Frozen Birthday Party Ideas

A few months ago we had a wonderful Frozen Birthday party for my 4 year old daughter.  Of course, with Frozen being so popular, there are a billion ideas out there.  Here is what I put together without having to spend a lot of money or time, and I was very pleased with the results!

The invitation we sent out (printed as a 4x6)

The girls loved dressing up!  (And of course every little girl owns a frozen costume.  Although we did mention that any princess costume was welcome).

Decorations: I kept our party decor very simple.  I got a bright blue tablecloth and blue polka dot ribbon to tie a few bows here and there.  I broke out a few snowflake decorations frm my Christmas boxes.  (I thought about hanging up icicles and white Christmas lights, but got too lazy). :) A friend dropped off a ton of Frozen balloons which made the house look very festive.

My favorite decoration (and the only one I really spent time on) was these 3D snowflakes that I hung from the ceiling.  They were easy and looked amazing.

Activities-

Do you want to build a snowman??

We made our own snowmen out of legos.  I had a bunch of these leftover snowman lego kits from target from a few years ago (around Christmas time, target often has little toy packages attached to gift cards.  A few years ago it happened to be lego snowman so we stocked up).  You could easily use any white legos though or make snowmen out of play dough.  The girls loved doing the legos!  (And so did the older ninja brother who you'll spot in some of the pictures).  :)

I made this printable to attach to each lego bag.  (I got the olaf picture from this site that has free frozen printables).

Ice Painting

I found this idea of ice painting with epsom salt on this website.  Honestly, the results weren't amazing, but the girls really enjoyed doing this and wanted to paint more than one paper.

Finding Elsa

In Frozen, Anna has to find Elsa, so I made a game out of it based off of one of our family favorites.  I made this little Elsa out of legos...

The rules:  Everyone leaves the room except one person, who hides Elsa in a completely visible spot somewhere in the room.  Then everyone comes back in and searches for Elsa. The person who finds her first is the winner and gets to hide her next (although we made sure everyone got an equal amount of turns).  The girls loved this game.  We played this several times since all of the girls kept wanting a turn.   

Can you find Elsa?  (Also a good view of the 3D snowflakes mentioned above )

Throwing Snowballs at Marshmallow

My talented husband drew me a huge Marshmallow (the snow monster from Frozen) that I hung up on our wall.  We had the girls throw these snowballs (made out of soft terrycloth material) at him.  (Just like Anna does in the movie).  There wasn't much to this game, but the girls enjoyed it.  We kept having them move back farther to see if they could still hit him and who could hit him from the farthest away.

Dance Party with a Bubble Machine

This was a huge hit!  Combine every little girl's favorite song, "Let it Go" with bubbles and you are set.  Everyone loved this part.  And we actually did this more than once throughout the party since it was such a huge hit.  The girls loved pretending the bubbles were snow.

Freeze Dancing

We also listened to the Frozen soundtrack while the girls danced, and every now and then, I would pause the music and they would have to freeze.  This was so fun to watch.  My daughter's friends still ask to play this game when they come over for play dates.

Freeze!

We moved outside to play a variation of red light, green light.  Our family calls it statues, but since it was a Frozen party we just called it Freeze.  One person is it and stands on the opposite side of the yard as everyone else, with his/her back turned to them.  You can only move when the person who is it is turned around (and can't see you).  When the person who is it turns around to face you, you have to freeze or you are sent back to the beginning.  So the person who is it, turns back and forth while the rest of the party tries to sneakily move closer to them without getting caught.  It's a lot of fun trying to watch 4 year olds try to freeze and for some reason their arms usually have to shoot up in the air.  :)  

Frozen Coloring Pages

We filled some extra time with coloring.  This was a great time filler and a nice break from all of our dancing and activeness.  There are a billion free Frozen coloring pages on the internet.  I printed off one for each girl.

And we were so lucky to have Olaf stop by the party! :)

(Found Olaf beanie at Kohls)

Food:

There are lots of ideas out there for Frozen themed food.  However, I just went with my daughter's favorite snacks.  I used blue frosting on the cupcakes and topped them with snowflake sprinkles.

I did break out my Pop-Chef and cut our ham, turkey, and cheese in hearts and stars to go with our snowflake crackers (these were a ritz special edition this winter).  

