Friday, December 14, 2012

A's 4th Birthday - Brave theme

We took A to watch Brave in theaters and she fell in love instantly. Before it could come out on DVD however we also had short but very intense relationships with The Lorax, Barbie's Princess and the Popstar, and Angelina Ballerina.
But the minute Brave came out, Merida won. I'm a pretty crafty person to begin with, but Pinterest has completely taken it into overdrive. There are so many possibilities! Unfortunately, we live in a small town so I wasn't able to do everything we had originally planned. Not that the attendees cared too much, it was cold outside and they spent the majority of the party playing Dance Central on the Kinect.
Just in case your little Princess wants a Brave birthday party, here are some of the amazing things we found and some that what we tried out. For her personal cake I used a lot of the tips from this pin. Ashleey at Topsy Turvy Cakes is INCREDIBLY talented. If you're in the Salt Lake area and need a cake made, she's your lady! This one was made out of Funfetti for us non-chocolate-lovers. When you do this you should A) buy the Barbie cakepan or B) not cut a huge whole that seven barbies could fit in. I made that mistake and tried to correct it with Marshmallows.. Also my icing layer should have been thicker and then I think it wouldn't have looked so lumpy. You live and you learn. For our cake I went with something more simple and we got the idea from this. A was very adamant about wanting a blue chocolate cake and I was really surprised to find that it exists! There are a lot of not so pretty blue velvet cake recipes online but this one made the most beautiful shade of blue.
This is part when you're absolutely sure I am not a proffessional cake decorator.
And now it's time for the highland games! I wasn't able to find any archery sets or even the items needed to make some. VERY disappointing. I even asked people to look in other towns for the Disney sets and they were sold out almost everywhere. We did eventually find one but not enough for everyone to take one home. If you're up for some DIY adventures though, this looks like a great tutorial. For a Caper toss I was going to use a yoga mat as some others have suggested but my boys are still pretty young and I didn't think they could throw it very far. So instead I made one from a stick, a lot of batting (the thickest you can find, in my case it was some I had used as a baby bumper for a crib set.) and pink duct tape. I basically just rolled the stick in the batting and then again in the wrapping paper. I duct taped both ends and the middle, just to make it cuter. Everything but the stick, ha, was purchased at Hobby Lobby.
We also did a ball toss, an idea I got from A Crafty Chick She has so many good ideas, check them out too! For the ball toss board we used a foam board and (my saving grace) more duct tape! I traced 3 circles, cut them out with an exacto knife and then taped around all the edges. So simple and I think this is the game the younger ones played the longest.
For food we just had pizza, A's favorite. We did make about 100 little black bear cookies. This was my first experience with "flooding" but I think I got it down by the last few. I used this recipe for the Royal icing and this recipe for the sugar cookies. To be a bit more authentic, you should think about including Scottish sweet buns. There is also a recipe there for bear paw cookies which are absolutely adorable but we had a child with a nut allergy attending and in all honesty, we made way too many sugar cookies. For decorations we used a lot of blues and greens. Blue/Green streamers and Brave balloons. We also made some "blue wisps" out of a sparkly tulle, they turned out so cute! After her party they ended up on the Christmas tree as decorations. I had them around the party favor bags, with those we included a trophy for each child. (Party supply area of Hobby Lobby) and that's pretty much all of it. Hope this helps you plan your little ones special day!

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