wrapped kit-kats from a local seller on ebay. I thought this would take some of the hassle out for me as I would not need to sit and wrap them myself and also they personalised them for me. I no longer have the details of who supplied them but if you search on eBay you are bound to find loads of suppliers near you.  Here they are with a little card I popped into the party bags which was another download from Homeketeers that I laminated as a keepsake for the guests:

Loot Bags

These are always a firm favourite I got these ones on eBay - again! (Apparently I no longer go to actual shops!) I filled them with a few sweets, yo-yos, Frozen pencils and erasers, plastic bangles etc. and of course...

A slice of cake

This is my masterpiece! (clearly I'm no pro but I think I did ok for a complete novice!) I made a Victoria Sponge (I like to follow the recipe from Nigella Lawson's 'How to be a Domestic Goddess' as it's really easy and everything just goes in the food processor!) I just put jam between the two sponges. I then rolled out some ready to roll light blue icing and covered the cake in that. Then I rolled out some white ready to roll icing and cut around it in a wavy line so that when I placed it over the blue it looked like snow fall. The figures I bought on eBay (definitely a theme here!) and used a little icing to stick them down. The snowflakes around the edges came on the same sheets of rice paper as the cupcake toppers above. I bought the ready to roll icing and the light blue cake base from Hobbycraft

All in all it was a huge success and the Birthday girl and her guests had so much fun!

Birthday Girl

Just had to include this photo of my niece as she looks soooooo cute in her frozen onesie and tutu! x

If you are planning to do your own Frozen themed party I hope this has inspired you and helped you know where to go for ideas and resources! You can check out my 'Frozen Party' board on Pinterest here. Most of all...Have fun! x

Guy Fawkes Fun!

Last week we were celebrating Guy Fawkes night! It was actually on Thursday but we watched the big fireworks display on Saturday night because the community centre near our house puts on a huge display so we all just stand outside and have an amazing view! More about that later.

On Wednesday evening my two little nieces came round to play after school. My sister had a migraine so I sent her to have a nap while I got on with some Fireworks painting with the little ones.

First we chose brightly coloured paints (handy hint -add a little pva glue to your paint when using glitter on top as this helps the glitter to stay stuck once the paint dries)

Next we got an assortment of paint brushes and old toothbrushes (another handy hint - add a little water to your paint and pva mix if using toothbrushes as runnier paint makes flicking it a lot easier)

Then I took some black card (A4 size) and cut the edges in a zig-zag fashion to make them look like explosions!

Once we had all those things in place we got started splattering and flicking paint onto the card.

                 

They wanted to use toothbrushes and paintbrushes to just paint flicking lines and star shapes rather than flicking the bristles but that still worked. The littlest niece got in with her fingers, scraping the paint too, which was actually quite effective. Once they were happy with their designs I got them them to sprinkle multi-coloured glitter over the paint and shake the excess into a tray to be tipped back for later use.

                            


Once they were dry I added them to the display with the haunted houses from Halloween all ready for our family Guy Fawkes Night Celebrations!

On the Saturday after Guy Fawkes we had 8 adults and 5 children at my house to watch the fireworks display! Before we went out the little ones had a jacket potato for dinner then all the adults had a Chili with rice so we were well fed and warmed up before going out there!

I then sat the children down and we opened our big packs of glow sticks and made them into necklaces and bracelets. My mum had also brought some along that were wider and hung on lanyards. We didn't do this last year and it was quite hard to spot them all out there on the dark field so this year we were better prepared and they were much easier to keep track of!

Last year we took out hot chocolates with marshmallows to keep us warm out there but I didn't think of it this year. Fortunately my lovely neighbour brought us out some Mulled Wine although the weather was much milder than this time last year so we weren't too cold.

The display was great and the children were mesmerized! Olivia doesn't like the big bangs though so she had her ear muffs on to help with the noise! Plenty of 'oooh's and 'aaah's were had by all! We then met up with our other neighbours and their two girls and we got out the sparklers and talked to the children about sparkler safety and made sure they were all wearing gloves. Everybody had at least two turns (including the big kids!)

                           

Finally it was all back into our house (including the neighbours) for tea and birthday cake as my mum and cousin both have birthdays in the next week. Once the happy birthdays were sung and the cake was eaten the little ones were getting very tired. We said our goodbyes and put them to bed before cleaning up and falling into bed ourselves! Well this year's Guy Fawkes Night certainly went with a bang!