The kids ate these too fast to appreciate their cuteness, so probably not worth the time! :)  

I really was lucky finding these snowflake water bottles on Christmas clearance for 9 cents each.  I sent them home with the girls, which they loved.

   

Goodie Bags:

My daughter had so much fun putting these party favor bags together.  Her Feburary birthday party was just perfect timing for a Frozen party since Target was filled with Frozen goodies in their $1 section.  We found Frozen rings, necklaces, stickers and pencil/notebook sets.  We included Frozen fruit snacks and sparkly blue nail polish. 

We also included white Olaf playdough

I bought white play dough for 50 cents from walmart, printed off the Olaf printable from the site mentioned above, then attached it to a piece of matching scrapbooking paper and then mod podged it all on the play dough tub.  Very simple and turned out so cute!

Found these Frozen bags at Daiso (similar to a dollar store we have here).  And attached each girls name to her bag.  Loved the way they turned out!

It was such a fun Frozen party and actually wasn't too much work.  And most importantly- my 4 year old loved it!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Birthday Party Ideas

I was really excited to throw my son a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles birthday party.  In fact, I think I was just as excited as the kids were.  It was so much fun.  Since my son loves to dress up, I knew we had to have turtle costumes.  So I found cheap shirts at kohls, $1 bandanas, and all of the weapons were from the dollar store or homemade.  (For more details on homemade Ninja Turtle costumes and weapons, click here).  I also found a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles minifigure set on ebay that came with the 4 turtles, Splinter and Shredder (cost about $8).  Legos have always been my son's favoite so I knew these would be the perfect addition .

Decorations: Lots of green! Green streamers, balloons and table cloth.

Entertainment: The kids had to suit up like teenage mutant ninja turtles and then go on a scavenger hunt to rescue the birthday boy's presents that were stolen by Shredder.  This was a huge success!  The kids loved it.  Here's how we did it- there was a note on the front door saying how Shredder had stolen the birthday boy's presents.  The kids would have to get on their turtle gear and go find them  On our kitchen table (see pict above) we had the turtle shirts, bandanas and weapons laid out for each kid to put on.  There was also another note on the table from Splinter.  The note told the kids that after they put on their turtle gear, they needed to round up all of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to help.  The note gave them their first clue of where to find Leonardo.  

Each clue led them to find one of the lego turtle minifigures, which the kids had to put together and then move on to the next clue.  

After finding all 4 turtles, there was a final clue leading them to the presents and lego Shredder.  The clue warned them that Batman* had joined forces with Shredder and they would have to defeat him in order to get the presents back.

(*We chose Batman simply because he was on the inflatable socker bopper that we found at Ross for $4.  We thought the kids would have fun using their weapons to beat it up.  It was the perfect climax to our scavenger hunt).

After beating up Batman for awhile, we then got to open up presents.

Food: We of course had to have pizza- a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle necessity!  I found these dishes in target's $1 section.  I went with these over disposable dishes cause I knew my kids would use these over and again.  

We also had this ice cream cake, which is one of our family favorite's desserts!  It's easy, delicious and a perfect alternative for kids who do not like cake. 

It was the perfect Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle birthday party!  As soon as it was over, my son asked if we could do it all again the next day.  :)

Lightsaber Popsicles

Anyone who has talked to my 5 year old son for more than 2 minutes knows that he is obsessed with Star Wars!  So when a friend showed me these lightsaber popsicles, I of course had to make them for my family.  They are super easy and fast to make.  All you need is felt, scissors and a glue gun.  

I was amazed that you couldn't feel the cold otter pop underneath the felt at all.  My kids have always complained about cold hands with otter pops, so this idea was not only fun but brilliant as well.  What a perfect summer treat!  (And a great idea for a Star Wars themed birthday party!)

Warning: These lightsaber popsicles might lead to lightsaber battles breaking out so do not leave children unsupervised. :)

Jungle Safari Birthday Party

This was one of the cutest kids' themed birthday parties I have ever seen- a jungle safari!  It was thrown for a little girl who was turning 5.  I had nothing to do with the planning of the party, but got to tag along with my son and see all of the creative ideas this mom came up with.  

