Tuesday, 23 September 2014

Princess Jasmine and Aladdin Party

Chloe has been begging for a "Princess Jasmine" party since she was 2, and there was no convincing her otherwise as her big day drew close (especially since she has quite literally been waiting half her life!). Initially i couldnt find much inspiration online for "Aladdin" style party ideas but now that its happened, all I can say is WOW!!! This was one fun theme, dont change your mind if youre considering it!

We started off with the invitation-



When the big day arrived, we had implemented some lovely ideas. Firstly there was an indoor gazebo area which we draped and decorated with the kids colour-ins. Underneath and around were a bunch of activities such as Sand Art, Jewellery making, cupcake decorating and face painting


The Sand Art was very fitting for the theme, and certainly the biggest hit of the day - most kids absolutely love it and i will use the pack again for a party soon. I prestuck all trays to the table to avoid too much mess and colour mixing, but i must say there wasn't much actually!


Then for the jewellery making table, the kids just covered toilet rolls in ribbon and jewels, they actually came out really well, these examples below were made by kids aged 4!



Once again we used the BlockPoster website to make giant colouring ins and the kids had a ball painting and using bright gel crayons on them. The beauty of these enormous prints is that even at Chloes age, its easy for her to stay in the lines, and you can cover sections you dont want them to paint on and cut out the smudges. We ended up making 3, after lots of begging for more!

Heres the biggest of all



The cake wasn't what i had planned but it came out just fine and with not too much work involved! The Castle at the top was made of Rice Crispie treats that i moulded into turrets and put coloured fondant on. The clouds are just blue candy floss. The gold stars and genie lamp were made from fondant and painted with a metallic edible paint :) 

I had all good intentions of putting dry ice in the genie lamp before candles were blown (even had a little straw to allow smoke out the funnel) but I decided it was a little extravagant for a 3 year old.. will save the idea for another day!


Inside i stuck with the party theme colours in the madeira cake layers



We also had cupcakes, I couldnt resist buying some cute upright Jasmine rice paper cutouts and making the cupcakes into ball gown skirts (note these must be made of thicker rice paper, with tab cutouts that submerge in the icing, else they won't stand). The jasmine rice paper butterflies also came out nicely and were just printed on the standard thickness rice paper.




I managed to find this antique lamp for a steal on eBay and its been used almost daily by my little Princess Jasmine to summon her Genie. So a word of warning- dont pay for the expensive toy ones, get the real thing!



The block letters CHLOE were bought in polystyrene and were painted by the girls. It was another great way to get them involved in the party plans (and these have been kept for next year - to be repainted according to the whatever the theme may be!)




The next thing begging for attention in this theme is a "Magic Carpet Ride"! We emptied out the 
garage, blacked out the window, put glow sticks/glow jars/glow bottles and glow balloons inside and turned it into an actual Magic Carpet ride room. The magic carpet itself was simply made by throwing a persian rug over my father-in-laws car creeper trolley, and tying a rope to one side.

We played the "Whole New World" music and took a handful of kids on each ride in the pitch dark - which had them squealing with delight - the garage sounded like an amusement park ride in fact :)







Now Chloe is one lucky girl, because she has a beautiful rather exotic-looking, belly dancing cousin Claudia who offered to come and pretend to be the real Princess Jasmine. She had the girls enthralled!




Moving onto face-painting, I did it myself and I am no pro! I just had one split cake on offer and sticky silver jewels. The face paint cake was made of Snazaroo's white-blue-lilac-hot pink. And i used it as follows-

Firstly i was able to make "Jasmine Crowns" like this one  using 2 sponges on either side of the cake...


And then using 1 stroke, Jasmine butterflies like this ...


I even had a request for a "Jasmine Monkey" as you can see by this little cheeky one!
And nobody asked for anything else so face-painting was done really quickly and easily :)





Lastly for the party pack loot bags we couldnt resist doing what we did for Katies princess party ... laminated prince/princess bodices stuck on coloured paper bags. 


Now im not one to spoil and over spend .. so inside the party packs we kept it minimal with Aladdin colouring in sheets, 1 or 2 sweets, Jasmine  & other flower seeds to plant and Jasmine hair bows (made with tiny iron on transfers applied to normal hair ribbons with a hair straightening iron!)

Here are the pics





All in all, a great theme, and i didnt even get to do half the ideas i had. I would love to do it again one day :)

Wednesday, 10 September 2014

Homecalling Revelation

Its almost a year ago that this blog was updated. Since then we have responded to Africa's call home and settled back into our house in Joburg after 8 wonderful years in England. Although I loved our time in MudIsland, it hit home that it was time to return one day when I was looking through my kitchen window. I was slightly despondent and agitated with the lousy weather yet again, and noticed the sign that i had bought for our beach house ...


For some reason, there and then i knew it was time to return to the land of the blue skies and big smiles, and be reunited with our sorely missed family and friends again. And here we are, we havent looked back since :)

As most of my posts on here are about places to visit with young children, I will continue in that light and start writing about fun things to do in and around Johannesburg, of which there are many (this is one family friendly place!) We have done so many already .. i have my work cut out :)

Will get started ASAP!

XX


Monday, 3 February 2014

Katies Princess & Pirate Party




Here are some pics from Katies Princess party. She is born at such a bad time of year in England that it all needed to be done indoors. The castle was made out of cardboard boxes (conveniently as we were moving house at the time!) Here is the link on how it was made ...A Princess Castle Party Prop







Tables were mostly done courtesy of Poundland , the balloon vases were just rolled up placemats! Gold plates were used as they were much cheaper than the disney princess plates



These party bags were made using coloured paper bags and princess upper body cutouts, they really came out nicely and were great fun to make


We used masks a decoration for the boys party packs





Everyone got into theme on this one!



This princess party prop was great for photos. It is made using a large blue table cloth and we printed the princesses using a website called www.blockposters.com. You send them an image and the dimensions you want it in, and they send it back to you as an Adobe file split over the number of pages you requested. You then just tape them together like puzzle pieces.




This was a cupcake decorating table ....


And this was our Brave princess birthday girl :)

Thursday, 17 October 2013

Make Your Own Fun Gifts for Teachers :)

It is with both excitement and sadness that we are deep in the throws of moving country at the moment, with the house furniture packed up & floating somewhere in the Atlantic as we answer Africa's beckoning call home! So sadly tomorrow is Katies last day at nursery. I wanted to give her dear teachers something with a bit of "colourful us" thrown in, so after buying a load of pencils and glue at Poundland, heres what we came up with .. stationary cups/ vases made out of pencils!



Right now to make these you will need the following ...


Wrap a hairband elastic around the tin and start inserting pencils all the way around. Then glue each one together using superglue or a suitable wood glue.



Let dry and decorate as you please ...



I threw in some flower pots on top to raise the vibrance a notch higher even :)





Friday, 11 October 2013

A Princess Castle Party Prop


Heres one we made in the midst of moving house! We were surrounded by large cardboard boxes with loads of packing to do .. but somehow making decorations for Katies upcoming princess party seemed more interesting and this creation came to mind -




Heres how we did it-

We had 1 grocery left in the kitchen - namely coffee... and one sponge in the sink, and that was all we needed ;)






And heres are pics of the Princess having fun with it on the big day :)