Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Princess Isabel Is Four!

As you may have gathered from previous blog posts, Isabel is very enthralled with being a princess. She has only seen two Disney princess movies (Cinderella and Snow White) so far, but she knows all the other princesses' names and wants to be a princess herself.  So, it was inevitable that when asked what sort of birthday party she wanted to have, she answered emphatically, "A Princess Party!"  Of course, we indulged her wish.  After all, wanting to find Forever Love someday and being kind to others in the process is not all that bad! :-)  Of course, we also want her to understand, in time, that she is a child of the One True King and, therefore, already a princess.

Since many of Isabel's friends from church are boys, we decided to make it a princesses AND knights party.  After a couple of weeks of planning, we were ready for the "royal occasion" and for the guests to arrive to celebrate our favorite princess with us.  Below are a few photos of the grand event.

Every princess and knight needs some accessories, so I made cardboard swords for the boys and bought tiaras for the girls.

Then, I made shields for the boys to color and...

...wands for the girls to decorate with ribbon

Somehow the cake always becomes one of the trickiest and most time-consuming parts of the birthday parties we host!  It took me several hours to make/decorate Isabel's castle cake even though I bought a kit that was supposed to make the process easier.

The royal dining room

The goody-bags

Our favorite princess

Lukas felt he needed his own knight costume to play the part of "Princess Protector", so he spent some of his saved allowance/Christmas money to buy himself a knight outfit complete with shield and sword.

We designed and assembled a cardboard castle for the party guests to decorate and draw on from some of our old moving boxes.

Olli did the main construction (which was VERY solid, by the way!), I cut out the turrets, made a peephole by the door and drew the bricks around the entrance and Lukas made a sign on the side of the castle that reads "Princess Isabel's Castle. Built in 2014"

I saw this idea on Pinterest and decided to use it with a slight alteration to make the typical saying applicable to knights too:  "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall. Who's the Fairest/Bravest of them All?"

Isabel's room was turned into a "Princess Playroom" complete with her Princess Lego Sets, Princess Bear Collection, and Doll House with Princess Dolls.

What Princess Party would be complete without plenty of food including fruit kabobs made into the shape of princess wands and knight swords and Jello-Jigglers in the shapes of hearts and stars?!

Some of the knights and princesses in the kingdom

We had several people make their own knight costumes to go with the theme--very creative!

And, of course, if Lukas had a piñata at his pirate party, Isabel deserved one at hers!  However, this one was a little less "barbaric", keeping with the civilized princess theme, since it was a pull-string piñata rather than one you whack with a stick (also much more appropriate for an indoor party) :-)