One of my favourite times of the year is celebrating my children's birthdays. I love planning their parties and creating special memories for them. This was the first year that Lily wanted to pick or really understood what it meant, to pick the theme for her birthday party. To be honest I was kind of shocked that she picked Frozen; specifically Ana. It is not a movie that is played often in our house but I told her we would do whatever she wanted and that's what we did.
I have to say my favourite part of planning her 3rd birthday party was doing it with her. While I wanted there to be a few surprises for her. I wanted this to be something special that we worked on together. She helped me pick out the party favours for her friends, the decorations, the cake and the food. She even helped me prepare the decorations and food the day before. It was so much fun working on it together and it helped us have some time together the two of us. But when it came to the day of the party she wasn't allowed to see anything until it was all put together!
Before I share all the details of her party I want to thank a few people who helped along the way. Without all of you I couldn't have made Lily's party as huge of a success!
PlayVille Hamilton for providing us with the best party location Personally Yours Boutique and Apparel for the amazing happy birthday banner! Ady and Owen Custom Invitations, Announcements and Printables for the custom invitation and food labels Elizabeth Rooney Photography for being our designated photographer
Minikinz Entertainment for providing us with beautiful entertainment
Balloons Galore for the beautiful balloon bouquets that provided endless about of fun for my kiddos Munching Monster Chewlery for the custom necklace in Ana colours
A Life She Loves for the perfect "threenager" shirt for our birthday girl
Let's start with the invitation. This was one of the hardest parts of the party for me. I had such a hard time picking what invitation. I wanted it to be something different and unique and that is why I contacted my girl from Ady & Owen to help me out! Jennifer is my go-to whenever I need help. She takes my crazy and million ideas I have in my head and figures out a way to put them together seamlessly. Then she takes my 100 changes throughout the process without hesitation. I am so lucky to have someone I can trust and work with so effortlessly. Jennifer created the perfect invitation with all Lily's favourite people; Sven, Olaf, Elsa and Ana on it! She also nailed the colour scheme that I wanted. Jennifer also created the custom food labels for the party which turned out amazing.
The Party Location
This part was easy! We knew right away we wanted to have Lily's party at PlayVille. This is one of our favourite places to go and it is perfect for hosting a party. The space is not too big that it is overwhelming when you have little ones running around. They have a great party room to host many little's. All of the kids had so much fun together at PlayVille from big to small! Even the adults got in on the fun which was awesome to see. I also loved that PlayVille has a stage which is perfect if you are having any entertainment at your party!
The Entertainment One of Lily's request was that she really wanted to meet Princess Ana from Frozen. So of course, I knew I had to contact our favourite company Minikinz to help us out. From the moment Ana arrived she had everyone mesmerized. She looked like she stepped out of the movie Frozen! Her voice was beautiful and all the activities she did with the kids had them entertained. Lily was quite shy at first, but Ana didn't push and once it was time for games Ana had her hooked. Just like the rest of Minikinz performers, Ana was absolutely amazing and we highly recommend contacting Minikinz for your entertainment needs.
The Food
This is probably my least favourite part of planning a party. I hate doing all of the food. Our cake we purchased from Fortinos. I find they have the best pricing for the most delicious cake. They had lots of graphics to choose from for the cake and we let Lily pick what she wanted on it. The rest of the food was pretty simple but we had some special Frozen themed snacks for the kids.
Olaf's Arms - pretzels
Sven's Snacks - cheese, crackers and kielbasa
Kristoff's Ice - Blue Jello
Frost Bites - marshmallows dipped in white chocolate and sprinkles
Ana's Snowballs - white donuts
Melted Snowmen - water
I had one little slip up when it came to the food. One of my biggest party planning tips is prepare your food the night before. We cut up all the fruits and veggies and bagged everything the day before. That way I wasn't rushing to do much the day of other than set up. I made the Jello but silly me I put it in the freezer instead of the fridge and ruined it. So day of, I panicked not realizing until we were leaving what I did and had to run to the grocery store to find an alternative for Kristoff's Ice which ended up being blue sour candies. While I was devastated by this mistake no one noticed LOL
The Decorations
For decorations Lily picked out a few things from Party City and Walmart such as table cloths, plates, napkins and some table decor. There wasn't a ton of space for me to decorate so I knew that I wanted to keep this part simple. However, we had a custom Happy 3rd Birthday Lily banner made by Personally Your's Boutique and Apparel which turned out amazing! Lily was so surprised when she seen it. Balloons Galore did two balloon bouquet for us. One was Ana themed. The other was 3 balloons because Lily was turning 3. It is a tradition that each year I take a photo with the kids with the number of balloons for the year they are turning. So we had three balloons in the colour scheme of Ana's dress.
The Party Favours I went with something that was good for the varying ages of kids that we had at the party. I did a pail and bucket and then a small beach ball with it. While it wasn't really Frozen themed I wanted something that the kids would actually use. Party City had a great selection and pricing on their summer toys at the time so it was the perfect deal!
On the day of Lily's actual birthday we spent it exactly how she wanted. She asked to go to my parents house and play in the garden and her doll house. We brought her bouncy castle from Grandma and Grandpa home to play in with her brother. Then we had a small immediate family only party at our house to celebrate our favourite girl. We went to the grocery store and she got to pick out a special treat from the bakery for us to sing happy birthday to her. It was the perfect day celebrating our big girl!
Here are a few party planning tips:
Prepare everything the day before! I made sure I had all of our decorations and anything I needed to bring in a bag at the front door ready to go. All the food was prepped the night before, bagged and put in a cooler. Putting everything in a cooler was great for keeping it cold at the venue and made carrying everything inside and packing up a breeze!
Get help! I love doing DIY but I knew that I was tight on time and wasn't going to be able to pull off a lot of it on my own. So I enlisted some of my favourite small shops to help me and it was the best thing I could do
If you're having a summer party send the invites out early! Gives people a chance to plan around the party with everyone's busy summer schedules.
Less is more! Kids will love whatever you do - there is so much pressure to throw these huge parties. Lily loved all the decorations and little things we did, but what she loved most was playing with her friends and making memories with us.
