We had so much fun celebrating our big three year old this past weekend! One of Palmer’s favorite books is the Princess and the Pea; we’ve got three different versions that she loves, and have even checked out the Spanish version from the library recently. When I began to think about her birthday party and theme ideas, it definitely came to mind, with a play on words of course, since we often call her P.

My friend Savanah of Purple Line Designs, helped me with a design for the evite we sent out and the planning began. She did a wonderful job of incorporating the storybook drawings and Palmer’s look for it, she’s so talented.

In terms of decor, I wanted to do several nods to the book, but also plenty of fun for the kids. Ideally, I wanted to create a tablecloth that looked like stacked mattresses but knew that would be pretty time consuming and without a sewing machine on hand, I decided to make a smaller version. So I found some pillow cases from a thrift store and took them apart and attached them with liquid stitch. I then set the pillow case covers on top of stacked boxes and used another spray painted box and some poms as a headboard.

I wanted to keep all the kids entertained, especially since the party ended up having to be indoors. So I tried to set up as many activities as possible. We had a small bounce house, foam swords, rainbow rice sensory bins with magnet tiles towers, dragons, and a castle, Princess coloring sheets, decorate your own crown station, painted face in the hole boards, and a pick your own jewels area. I spent a lot of time on the decor and activities, most time consuming, painting the face signs and stacked mattress bed, but it turned out so cute I thought, so it was worth it to me.

For food, we went with the ever popular Chickfila nugget platter, which of course was empty by the end of the party. We had snacks for the kids, princess gold fish, veggie straws, cut grapes, and pretzels. We also had princess fruit wands for guests as well. In terms of dessert, I made Palmer a butter recipe cake with buttercream icing in pink as she requested this year. My sweet cousin made beautiful delicious cupcakes complete with pink frosting and pearls and my talented aunt made some of my favorites, her red velvet cake pops for guests. They were both beautiful and delicious!

We were so thankful to have our sweet friends come celebrate with us, and even Palmer’s cousins and grandparents came in town to see us. Her cousins enjoyed every second of the princess theme!

For favors, I had asked my friends earlier this summer what their favorite party favors were from their kid’s parties so that I could try to incorporate some of those ideas. I bought a bunch of containers on sale at back to school time, and filled it with some princess figurines, knights and princess expanding washcloths. Palmer and I made a batch of rainbow rice that we put in each container for sensory play. We also added some tweezers and water bead tools in there to help with play and dexterity. I had saved and cleaned jars that we were once for baby food and filled them with dehydrated green water beads that the kids could use at home too. We also had Ring pops which were the big surprise hit! I finished them with cute personalized tags I found on Etsy that we also used for Palmer’s school happies at her fall party.

We had the best day celebrating our big THREE year old!!

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