Let's Have a Frozen Party!

Last week we had a Frozen party for Nicole's 7th birthday. Her main request for the party was that "we get to make stuff."  I'm sure you can imagine how excited I was about that. Making stuff is right up my alley! So from the invitations to the activities to the cake, we made everything that there was to make.  I'm certainly not a professional party planner but we made it all work and had a great time together! Today I'm excited to share some of our Frozen Birthday Party ideas with you!

First up is the invitations. Since Nicole wanted to make them we searched out some free clipart and put this one together using Word. It was quick to print and she was delighted to help cut them out and stuff the envelopes. If you like our format you can download the file here and customize it with your own information. There are four to a page. Enjoy! 

Fast forward to party day! The first activity Nicole wanted to do was "Pin the Nose on Olaf."  She invented this game (kind of, right?) and originally had big plans for us to draw a poster of him, but when we saw this one in the store we didn't hesitate to throw it in the cart. Each of the girls did get to cut out their own carrot nose for Olaf and write their name on it. We used a simple white dish towel for a blind fold and they had a blast.  

Would you like to build a snowman?  They certainly did! We provided three sizes of marshmallows and a handful of toothpicks and left the rest up to the girls. Some of their creations were really impressive!  We also noticed that we ended up with a lot less marshmallows than we started with -- I'm not sure what happened to them. Mmm... 

Next we had a mini dance party (un-planned) and opened presents. That wasn't very Frozen themed but it WAS very fun. The party is all about the girls, right? 

Our next activity - Olaf Softies!  I honestly had no idea that these would be such a hit. Nicole wanted each girl to make her own so I drew a snowman template and traced it onto white felt for the girls to cut out. Then I sewed around the edges for them and they got to stuff it and glue all the pieces on that they cut out themselves. 

We made a mess but it sure was fun! 

If you would like to make your own Olaf softies with your kids, you can download the template here and then have some fun!  Print just one template onto cardstock, cut it out, and trace it onto two pieces of white felt per child.  Let them cut the 2 felt shapes. Stack the shapes wrong sides together and sew around them 1/4" from the edge, leaving a 1" opening. Have the kids stuff batting into Olaf and then you will sew the opening shut. Then provide scraps of orange and black felt for the kids to cut out arms, hair, and a mouth. They will also love to have googly eyes and black buttons to glue on. We used regular Elmer's white glue. 

They turned out so cute! Some of the Olafs were more... accurate... than others. But they are all very loved. The girls' moms were happy that we sent home a special party favor rather than the usual "stuff." 

No party is complete without food! In the theme of "making stuff" we thought it would be fun for each of the girls to make their own pizza.  I mixed up some dough and rolled out mini circles, and then they put on their own toppings.  

While the pizzas were baking, the girls frosted their own cupcakes. Pink and purple with sprinkles, of course. 

Then they all dug in! We had so much fun! That was all of the excitement at Nicole's birthday party with her friends. A few days later on her actual birthday though, we made Nicole a Frozen castle cake to share with our own family: 

She helped me decorate it and it was so easy to do! If you have no cake decorating experience I think you can still pull it off! The castle looks even more amazing if you do a double layer but since we were only feeding nine people we decided to make it one layer. I learned this cake in a beginner book that came with my cake decorating set.  

Step 1: The first thing you do is buy or bake a round cake. Ours was 9". Let it cool.

 Step 2: Then you will mix up some buttercream frosting. I strongly suggest that you use this recipe for the frosting - store bought frosting is not good for this. I doubled the recipe to make sure I'd have enough for the towers.   

Step 3: Frost the cake. It doesn't need to be perfect because we're going to be covering most of it. 

Step 4: Place one ice cream cup in the center of the cake and press it in until it sticks. Use a frosting tip to decorate around the base of the cup and hold it in place. (You can use a ziploc bag with the corner cut out of it if you don't have a piping bag.)  

Step 5: Take four more ice cream cups and cut the bottoms off them. Arrange on the cake where you want your towers to be and press them gently into the frosting.  I put my two front ones slightly farther apart that my two back ones, so they can all be seen easily.  Decorate around the base of each cup to hold it in place. 

Step 6: Pipe frosting around the rim of the center cup and then press a cone onto it, upside down, as shown in the picture above. Then pipe frosting around the edge where they connect, to make it pretty and secure. If you don't like how yours looks, don't worry because you can cover it up with candy!  Do the same with the remaining four "towers" so that they each have a cone on top. Make sure they are all secured with frosting before moving onto the next step. 

Step 7: Now you're ready to decorate! Gently push candy into the frosting wherever you would like. I made a frosting door on the front and a frosting ledge all around the top and base of the cake so it would give us plenty of places to stick the candy.  Nicole helped of course and we put Mentos on the top of each tower, candy snowflakes around the lower edges, and blue sprinkle balls all around. Our cake wasn't perfect but she was sooooo happy and it took us less than half an hour once it was baked. 

You can get a lot fancier and mix it up with different kinds of candy too.  Here is the castle cake I made for Nicole when she turned 3, using pink whoppers and white jelly bellies: 

Cute, right?  It seems like it was just yesterday, sigh... Anyway, now you know how to decorate a castle cake too, whether it is Frozen or not!  

Let's not forget those Thank You cards!  I made folding ones so Nicole can write a little message inside to each of the girls. You can download the file for Thank You cards here. 

That's all for our ideas on the Frozen birthday party!  I bet you can think up some creative ideas of your own.  Some are better than others - Nicole's brothers thought it would be fun to give each of the girls a "frozen" barbie doll by putting them in the freezer before they came. Yeah, don't do that.  But I hope you WILL try out some of these creative ideas and let us know how they go!  And of course, don't forget that your birthday girl would LOVE to have her very own handmade Elise's Everyday Princess Dress for the party.  It really was the finishing touch.

Let's Create! ~ Kristen