Age 5 and my daughter had expressly narrowed down her princess of choice to Elsa. Or Anna. Just anything Frozen really. Except Kristoff. Like any self-respecting mother and child of that time we overdosed on it until no more could be taken, and we had to well and truly Let it Go. However, before the point of OD we lapped it up. It got me through many a day of needing to work late as I would pop Frozen on and it was guaranteed to keep little Moo transfixed so I could get on.
As a brand, Frozen did well and truly explode. It was everywhere and if we went to one Frozen party it certainly wasn’t the last! We even went to one party at Moo’s dance school and it was seriously like a Frozen convention. I kid you not. The only way I could spot little Moo amongst the mass of blue Elsa’s and cerise pink Anna’s was the fact she was in green (Frozen Spring Fever outfit. Obvs 😜).
So, when it came time to organise her 6th birthday party, it was a done deal: Frozen party it was then! I must admit I was in my element with this one as I was partial to a bit of Frozen myself (at the time…it wore off…kinda) and with the advent of Frozen 2 on the horizon this blog is little topical, I feel. Sadly though, when I saw the trailer recently and squealed in excitement, Moo – who is now a worldly 10 year old – gave me a shrivelled look for getting excited over something so ‘babyish’ (and another piece of my soul went South).
Anyway, back to the party (there is plenty of time for me to ply Moo with bribes so that we can go see Frozen 2 when it comes out lol). I went to town on this party and shocked myself at how anal I was in making it ‘perfect’. This was when I was still in the stage of parenting of ‘chucking everything at it’. A psychoanalysis of me at that time would probably reveal mum guilt in abundance at working round the clock or some shite about proving to the world that single mums can hold it down like the rest of them, and, yes, whilst there is an element of this, truth be told I also just wanted to live the princess life vicariously through my child! So, chuck everything at it, I well and truly did.
On the day, this meant an explosion of pink and blue. Bizarrely I had only recently before decorated my dining room in duck egg blue and pale pink so it complimented perfectly (oh how I love it when your house décor matches your party theme, ha!). I went a bit mad on Amazon ordering matching decs which were hung from every spare hook and cranny. Again, thanks to Moo’s birthday being in January (generally shite timing tbh but if there’s a silver cloud you should find it) I was able to keep out some of the Christmas toot, namely white feather Christmas trees, some decorative snow flakes and fairy lights. I then used a random piece of white felt (packaging for something or other) as a table cloth and I pretty much had all the ingredients for a snow scene (laying the fairy lights under the felt worked a treat). I even dug out some old pink material and wrapped it around the mirror for added colour. For someone whose only creative abilities are invariably knock-offs from Pinterest or blog posts, I was pretty impressed with the result!
All the food was Frozen themed (as much as hot dogs can be with the rather naff title of ‘Arendelle’s bakery’ I gave it…I mean, come on, what was I meant to do?!). To be fair I stretched the imagination a fair bit naming the food (cringe): snowman noses for Wotsits and snowman arms for Twiglets lol. But the kids thought it funny…more funny then the Frozen grapes that didn’t get a look in…probably for the best since I hadn’t halved them and my Heimlich manoeuvre isn’t particularly polished (oh how us 2015 parents lived on the edge!). The snow balls went like hot cakes which Moo and I had great fun making (I say that with rose tinted spectacles well and truly on, lol) and were literally just marshmallows with a candy stick shoved in the base and then dipped in melted chocolate and covered in edible glitter.
The year before at Moo’s princess party I had made a Princess cake so, having dipped my novice toes into home-made birthday baking I thought I’d give it another go. For this one, I made a basic three tier sponge cake and then covered it in buttercream frosting that I added white colouring to (I think I bought the colouring from the sugarflair range on Amazon) to make it look snow-like. In hindsight, the decoration is an example of the ‘bat-shit crazy’ stage I was at as I decided to try and make the Frozen castle. Yeah, I know, dickhead. Of course, these things sound great in your head and then you realise that actually you can’t just wish it to happen – you know – you need skills, which I don’t have.
So, when in fantasy land I’d gone and bought all the gear to make homemade blue candy but had no idea how to transform it into a fookin’ castle so I decided to wing it and adapted my idea to shards of Frozen castle instead (think: Elsa had a bad case of PMT one day and just lost her absolute shit at not being able to find her house keys castle keys so instead she’s imploded her way in). Bloody hell though, even smashing that massive slab of candy into shards was a ‘mare: I literally had it wrapped in a towel and was flinging it against the side of my house lol. Anyhow, I thought the result was quite creative, heck, it was either cake with a load of blue ‘ice’ shards dotted over it or a mercy dash to the local supermarket for a shop bought one (I did prefer mine tbf).
I’d learnt previously that a successful party mainly involves handing over the entertainment baton to a professional so I saved my pennies and again used the services of Enchanted Events (find them here). I honestly cannot rate them enough if you are based in the South East. They had all the little princesses up and dancing and raucously singing Let it Go until I gladly let everyone go…home.
I’ve always drawn on previous parties to help me make throwing the next children’s birthday party smoother and less stressful (like wine, for the adults…that helps) so that year I made the very sensible decision to sod off with the guests at home time round to my mate’s house for dinner so that I wouldn’t have to look at the mess til morning. Pure genius lol.
Until next time (btw for Moo’s 7th birthday I thought: fook this for a game of soldiers, and took her to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the West End instead, ha! Don’t tell me I don’t always learn something hehe).
The Sound of Motherhood 