Princess Presley is 6! A Unicorn/Rainbow Party

Well, the unthinkable has happened. My best lady is SIX! I can't believe it. I don't deserve her. I truly don't know how I'd raise my boys without her. She is so incredibly helpful and has just the sweetest, kindest spirit. God blessed me so much when he gave me my girl. She made me a momma and continues to make me so proud every day. Basically, she is magic.

And speaking of magic, what other way to celebrate Princess Pres than with a rainbow/unicorn party?! She actually came up with this theme pretty much the day after her 5th birthday party and we've been planning ever since. I love how involved she gets now. She appreciates every little detail of the things we create and it makes me so happy. A woman after my own heart. She says that next year we're going full mermaid so I'm sure we'll be diving under the sea in no time.

Last year we had 2 parties in the same weekend: One with a few friends and another with family. It was just right so we did it again! On Saturday a few friends came over for crafts, cake, and play. Then Sunday afternoon we had family come celebrate with more food and cake. By Sunday night we were pooped but had so much fun celebrating our girl.

6 years ago in a land far away,

Our fairytale began on Presley’s birth day.

Then came magic and glitter and unicorns with wings!

Rainbows, bright colors and more pretty things!

Now our princess’ day is once again here,

and we wish to celebrate with those she holds dear!

Come visit our kingdom, happily ever after awaits;

You won’t want to miss it! So please save the date!

I tried to get away without writing a poem for Ollie's birthday and my family revolted. I didn't make that same mistake again. I usually just make a Facebook invite with a cute picture and all of the deets. This saves $$ on invitations/postage and is much easier to keep up with RSVPs. 

We had so much fun decorating!

I found this giant horse at TJ Maxx before Christmas! I tried to walk passed it until I heard a quiet whisper in my ear, "You need it, Katie. Pick up the horse." I suddenly don't know what came over me. I found myself carrying this life-size Pegasus through the store, then through the checkout line..before I knew it I had strangers stopping me in the parking lot asking me where in the world I had purchased such a thing. "I'm not sure," I replied. "It's all a blur." I hung my head in shame and reluctantly stuffed it into my car. 

The disappointing part is that Santa got all of the cool points for this purchase! Santa also noticed pretty late in the game that Pegasus is JUST a flying horse. How...unimpressive. He does NOT have a horn. Good thing Santa shops at Target as well and found an interesting contraption to strap to his head to solve the problem. 

Well, now here we are. The only thing to do with Pegasus is look at him. Believe me. The 3 year old has tried to ride him a few times, to no avail. 

Well! It was Peggy's time to shine! 

I made this "6" to hang on the door out of poster board, glittery foam paper and misc trinkets I found amongst my craft supplies.

I made 5 large glittery stars out of single-sheet scrapbook paper from Hobby Lobby. I glued them to clear thread and hung them from the ceiling with Command hooks. I found the iridescent doorway curtains on Amazon! They were $8 for 2 of them. My mom found the pink balloon cluster on clearance at Michaels. She used it to decorate her car when she picked Pres up from school and a week later IT'S STILL LIVING! I just taped them to my wall with packing tape because classy.

I found this unicorn banner at Five Below for, you guessed it, $5! It had another piece that said "Birthday" but I thought "Magical Birthday" was a weird exclamation to put on the wall. It was giving me Dwight Schrute "It is your birthday" vibes. "Have a magical birthday" would've been acceptable. I probably put more thought into than I should have. It is what it is. So I only used half.

The dining room is always my favorite room to decorate! This is where I go all out. I only had food on the table for the family party. I just provided cake and ice cream for the friend party. These pictures are from the second party. It was rainy then so Pegasus made his debut indoors.

And when I say food I mean sweets. A lot of sweets. We couldn't resist. It was at 3:30, right after naptime and before dinner, so I figured it was acceptable. It probably wasn't but I'd do it again.

I told yall you'd be seeing this balloon arch at every party forever. I wasn't lying! I promise to change it up though. This time I used this pastel balloon set from Amazon to create a magical balloon rainbow. $7 well spent. I traced and cut out more stars in different sizes to tape to the balloons AND covered it in twinkle lights! And what's more magical than twinkle lights? I found them also on Amazon and used both strands. 

I already had the subtle purple overlay (purchased as a piece of fabric from Joann) and found the champagne-colored sequin table cloth on Amazon for just $12. I then covered the table in more glittery paper stars and some cute unicorn-themed glitter I found on the craft aisle at Target (near the party/office supplies). I also found the white tiered serving tray in the Dollar Spot at Target for just $5! 

