Princess Heidi's Royal Party!

It's hard to believe that this little birthday girl has been three for over a week now... Still harder to believe that we celebrated her birthday, with her little friends, over two weeks ago... And I'm only just getting the chance to write about it now!

Life is crazy busy round here!

When I broached the subject of her party with her, our Heidi girl knew exactly what she wanted... A party fit for a Princess. Lords, ladies, Kings, Queens, damsels-in-distress and Knights-in-shining-armour were welcome too, and of course any Prince Charmings to be found in the local vicinity.

A royal birthday was on the cards!

It was actually a really fun little theme! Although possibly the toughest I've had so far. If it had purely been a "Princess" party, it would have been easy, but in the interests of her non-princess loving friends, we had sought to give it a more umbrella theme, and a Royal party was not easy to discover on Pinterest!

So in case any of you have any similarly soon-to-be three year olds, I thought I'd share the details so you can conjure up your own Royal Party effortlessly, should the opportunity ever arise! 

The Food

This is the bit where you have to get a bit creative! Party food is party food at the end of the day... It's pretty much been the same thing since I was a little girl, so it's all about capturing the imagination in the labelling! Here's what was on the menu...

* Royal Rolls - cheese, ham or jam bread rolls

* Carriage Wheel Crisps - circular cross-cross cheese and chive crisps - Lidl's finest!

* Royal Sceptres - cheese straws

* Buckingham Palace Bites - the healthy stuff! Cucumber and baby plum tomatoes

* Birthday Cake - Royal Castle style (more on the cake below)

* Crown Jewel Kebabs - fruit kebabs in multi-colour - grapes, blueberries and raspberries

The entire table was polished off. I actually don't think there was anything left at the end!

The Activities and Games

I split the party into three parts; free play activities, games and food. Having a simple structure helps me feel like we've got some direction, and means people know what's going on... So here's what we did...

Activities...

* The Royal Dressing Room - fancy dress corner

* Tallest Turret building - good old megablocks

* Crown Making - gold and silver crowns, glitter glue, stickers and gems... What more could you want?!

* The Royal Kitchen - home corner

* Colouring table - self-explanatory... This ones always a hit!

Games...

* Ballroom Bumps - Musical bumps

* The Pirate Game - you know, the one with "port", "starboard", "climb the rigging"... So we made a Royal version with calls like, "Windsor Castle", "Buckingham Palace", "bow and curtsey" and "carriages 2"... It was fun!

* Hunt the Crown Jewels"... I had hidden different coloured jewels around the room and the children had to find them. They had good fun hunting high and low, and ticking off their charts as they found the different colours.

The Cake...

I actually think this was my most impressive looking cake to date, though it was actually one of the easiest to make. Three Victoria sponge cakes. Two layered with jam, and the third quartered with two quarters sitting, layered, on the top. Cover everything with butter-icing, add pink wagers for doors and windows and ice-cream-cone turrets and voila! Quick and easy!

To say our littlest lady was thrilled is an understatement... Just look at that little face!

The Favours

Sweets are always a winner, aren't they?! So when it came to the favours, I bought a mountain of Tesco own brand jelly beans and separated them up into little cellophane bags. Perfect little Crown Jewels for our little Princes and Princesses.

And one very, very happy little lady...

And just like that, my baby girl turned three!

Right. Three months until the next birthday party... I'm off to recover! Phew!