Princess Party Extravaganza

I LOVE planning birthday parties for the kids and usually start well in advance. Bella really wanted a princess party this year so I bought the cake kit early, but then didn't give it much thought until suddenly it was only 2 weeks until it was mine turn for teaching Joy School and her party. (Instead of having a big friend party we just did this party as part of Joy School) Now 2 weeks sounds like a lot of time, but like I said I love planning parties so I like to drag the process out!

This is the invitation - I found the poem online and thought it worked great for what we were planning. I got several cute pictures of Bella dressed in her princess outfit, but I liked this serious one best.

Grandma Jerri Lynn was in town the weekend before Bella's party and insisted we start on the cake early. Good thing since we had to build it in stages. It was really quite a lot of work! At times we had our "creative" discrepancies, but I was glad she helped because it really turned out great. Too bad Grandma couldn't stick around to see the finished product!

Bella was so cute as I was finishing the cake she said, "When I'm a mommy then I can make cakes for my kids." I just laughed because that's why I make birthday cakes because I remember my mom making me cakes when I was young. And so the tradition continues!

And as always, Chuck was a good sport too help. I always come up with crazy ideas and then Chuck is the one who figures out how to make them work. He spent a couple hours making this castle. Our ceilings are 12 feet high in the family room so it was huge! It was midnight when Chuck, Trina and I were trying to hang this thing up. Somehow we managed without ripping it or having Chuck fall off the ladder.

When the kids got up the next morning they were all excited to see the castle their dad had made. Samuel was asking all sorts of questions about the building process and Bella was just delighted that daddy had built her a castle. It was really cute! What an amazing dad!

Bella and I dressed up in our princess attire.

Chuck was very surprised that I dressed up too. Dresses and nice clothes are just not me, but I figured I had this pretty dress hanging in my closet that I wore for Trina's wedding years ago and I might as well at least wear it one more time.

Drum roll please - Here is the castle cake.

Bella LOVED it. That morning as I finished putting it together I was really worried it might come crashing down before Bella got a chance to blow out the candles, or worse before I could get pictures! But I anchored the pillars with white chocolate and so it held together with no problems!

And thanks to aunt Trina who also went along with my idea of having her dress up as Snow White and come to the party. Good thing the Halloween costumes are out. But why are all the women's costumes so skanky! We had to alter this one a little to make it more modest!

I told Bella a few days before the party that I had invited a special guest to her party. When the doorbell rang the girls rushed to see who it was. It was so funny because they were excited to see Snow White, but they were all a little shy at first. Trina and I were trying really hard not to laugh because at first Bella kept looking at her very skiptically - almost as if she was thinking in her mind "You sure do sound like Aunt Trina". The girls eventually warmed up as Snow White helped them make bracelets and crowns and then played a princess dancing game with them. They were asking her all sorts of questions and several of them wanted Snow White to come to their house.

All the pretty princesses.

When it was time for Snow White to leave all the girls rushed to the window to watch her. Poor Trina wasn't sure what to do becuase they wouldn't leave the window. Finally she just walked around the back of the house until I snuck out to let her back in.

The party was a lot of fun and it was so cute to hear the girls tell their moms all about how Snow White had come to the party. Bella has asked me every day if we can have another princess party with a castle cake and next time she would like Sleeping Beauty to come and then she wants Snow White to come after that.

I was really glad Samuel was at school because when Bella told him Snow White had come to her party he just kept saying that just couldn't be real. We showed him a few pictures and his exact words were, "That's not Snow White that's just a girl dressed up as Snow White. Look at that hair!" Bella kept insisting that Snow White really had come. Samuel finally decided maybe she had, but wanted all sorts of questions answered. How did she get here, where did she go, did she eat cake, what did she say, if Snow White was real then the dwarfs must be real - it just went on and on and on in typical Samuel style. The two of them discussed it all afternoon!

Bella's actual birthday isn't for another week so we still have some celebrating to do!