Rapunzel’s *Golden Hair* Birthday Party

If you remember, I saw Tangled as a pre-release. And loved it. Loved it. At Thanksgiving we ended up seeing it again with family. That night I must have dreamed about Rapunzel and her golden hair because I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about how it would be a perfect theme for Lydia’s GOLDEN Birthday Party! In fact, I had to get up to write down all the great ideas I had! I say that to say, I clearly have an inappropriate relationship with birthday parties.

Anywhoo. Let’s get on with it, shall we? Here are my…

Top Ten (or so) Best Moments from The Golden Hair Party

1. Painting

Rapunzel spent her life locked in a tower, but she was by no means bored. She baked, she made candles, she did ballet, sewing, reading and even ventriloquism. But her favorite past time? Painting! She painted every wall of her tower. So, I decided we were going to paint.

I bought 11×14 canvases from Michael’s (with a 40% off coupon!) and borrowed easels from my friends and family. Then we decoratively threw a drop cloth on the ground and voila–instant gallery!

Now, the problem is, how to get the kids to paint something without making it look like a big globby mess? Well, I went back to my Jesus Storybook Bible Fingerpaint Canvas and used stickers! I used my mom’s Cricut to cut shapes and all the kids’ names out of Contact Paper. Then, the kids put their Contact-Paper-stickers on the canvas, painted over them, let them dry and peeled them off! I can’t believe I don’t have pictures of any final masterpieces, but I promise they were stunning!

I had great plans to do a big canvas with a “5″ sticker on it–then let all the kids do a handprint on it (get it? 5 fingers?). Then it could be a souvenir for Lydia. Alas, I didn’t get it together in time.

2. Lanterns

In my middle-of-the-night dreaming about this movie and party, I had this great idea to set off lanterns for Lydia’s birthday. It’s exactly what the king and queen did for their daughter. And in the movie, they continued to do so for 18 years hoping their lost daughter would see them and come home to them. (*sob*) This visual is absolutely stunning and I wanted Lydia to see the same thing for herself. To know that no matter how far away she is from us, we will always always put a lantern out for her. We will always be loving and praying for her. (*sniff*)

I ordered the lanterns–they were about $2 each. And I was only going to set off 5–one for each of her years. But. There are are lots and lots of warnings on the label–DO NOT USE NEAR TREES OR ROADS OR HOUSES OR CHILDREN. DO NOT USE IF WIND IS STRONGER THAN 5MPH. And what do you know? All those things applied to us. We were actually going to try it until we saw the forecast for Saturday: WINDY. Seriously. Not Cloudy. Not Sunny. Not even Rainy. WINDY.

So we went with Plan B…

3. Balloons with LED Lights

I ran to Party City at 8:30 the morning of the party. I was so early I had to call the store and say, “Uhm, I’m standing outside. Can you let me in?” I bought 40 balloons (enough for everyone to let one go) and then bought LED lights to go inside. Great idea right? Well, they only last 8 hours. The party wasn’t until 4pm. And I wasn’t going to release the balloons until 6pm. *sigh*

So, I placed an order and my husband had to pick them up at noon. Lovely. Like we didn’t have mopping and cooking to do.

Once I saw the lights in the gold balloons I got over my despair at not doing lanterns. They were quite pretty. But the sun would NOT go down. And the natives were getting restless. Oh, and it was like 17 degrees outside. So, we went outside at quarter till 6 and let them go anyway.

We sang “Happy Birthday” and let the balloons fly into the sky! I was still envisioning a Tangled-like lift-off….but the wind was definitely blowing. And the exact opposite direction I was hoping. So, about 5 balloons got stuck in our tree and the other ones slowly went over the house. Not exactly what I wanted, but it was still kinda fun to see everyone chattering, singing and holding balloons on our driveway.

