Sunday, April 25, 2010

Princess Party on a Budget...Need Your Thrifty Ideas!

If you have been reading my blog long, you might remember that last year, the party I planned for my daughter's first birthday was curtailed by terrential rains and terrible flooding, which left many people stranded for days. My inlaw's house (where we were staying that night) actually flooded as well and eventually had to be torn down. It was a crazy couple of days!

Needless to say, there WAS NO 1st birthday party. I was hoping to resalvage some of last year's cake experiment and try a princess party all over again. What tips could you give me for planning a princess party? Last year I was so focused on this cake, I didn't buy hardly any decorations or anything! LOL Which is good because I didn't need them anyway! But this year, I want to make it a really special party. Any frugal tips, links or thrifty, creative ideas from you amazing moms would be so helpful!!!

Before the night of the flood, the day before G's party, I spent many hours trying to make this cake by Wilton, so this is all I've got so far...can you give me some more ideas?


Beautiful, but ambitious huh???

But I planned, took my time and by the time I was finished, her cake really did look a lot like this (but because it wasn't fully assembled, I didn't take any pics...I wanted to wait until I had it all put together...bummer)! I bought the Wilton cake set ($18 at Walmart), baked the specified cake rounds, made home made butter cream icing, bought 100 little sugar flowers (cuz I sure wasn't making those! They cost $10...bought 100 @ 10 cents each), bought the purple sanding sugar and different colored dyes to tint the frosting. In all, I probable had about $50 in the cake ingredients and accessories, which I think is pretty reasonable for such a big, ambitious cake. If you bought this cake from a decorator, it would've cost upwards of around $300 or more! But it was a LOT of work. So, because we didn't get to use the cake because the party was obviously canceled, I just had my mother salvage as many of the little sugar flowers as she could and all the plastic pieces that I hand decorated with icing leaves, flowers and sanding sugar, and had her freeze all of them in her deep freezer, because those pieces are what took the longest to decorate! So this year, I plan on just buying the rounds already iced with white icing and then assembling the other stuff myself. I hope it all works out! I'll post pictures of the party next month and let you know how it all turned out!

In the meantime, send me your ideas!


7 comments:

  1. http://partyperfectblogspot.com
    I think that's it. That's where I get a lot of inspiration. Martha Stewart has an easy way to make tissue paper pom poms. Just google it and you should find it. They make the room look so pretty. They end up being about 20 inches around and you just hang them from the ceiling. Elaina just had her princess party yesterday and the total cost was under $30, but I didn't do a cake. I know! What's a birthday without cake. I did cotton candy instead and it was a huge hit. A lot cheaper too. What can I say. . . but we're trying really hard to get out of debt. :)I usually get a lot of candy and/or decor. after Easter when they clearance it all out.
    I'll try to post some pics on my blog in a little while. Maybe that'll help you see it a little better. The funnest thing I did was buy small ladies high heel shoes at Goodwill and spray painted them gold. Each girl got to decorate a pair with glitter and sequins to take home as a party favor (princess shoes). This was another plan ahead thing though. I hit up the Goodwill on half price weekends so the shoes were only about 2.00 a pair. Garage sales would even be cheaper probably. I don't know how many children you'll have participating though. Elaina turned 4 so she just had 3 friends come celebrate with her. She didn't have any friends when she was 2 so we just did family. One idea that I wanted to do but didn't was take a picture of Elaina all dressed up in her princess dress and print it out to play "pin the crown on princess Elaina" with a simple crown cut out of white or yellow paper with some glitter around the edges. Check out my blog later. Hope all this helps.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That is a beautiful cake Angie! Fit for a little Princess! You know you don't have to decorate it exactly the way it is on the box. I never decorate any of my cakes that I make exactly like the directions are.

    A few years ago I did find some gold paper crowns at Target that the girls decorated with beads. I made these cute little aprons for each girl to have also. I made them from some cheap silky material at WalMart with some lace material to go in the front. I used ribbons for the ties to tie them on. I went to the Disney web page and found coloring sheets of all of the different Princesses and I printed those out and put them together with the curling ribbons that I made myself.

    I have my great grand mother's punch bowl and cups so the girls drank punch from that. I also have those cute antique party snack plates that the girls ate their food from.

    I'm sure there is more but I can't remember it all! I hope this helps!

    Hugs,
    Angela

    ReplyDelete
  3. Angie, did you see my post about Bee's princess castle cake? Here's the link:

    http://blog.wantingwhatyouhave.com/2008/10/bees-barbie-cake-and-other-cake.html

    It might be simpler than the Wilton version.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hmmm...you could have the guests make princess accessories, and you can't beat decorating with tulle and while Christmas lights! :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wish I had some ideas for you. Hate that the party last year didn't turn out and I bet this year it will be fabulous!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Very beautiful indeed.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for visiting. I read and value each one of your comments, so type away! Blessings!