When the kids arrived they received a pair of binoculars- made out of the brown tube inside of wrapping paper (could also use toilet paper/paper towel roll), and with holes punched in the side with yarn coming out so the kids could wear them around their necks.  There were markers and animal stickers for each kid to decorate their binoculars.  Then the kids were taken outside on an animal hunt.  Little animal figurines (each one just a few inches big, probably could find a pack of these at the dollar store or target) were hidden at a park across the street and the kids had to use their binoculars to spot them.  The kids had so much fun spotting the animals, and after the party each kid received an animal to keep.

The kids then had pizza.  (And I thought this was the most genius idea - the mom had already pre-cut all of the pieces of pizza in half, which made a perfect size for some of the smaller kids.  Plus it was much easier for the kids to pick up and eat.  And I didn't see any pizza get wasted.  I just hadn't thought of that before and definitely did the same thing at my son's birthday party a few months later!)

The kids also had rice crispy treats that were in the shape of snakes.  They were dyed green and had dabs of chocolate for the eyes.  Such a perfect treat to go with the theme.  

All of the kids had a blast at this fun party!    

Easy Cake Topper Idea

Have you ever gone to the store hoping to purchase a birthday candle of a specific number, and of course, the number you're searching for is the only number they don't have in stock??  That happened to me last year as I was preparing for my husband's 29th birthday and could not find a #2 candle anywhere.  I then had the idea to just make the numbers out of legos instead, which also saved me several dollars.  My son helped me build the two numbers we needed out of legos.  And underneath each number, we connected a small tower of about 4-5 square legos which I pushed into the cake to help hold the lego numbers in place.  It was a great alternative to buying a cake topper or numbered candles!

How to Make Easy, Cheap, No-Sew Tutu

This is the easiest, cutest homemade tutu ever!  I made one a few years ago for my little princess turning one.  It made such a cute accent in all of the pictures we took that day.  And it was quick to make!  The only things I used were elastic and tulle (which cost a few dollars total).  This tutorial explains the easy process very well.

For my daughter's 3rd birthday, I decided to add some ribbons to the tutu.  It was a cute touch but more than doubled the cost of the tutu.  So I'm not sure adding the ribbons was worth it.  But I still love the simpleness and cuteness of this homemade tutu.  It's a fun way for your little princess to stand out on her birthday or to turn any day into a special occasion.

Kids' Pirate Birthday Party Ideas

We just threw a Pirate Birthday Party for my 5 year old.  Here's what we did-

Decorations- Black and red streamers, found a pirate table cloth at the dollar store that I cut into strips and made banners out of, made our own pirate flag on black cardboard (used white paint), dressed kids' favorite bear as a pirate.  Bought these pirate hats off of amazon for all of the kids to wear.

Games/Activities- Made a sword for each kid to decorate with markers and stickers

(I cut the swords out of a cardboard box and painted the handles black earlier in the week)

Played pin the eye patch on the pirate

Drew the pirate on the back of a large paper bag.  Cut out black eye patches for all of the kids with their names on it.  (Made it easy to keep track of who won).  Let the winner pick out a piece of candy.

Treasure Toss- Turned a storage box into a treasure chest by putting a couple of stripes on it and a picture of a keyhole and a skull and crossbones.  Had 3 small balls that each kid got to toss in the bucket.  They got a piece of candy for each ball they made in the treasure chest

Walk the plank- This was a huge hit.  Each kid did it 3 or 4 times

We had this piece of wood laying around (the for sale sign from when we bought our house).  I sawed off the end with the sign, so it was just a long, straight piece.  I painted the words walk the plank on it.  I used mod podge to get a couple of skull and crossbone pictures to stick to the wood.  We propped the wood up on 2 sturdy chairs and put a crocodile (a swim floatie) underneath our plank.  Gave the kids a piece of candy for bravely walking across the plank.

Ate pizza and ice cream cones.  Found pirate plates and cups at the dollar store.

Treasure Hunt- Hid candy all over the backyard for the kids to find

I searched everywhere for chocolate gold coins, but couldn't find any except overpriced ones online.  Decided to use candy with gold and silver wrappers (like twix, snickers, rolos, 3 musketeers).  Purchased these Pirate Skull Bags from Oriental Trading Company (watch for free shipping) to hold all of the kids' candy.

The kids had a lot of fun, and our little pirate was very pleased. :)