For our sparkling sweets we had:

White chocolate covered unicorn strawberries

Unicorn "Little Debbies"

Lucky Charms "rice krispie treats"

Fruit with glittery, sweet unicorn dip

Rainbow pasta salad

CAKE

The unicorn strawberries were a true labor of love. They started off a disaster. But then I began to embrace my new role as a chocolatier and things started falling into place. The trickiest part was getting the chocolate the right consistency for the pink hair and eyes. 4 seconds in the microwave and it was too liquidy. 4 seconds in the fridge and it was too hard. I eventually figured out that having a cup of warm water nearby worked wonders as the chocolate hardened in the piping bag. A few days before the party I made the horns and ears out of fondant (purchased at HL). The night before the party I dipped the berries in the white chocolate and stuck on the horns and ears (this must be done when the base is still wet). Then I did the eyes, hair and pink cheeks (edible petal dust from my local cake supply store) the day of. But they turned out so cute and yummy that they were totally worth it. So if you're local and you'd like to order some for Valentines Day I'm actually taking orders! I know I know. Getting a little over zealous. However, they made me feel like French royalty (probably not a thing) so I'm accepting it. *Kisses fingers into the air dramatically as notes of cocao and berry float around blissfully in the air, wrapping me in a tight hug full of warmth, comfort, and endless love*

Ahem

Moving on

I found the unicorn cakes on the "snack cake" aisle at Kroger! They come in a box $2/8 and they are SO TASTY! No labor of love needed. I simply unwrapped them and placed them on my $5 Dollar Spot find and looked fancy AF doing it. I got the paper mache "6" at Hobby Lobby and traced it onto more glitter paper and just glued it on.

I followed this recipe to make Lucky Charms Treats. I made them the day before. No Rice Krispies were used in the making of these delicious treats. I think my son snuck and ate at least 5 during the party, which is probably why he was so lit. They're made of just Lucky Charms, marshmallows and butter. A perfect trio. Need I say more?

The fondant rainbow I made for the little cake we had the day before and I repurposed it here. 

The "unicorn" dip really did me in. I think I passed out and came back to life after one taste. Much like the day when Pegasus came home with me in my back seat. It was a gift from the Lord. I found the recipe here. HOWEVER, LET ME WARN YOU! The recipe says to use THREE DANG CUPS OF SUGAR. The more I thought about that concept the more I laughed because that amount of sugar would've literally made my children launch off to space and I would've never seen them again. Basically, someone who made this recipe as it stands on the website is still not okay. I put maybe a tablespoon of sugar in it and had a sugar buzz for an hour. Granted I had like a pound of it in one sitting but dang! THREE CUPS? I truly can't imagine. Surely it is a typo. I read it appx 100 times thinking it said tbsp or something and I wasn't seeing correctly. So now you can't say I didn't warn you. I mean it has marshmallow fluff, cream cheese, and heavy whipping cream in it. Even if you emitted the sugar all together it'd still taste like King Neptune smiled upon it. To top it off I added rainbow sprinkles and edible glitter which truly made it irresistible. My kids and I have been binge-eating the leftovers with graham crackers like we have no shame. 

So for the pasta salad I found a recipe that looked good then found another tutorial on how to dye pasta. The result was, well, magical. My husband and I were rationing the leftovers. The basic pasta salad recipe is linked here. Dying the pasta is so simple! And it would be so fun to do with regular noodles for spaghetti night or something to make the kids excited to eat it. I mean, you don't have to tell me pasta's for dinner twice. I'm already at the table before you start cookin. But my kids are a different story. They don't know what's good. But all you do is cook the pasta al dente, drain it, separate it into ziplocs (as many bags as colors as you want), add 3 cups of sugar to....LOL sorry! Can't stop thinking about the fruit dip. Ok ok. Where was I? Separate the noodles into baggies, add 2 tbsp of warm water to each bag and a few drops of food coloring. So 1 bag for blue, 1 bag for green, etc. Slosh it around and voila! Magic! Be sure to rinse each colored bag of noodles separately in a colander as not to mix the colors as you rinse off the excess dye. The most fun part was combining it back together and seeing the beautiful noodle oasis you had created. IDK what a noodle oasis is but it sounds LOVELY!

I've mentioned before but I actually have a cake business. I'm no longer making cakes for hire because I have 100 kids. But I still love baking for my babies. I loved the sprinkle collage (is that what these are called? Sprinkle sets? Sprinkle collection? Sprinkle MishMosh? PishPosh? Sprinkle mahem? SPRINKLE ASSORTMENT- THAT'S THE WORD!) I couldn't find what I was looking for so I made my own. I found Wilton brand Valentine's sprinkles in the Valentines section at Target and went from there. It was super cute and had most of what I was looking for. I removed the gold arrow sprinkles individually because I'm terrible at archery and felt personally attacked by them (or they just didn't match). And apparently I have too much time on my hands. I added more gold and rainbow sprinkles I already had to tie everything together. 

SO, that was all for the family party. For the kid party I made a little 6 inch rainbow cake to serve a much smaller crowd. 

On the other side of the room is the table for plates/napkins/utensils and I always have a themed book for everyone to sign, kind of like a guest book. 

