Snow White Birthday Party on the Cheap

You might remember, about a year and a half ago I wrote a post about my “Princess Issue.” I used to have a little bit of an anti-princess attitude. However, I’ve really lightened up on this, and over the past year, the princesses have really been a popular toy/play theme in our house. We even had lunch with the princesses at Disney for Miss’s birthday. My girls love playing with, reading about, and dressing up as all the Disney Princess gals. Snow White is typically the favorite, though recently they’ve really been into Ariel, and Cinderella and Rapunzel are always popular here too.

But I must admit, as much as I’ve lightened up on my anti-princess campaign and have come to enjoy, perhaps even embrace, the princesses these days, I still sometimes tend towards encouraging other toys, games, and books over the princess stuff. I guess I just want to make sure they’re getting variety.

So when it came time to start planning Miss’s birthday party, and I asked her what type of party she would like, I gave some non-princess examples.

Me: “You could have a cowgirl party, or an archery party (sounds odd, but this would be right up her alley, remember this?), or a fairy party…”

Her: “I want a princess party.”

Me: “Okay. Well. Any particular princess or just all the princesses in general?”

Her: “A particular princess.”

Me: “Which one?”

Her: “Snow White.”

Indecision is not a problem with this girl.

From that point, the challenge was on for me to come up with Snow-White-themed birthday decor that wasn’t cheesy, canned, or mass-produced by Disney. I knew I could give her a Snow White party, but I couldn’t make myself go to the princess aisle at the local Party Bomb store and buy up a bunch of their Disney Princess stuff. First of all, it’s ridiculous how much they charge for it. Secondly, they always sell it with several of the princesses together, and often Snow White is not even included. Third, well, I just didn’t want to. So I tried to get creative.

Where did I start? Why, Pinterest of course. From there I had to take the ideas and turn them into something I could do considering our particular situation.

I knew that we would be traveling for Miss’s birthday, and I wouldn’t be able to do a ton because we’d be having the party at my sister-in-law’s house. I wanted to do things that I thought Miss would enjoy that wouldn’t cost a lot of money. Also, I didn’t want to be too over the top with the princess-y stuff because the majority of the kid guests at the party would be Miss’s older and male cousins.

So I decided to go with the blue, yellow, and red color scheme (from her dress) and focus a little bit more on the Evil Queen and the poisoned apples. I really wanted to use some of the ideas from this post like the seven dwarfs ring toss, wishing well, and pass the poisoned apple game, but with the party being squeezed between sessions of the Iowa High School State Wrestling Tournament, I knew we wouldn’t have time for games. Plus most of the kids coming to the party were a bit old for these anyway. So I kept things more simple.

Anyway, focusing on poisoned apples and magic mirrors and keeping things cheap, I went to the dollar section at Target and the Dollar Tree store to see what I could find.

I found these packs of 10 (5 red and 5 green) apples at Target for $1. I didn’t immediately know what I would do with them, but knew I could use them for something.

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I never did come up with anything really clever, but I decided to make a few little signs. I wasn’t going to purchase a special font, so I just used the Blackmoor LET font in Word, on the largest size available, to make them. I thought they looked close enough.

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At the Dollar Tree I found this silver-colored platter.

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I knew I wanted to make the Evil Queen’s mirror, and though it obviously wasn’t a mirror, it was the right size and shape and it was reflective. And oh yeah, it was $1.

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Referring to a picture I found online of the queen’s mirror, I used craft foam to frame it (package of foam crown shapes also from the Dollar Tree, I had to cut one down to size).

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I found some gold acrylic paint in my crafting stash in the basement,

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some glitter glue, a few big rhinestones (the most expensive part of the whole project because I had to buy a whole big package, but I’m sure they will get used around here), some Elmer’s glue to fasten it to the platter, and voila! A Magic Mirror.

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I took a Command Adhesive Strip with me so I could hang it on my sister-in-law’s banister.

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Miss and Lass got a kick out of it, and so did some of our littler guests.

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* Note – the glue didn’t hold very well after traveling with it. I had to re-glue it and add some tape to get it to stay. It still worked well enough though.

We had poisoned apple cupcakes.

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I had seen a small stand-up doll Cinderella cake at our local grocery store bakery (like the kind my aunt used to make for my and my cousins’ birthdays!) and asked them if they could do Snow White. They said yes, so I ordered one. I didn’t want the whole party to seem more about the Evil Queen than Snow White, and I thought Miss would really like the doll cake. Unfortunately they called me three days before the party (one day before we left for Iowa!) and told me that they did not, in fact, have Snow White. After a bit of a scramble to try to find someone in Iowa who could do one at the last minute with no luck, I hurriedly photocopied a couple pictures from the girl’s Snow White book and laminated them to set on the table to add a little bit of actual Snow White to the scene. A little cheesy, but it worked in a pinch and it was free.

DSC_0351 DSC_0353 DSC_0402I did take one party idea from the blog post mentioned above, and that was to have some little bird whistles available as party favors. The ones used at the party in that post got reviews on Amazon that said they were very hard for kids to blow and actually make them whistle, so I got these instead (bonus: they were cheaper).

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They were mostly a hit with the Under-18-Months Crowd.

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So there you have it. Some homemade apple signs, laminated copies of book pages, a homemade Magic Mirror from a $1 platter, poisoned apple cupcakes, and some bird whistles. It wasn’t fancy, and not nearly as elaborate as most of the parties I saw in my Pinteresting. But it worked well considering we had to take the party on the road and were hosting it at someone else’s home. And it was CHEAP. All the decor (not counting food, cups, plate, etc.) was under $20.

Most importantly, Miss enjoyed it.

 

 

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3 thoughts on “Snow White Birthday Party on the Cheap

  1. I’m absolutely in love with the mirror platter and the pick your poison apples! You are so creative 🙂 ….I have princess issues with my daughter too – but that’s a much longer story than what would fit in comments!

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