The Little Prince Birthday Party
This past week was my son PJ's first birthday. In the interest of the public good, I am posting the party details so that if some hapless parent comes along and needs easy ideas for a Little Prince theme, they will stumble upon this blog and be able to use the ideas.
I was that parent a couple weeks ago, and although I went on Pinterest and searched online I only found complex and fancy party ideas that were way out of my league in terms of both time and money.
Here is the bare minimum Little Prince party ideas you can do without too much effort. You'll need a color printer, card stock, blue butcher paper, and a budget of about $50 (less if you have some of these supplies on hand).
First, decorate an entry way or other staging area with a giant themed sign. Voila!
I used blue wrapping paper because I couldn't find the right shade of butcher paper. The words are Grand Hotel font, and you just use Word or Pages to write out what you want it to say. Then either print on a color printer or be smarter than me and print on yellow cardstock (I wasted a lot of ink because I wasn't thinking straight). Cut out the letters and mount to the blue paper using double sided photo tape. The image of the Little Prince in the center was actually 3 different pieces of paper that I lined up and stuck together to make an image bigger than the 8 1/2 x 11 constraints of my printer.
If you buy a dark blue plastic tablecloth and pair it with gold or yellow paper plates, napkins and cups, its easy to inexpensively tie the theme in just by using these colors.
The only other decorative element I used was several roses that were placed in little glass jars. You can use mason jars, or basically any glass or ceramic jar. I then created the decoration for the jars in Pages (make a text box, add a dark blue fill and drag and drop the images you find online into the text box to create this. Add star shapes with a gold or yellow fill or drag and drop an image of a star you find online). I printed it out on a color printer and used that handy double sided photo tape to stick the images on the jars. One side of the jar had the image, and the other side had a quote about the little prince's flower. It might look prettier to use one whole strip and wrap around the jar, but that takes more time to make it the exact right length and I didn't want to spend a lot of time on this. So using two squares will save time but may look less polished.
For the cake, well... all the cakes I saw online were gorgeous and undoubtedly very expensive. I saw asteroid shaped cakes and just all kinds of neat ideas. But I was not going to shell out $100+ just for cake.
So, using a store bought mix and frosting (to which I added blue food dye) I made the cake and decorated with fruit rollup cutouts.
The stars were made with a multi-sized cookie cutter, the asteroid was a round cookie cutter and the little prince is cut out free hand. I reserved a little of the white frosting and added food dye to make the skin color, and piped on the arms and face. I free handed his hair.
Sure, its obviously a hack job. But you have to work with what you have, and in this case I had to work with what I didn't have: time, money, and cake decorating abilities, ha!
For the party favor, I made bookmarks using Pages. Again, a text box with a dark blue fill and a lot of dragging and dropping images. Then I printed them out and laminated. If you don't have a laminating machine you can get them laminated at Staples or Office Depot. It will cost you a little more money, but not as much as if you have to go and purchase a laminating machine.
On the back of the bookmarks I added quotes from the book, also dark blue with little gold stars scattered on it.
And there you go. Easy and basic, but still very festive. Feel free to Pin!
Happy birthday, PJ!
I was that parent a couple weeks ago, and although I went on Pinterest and searched online I only found complex and fancy party ideas that were way out of my league in terms of both time and money.
Here is the bare minimum Little Prince party ideas you can do without too much effort. You'll need a color printer, card stock, blue butcher paper, and a budget of about $50 (less if you have some of these supplies on hand).
First, decorate an entry way or other staging area with a giant themed sign. Voila!
I used blue wrapping paper because I couldn't find the right shade of butcher paper. The words are Grand Hotel font, and you just use Word or Pages to write out what you want it to say. Then either print on a color printer or be smarter than me and print on yellow cardstock (I wasted a lot of ink because I wasn't thinking straight). Cut out the letters and mount to the blue paper using double sided photo tape. The image of the Little Prince in the center was actually 3 different pieces of paper that I lined up and stuck together to make an image bigger than the 8 1/2 x 11 constraints of my printer.
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| We all took pictures with the birthday boy by the sign. |
If you buy a dark blue plastic tablecloth and pair it with gold or yellow paper plates, napkins and cups, its easy to inexpensively tie the theme in just by using these colors.
The only other decorative element I used was several roses that were placed in little glass jars. You can use mason jars, or basically any glass or ceramic jar. I then created the decoration for the jars in Pages (make a text box, add a dark blue fill and drag and drop the images you find online into the text box to create this. Add star shapes with a gold or yellow fill or drag and drop an image of a star you find online). I printed it out on a color printer and used that handy double sided photo tape to stick the images on the jars. One side of the jar had the image, and the other side had a quote about the little prince's flower. It might look prettier to use one whole strip and wrap around the jar, but that takes more time to make it the exact right length and I didn't want to spend a lot of time on this. So using two squares will save time but may look less polished.
For the cake, well... all the cakes I saw online were gorgeous and undoubtedly very expensive. I saw asteroid shaped cakes and just all kinds of neat ideas. But I was not going to shell out $100+ just for cake.
So, using a store bought mix and frosting (to which I added blue food dye) I made the cake and decorated with fruit rollup cutouts.
The stars were made with a multi-sized cookie cutter, the asteroid was a round cookie cutter and the little prince is cut out free hand. I reserved a little of the white frosting and added food dye to make the skin color, and piped on the arms and face. I free handed his hair.
Sure, its obviously a hack job. But you have to work with what you have, and in this case I had to work with what I didn't have: time, money, and cake decorating abilities, ha!
For the party favor, I made bookmarks using Pages. Again, a text box with a dark blue fill and a lot of dragging and dropping images. Then I printed them out and laminated. If you don't have a laminating machine you can get them laminated at Staples or Office Depot. It will cost you a little more money, but not as much as if you have to go and purchase a laminating machine.
On the back of the bookmarks I added quotes from the book, also dark blue with little gold stars scattered on it.
And there you go. Easy and basic, but still very festive. Feel free to Pin!
Happy birthday, PJ!
I'm exactly the kind of parent you described above and am so glad I stumbled upon this post!
ReplyDeleteYay! I am glad it will help someone!!
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