I found this unicorn pinata at HL for $15 and I used my 40% off coupon. I wanted him to match better so I cut up some gold streamers I already had and glued them in his hair. I'm just a little extra but it was bothering me a lot more than it should have.

For the girls' party favors we had a plethora of things. I made all of them a bag and it included a sparkly mask lanyard (another one of my random business ventures I did this year), homemade unicorn slime, a really creepy and slightly unsettling rubber finger puppet I came across at the Osh Kosh B'Gosh in Florida this summer, and their homemade crafts!

First were these cute unicorn slime jars. I was originally going to let them make this as a craft but decided they'd rather play and I just made it myself. I got all of the supplies at HL. The jars were $1 each and I used glitter foam to make the horns, white paper for the ears, paper flowers from the scrapbooking area, and black puffy paint for the eyes. Make sure the jar lids are screwed on tight before you paint the eyes. I made this mistake and they weren't lining up with the tops when screwed on tight.  I had to wipe off and start over.

The slime was so easy. I used 2 bottles of clear Elmer's glue, 2.5 tbsp contact solution, 1 tbsp baking soda and some of the leftover unicorn glitter from Target (a softer, less pointy glitter will work better). Just mix it all together and eventually it turns into slime! Pretty cool. 

I had 2 crafts for the girls to do before I released them to open presents and go play, which is what they really wanted to be doing anyways. We made cute little unicorn canvases that took maybe 10 minutes and beaded some bracelets, which took another...10 minutes. 

I got the wooden easels at Joann's for $1.50 each (I spray painted them blue) along with the tiny canvases that were the cutest things ever, also $1.50 each. I traced out the eyes on all of them so the girls could have a template. I gave them Sharpies to draw the eyes and crayons to color the cheeks and inside the ears, that I already had cut out of white paper. I also had the sparkly unicorn horns prepared and I let them pick their flowers. Then my MIL hot glued them all together. 

For the DIY bracelets I got the cute cording and alphabet beads at THE DOLLAR TREE WHO KNEW and the larger beads at HL. They were $2 a bag and I got 2 bags total. One bag actually had unicorn and rainbow beads. Nailed it. So this craft cost $7 total and they loved their beautiful creations. 

Here's is the kitchen decor where they did their creating:

I found these star plates at The Dollar Tree (again 8/$1!) and used them as place settings. I wrote their names on them and it was a good place for them to craft on. I included some unicorn horns I found in the party section at Target for less than $3. 

I actually made the Happy Birthday banner for Presley's 2nd birthday and have re-used it at almost every party since. So versatile! The felt hanging flower banner behind the birthday banner was also a Target party aisle find. So cute and only a few dollars! I got the rainbow pinata also at HL and used my 40% off coupon making it around $7. I re-purposed the gold star confetti from Bud's Lightyear is 3 a few months ago (originally from Amazon).

The living room has the bar where I serve drinks and I made a unicorn backdrop for pictures and to just look pretty. 

I found this gold fringe garland at Target as well! I only bought enough for one doorway, which was a miscalculation on my part. It was way too narrow because the bar is the size of 2+ doorways. Instead of buying another one like a normal person, I spent like an hour crafting it into a longer version, strand by strand. I had to cut it in half anyways because it was too long, so I glued the excess to a long piece of cardboard to keep it going. Basically, I would not recommend. However it actually turned out ok! I hung a white plastic table cloth behind it so you couldn't see through and added more glitter paper stars. I had a strand of pink lights, more little star confetti, and this cute unicorn sign from HL. I just served pink lemonade and blue Hawaiian punch.

I already had this backdrop stand/fabric that I've used a million times (much like my balloon arch) and I will continue using it until I die. Many years ago I decorated for a dance at my church. I bought this white rosette fabric and ended up sewing 2 big pieces together so it would be large enough for a photo backdrop. 

I looked everywhere for a paper flower tutorial but a lot of places want you to pay for a template, which would still require a ton of tracing and cutting and gluing. I finally came across this unicorn face on Amazon for only $12. "Alright Alright," she said in her best Matthew McConoaughey voice. I didn't like the ear/horn material, BUT I was able to use that as a template to trace the design onto paper that I did like. Simple. The paper flowers still required a lot of TLC but no tracing. I just had to punch out the pieces and hot glue them together. Not hard, just a little time consuming. The eyes are felt and I kept them as is. Definitely worth it. I hung some curtain LED lights (purchased on Amazon for Christmas..truly magical) behind the fabric to make it twinkle. It was really pretty and the pictures turned out real nice. 

Ohhhhhh I love them

And that was that! 

Another year in the books for my sweet PP. And my whirlwind birthday party extravaganza is over for now. Somehow I birthed all of my children around the same time (1 in November and 2 in January) which is proving itself to be quite complicated. Add in my birthday in October, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years and it's one big party over here for 3 straight months! I'm tired. But I'm sure I'll come up with another crazy project in no time.

Thank you so much for reading! Have a magical week! Pegasuses and unicorn dip for everyone!