Princess Party

I've neglected to post pictures of a party that preceded this one which was my son's dinosaur party. It was pretty epic but unfortunately, I was so busy that day I didn't get very many pictures so I've skipped it for now and I'm instead posting the pictures of my youngest daughter's 2nd birthday.

I wanted the party to be fun but low-key at the same time.
When kids are young, they are easily overwhelmed by big, loud, crazy parties with tonnes of kids running around and I really didn't think my daughter would enjoy that.

I also didn't want to forgo a party altogether, so I decided to keep it small. I  also didn't want to spend the $ to rent a party room so I got creative with our living room space.

My daughter was in a princess phase at the time so I decided that we needed a castle, because every princess needs a castle!  My original idea was to cut out of large piece of cardboard a (one dimensional) face of a castle and paint the details on.  I enlisted my husband's help to cut out the castle's shape and this is was he came up with instead... it was pretty fantastic!!

We only invited 2 other kids to the party( so including the birthday girl and my two other kids there were 5 kids total), which worked really well. It gave everyone enough space to move around and have fun without being crazy and overwhelming.

I laid out some princess dress-up items like crowns, dresses, tiaras, wands, and dress up jewelry and for the first little bit just let the kids dress up and play in the castle.
And because we didn't want to exclude my son we decided to make him a knight. We got him a sword, and he wore a cape from an old Halloween costumes, and my husband made a helmet and shield with the cardboard left over from the castle.

The concept was mine, but all the credit goes to my husband and his amazing skills with an exacto knife because this 3D castle blew my mind and went WELL beyond what I had been envisioning!
I think I jumped up and down for a full minute when I came into the basement and saw it for the first time!

As far as activities,  we decorated princess crowns and wands which were foam that I bought at the dollar store with stickers, glitter, sequins etc..

We played with bubble foam (which was just ordinary dish soap that I allowed to foam up in the sink with warm water and then transferred the resulting foam into bowls). The kids all had fun making bubble beards and bracelets and putting it on their hair. Simple, but fun and not too much mess. Although, it should be noted that this activity does make things a bit wet so we kept that activity at the table in the kitchen.

We then made edible princess necklaces with string licorice, coloured fruit loops and gummy lifesavers.  Had some food, cupcakes and then the kids played in the castle again.
It was relaxed and fun and my daughter had a great time!