{Also. This was a complete waste of money. The LEDs were $10 for a dozen. I don’t even want to tell you how much the balloons cost. If I was going to do this again, I’d buy or rent a helium tank and buy a bag of balloons with a coupon. And maybe try to throw a light-up bracelet from the dollar store inside the balloon.}

4. Crazy Hair

A few weeks ago, I went to a bloggy-Candyland party with the Mommy Insider and saw this fun idea–crazy hair with pipe cleaners and other decorations. I figured this was perfect for a party focused on HAIR. So, I showed the pictures to my sisters-in-law and they said it looked like no problem at all…well, Catie said she could do it. Micah wasn’t so sure. (I feel you, Micah!)

The basic idea is to make several different pony tails, wrap them in pipe cleaners until they stand up by themselves. Then we added sticky glitter foam flowers, bobby pins with toole or silk flowers on them and LOOK HOW CUTE:

The pipe cleaners were the only investment here–we used about 5 or more per kid. The flowers were just a dollar store bunch I pulled apart and the toole was left over from a costume.

Thank you, Aunt Catie!

5. Cupcakes

What little girl wishes of having scary Pub Thugs on the cupcakes at her birthday party? Well, Lydia was absolutely giddy over them! One of the Pub Thug’s dream was to make cupcakes. And when I remembered I had a Groupon for cupcakes–it was the perfect food!

I just printed off a picture of the Pub Thugs from the website and used my circle-cutter to make those pretty perfect circles. Cute, right?

6. The Food

I am so incredibly happy with the food. First of all–do you see the mountains of frying pans we had?! HOW AWESOME IS THAT? Rapunzel and Flynn’s weapon of choice was the iron skillet, so I knew I wanted those on my food table.

I decided to forego the cake and we had pies instead. (Remember, Rapunzel liked to bake.) I made a Swedish Apple Pie and a Cherry Pie. Daddy made a Peach Pie.

Then I made a BRAIDED loaf of bread. BRAID? Get it? Huh? Huh?

We also had a bowl of apples for Maximus, the brave dog-horse.

The main entree was the soup–Mother Gothel’s Hazelnut Soup. I found several recipes online. The one I used was from Family Fun and…well, it didn’t look that appetizing. But it turned out ok–even when I had to use carrots instead of parsnips. But I did make Taco Soup, too. Just in case the Hazelnut Soup was scary.

But my favorite food was the Make Your Own Tower Kabobs. Those cute little frying pans are filled with grapes, blueberries, deli meat, cheese and more. Everyone got to fill up a skewer and eat their tower o’food. Fun, right?

7. Lanterns

I found these cute lanterns on Oriental Trading Company. The kids colored them with markers and stuck foam stickers on them to decorate. They turned out cuter than I thought. And it was an easy craft with no set-up!

8. Cat’s Cradle

This is Asa before the party (in his pirate pajamas) showing off the Cat’s Cradle station. I thought it was appropriate since it is a kind of tangly game. I just put out a Cat’s Cradle book I had and some yarn tied in a circle. The kids seemed to like it—even though I don’t think anyone actually did the actual Cat’s Cradle games. Oh well, at least you can see my cute station signs–I printed off some pictures and put them in some old frames. To go with the whole painting-gallery-theme.

9. Shrinky Dink Necklaces

Family Fun had some great ideas for Tangled party ideas. My favorite was the printable shrink charms. You just get Inkjet Shrink Film (Michael’s was clearancing theirs out!) and print off their pre-colored charms. Then cut them out, punch a hole and bake. I just set them aside with little strings and let the kids make their own necklaces. It was fun to see which charms they picked. (For the record, I got a lantern, a frying pan and a paintbrush.)

10. My Rapunzel

Lydia wanted to dress like Rapunzel. So, my mom made the dress—from a made up pattern because there aren’t any Tangled costumes out yet. Then we had her hair french braided and put in fresh flowers. She was a beautiful golden princess to be sure! Happy 5th Birthday, sweet girl!

{see Part 2: THE DECORATIONS!}