Tangled party pics and how-to

It's a Tangled party! I'm sure there's some pun involving knitting and the name of the Rapunzel movie, but as my husband and I have had about 3 hours sleep in the past 48 hours in preparation for our daughter's birthday/work/grad school/fixing a lawnmower with a bent blade, I'm all out of puns. And energy. And polysyllabic words.

The invitations were super cute but I'm not posting them because I don't want to share my address. I made long, tall purple rectangles, punched out a square "window," inserted a braid made from embroidery floss and tied with a purple ribbon (anchored with a dab of hot glue) and backed it with plain white card stock. There's a good example on Martha Stewart's website (I don't recommend Martha's punch because it is overpriced and, if you watch the video, even Martha can't get it to work.) I was able to get three invitations printed per letter-sized page. I purchased bright yellow envelopes from Office Max.

I drew Flynn's "Wanted" poster -- if you want to make one, I don't exactly have any tips as I did it freehand. However, the other things are very do-able. The lantern pinata was made by my husband with two balloons, paper mache and colored tissue paper. We filled it with plastic lizards of different colors (like Pascal, the chameleon), rubber ducks for the Snuggly Ducking and "Tangled candy" printed with the images of the movie characters). 

Using the same paper I purchased for the invitations, I made the flags for the bunting and for the "boats" (blue jello for the water and oranges for the boats with toothpicks and paper sails -- reminiscent of the boat Flynn took out on the water to show Rapunzel the floating lanterns). Other food was "pub grub" -- pigs in a blanket (easier than sausage rolls), fruit and cheese -- all served in frying pans ("Who knew, right?") and a basket of apples in case Maximus drops in.

We taped paper to the fence for the kids to paint like Rapunzel and provided palates cut from cereal boxes and topped with washable paints. In the front yard, we used two yellow, plastic tablecloths tied together, wrapped around the trunk and hanging down like Rapunzel's hair.

I unrolled four skeins of cheap, yellow cotton yarn, tied it with purple ribbon and wrapped the banister.  My knitting/crochet friends will be happy to know that yarn will be repurposed into placemats.

The cake was topped with a tower made from cupcakes leveled off and topped with an ice cream cone. There's a wooden skewer going straight through the cupcakes and to the bottom of the cake. If you've seen the movie, you'll know frying pans were Rapunzel's defensive weapon of choice. So the cake was served on "frying pan" plates (black paper plates with black plastic knives glued to the bottom for a handle).

I cut out Pascal heads and glued googly eyes to them and glued them to party blowers -- those were a big hit.

I found super cute party favors at Party City -- tiny watercolor paint sets with a loop at the top. We used yellow ribbon to make them into necklaces -- all the kids loved them. They came 12 to a pack and you could choose regular or ones with Rapunzel printed on to case. All the kids were walking around with them on. Really cute.

Other than the sudden cold front that moved everyone inside after the pinata broke, it all went off without a hitch.  I'm so tired. But I'm really happy. After dinner tonight, my daughter turned to me, unprompted, and said, "Thank you so much for the nice birthday party!" So that's awesome. I'm so lucky to be a mom.