Frozen 2 Birthday Party

Into the Unknown, of being 5…

Every year, I have put my creative abilities to the test for my daughter’s birthday. She turned five at the beginning of July, but we had started the planning back in February. We decided on a Frozen 2 theme because…well, Frozen 2 is basically “life”for a 5 year old right now. I was really excited to put my imagination to work and my wheels started spinning.

Come March, I realized the severity of Covid-19 and knew it would most likely effect her party. I gave my daughter the heads up to prepare her so she wouldn’t get disappointed. I then made the promise that I would still try to give her the birthday she wanted, minus all of the guests. We’ve been staying with my parents and I had to make our decorations somehow work with their home set up instead of the Lodge we would normally use. It would be a challenge, but I was up for it.

I’m not a huge fan of licensed trademark decorations. I prefer to just buy the color scheme for table cloths, balloons, streamers, utensils, and plates at places like Dollar Tree or Walmart (which are often a few cents cheaper). Then I add flare to the decorations by adding our own handmade personal touches. I also save a lot of our party supplies from each past birthday to try and reuse at another time. For this party, I already had some balloons in the colors, as well as the streamers and a “Happy Birthday” balloon display that we found in the dollar spot of Target for my son’s birthday, last year. Aside from that, I purchased a Frozen theme Mylar balloon set with a large number 5 balloon, as well as a balloon arch set that came with snowflakes balloons and latex balloons. I ended up not even using the Frozen 2 Mylar balloons and only used half of the other kit. Using a balloon blower really helps make the process easier and we didn’t need helium.

Second hand decor

I prefer to buy things slowly (if I have to purchase them) because I’m on a limited income. I also give myself plenty of time so I can search for things at thrift stores, free giveaway groups, sales, FB marketplace and clearance items. I happened to find a woman getting rid of a beautiful and huge wooden lantern. I knew it would be a perfect accessory for Arendelle. It just was missing some glass and needed some wood glue and a cleaning. I also got lucky finding a lovely three tier stand that was teal in color. The woman wanted $5. I immediately imagined it on our dessert table. I also managed to find some snowflake plates and battery operated candles at Goodwill and Value Village. I love Value Village because their stuff is half off on the last Wednesday of every month. This past Spring, Target’s dollar spot had lots of different cake stands and I managed to grab a two tiered white one and a teal cake stand. All of these things will be able to get use again at my son’s “party” or any other party.

Homemade Decor

Other ways that I like to save money and get creative, is to make as much of the decor as I can. I like to try and use things from around the house or create from supplies we have. For this party, I chose to collect toilet paper rolls and paper towel rolls to recreate the birch trees from the enchanted woods. I used tape and sometimes hot glue to keep them together and painted over them. I used a flat dry brush with little paint on it to create the black lines. I also mixed a little black and white to get that off white look.

For the infamous ice diamonds that appear at the end of “Into The Unknown”, I had to get creative. At first I was trying to come up with the perfect materials to make them. I tried wax paper and parchment paper. Both with crayons, paint, markers and colored pencils, all with no luck. I wanted something opaque but can also make the designs on them. I finally came up with the idea to use good ole 80’s and 90’s favorite, Shrinky Dink paper! While this worked really well and gave me exactly what I wanted, it took way more paper than I’d like. Each diamond took a full sheet of plain shrinky dink paper. I didn’t want to spend more money than I needed to, so I limited my diamonds to just three strands.

I created a simple and cheap decoration by just collecting a few small sticks in our yard and covered them with glue and then glitter and stuck them in a vase. It really gave a nice sparkling touch to our table.

I decided to attempt to create the monoliths that are in the enchanted forest, displaying the symbols for each spirit. I used recycled Amazon boxes and cut out a few shapes and cut the triangles with a box cutter. I created a gray color paint and gently sponge painted lighter and darker color over it to appear like real stone. We used gold tissue paper to mark the symbols for each spirit. This allowed our lights to shine through and give an ominous feel. I purchased submergible lights that can shine different colors so we could have each colored element shine through. We did a simple dollar store battery tea light candle for Air, a magenta color with tissue paper to show Fire, green for Earth, and blue submerged in blue water with white sand below it to show Water. I included leaves in front of the Air, Bruni stuffed animal in front of Fire, snowball boulders and Earth Giant McDonald toys in front of Earth, and the Nokk horse McDonald toy in front of Water.

I also took the Fall leaves I purchased and threaded them on fishing wire then tied them to an old oscillating fan to add Gale to the party and cool us off!

I had found an affordable forest backdrop on Amazon that I wanted to hang to give some ambiance. It had birch trees and fog! Only problem, it had green grass. And I’m not sure about you but my kid knows that this is a Fall movie, not Spring! So I ended up buying two colors of paint from Joann Fabric and hand painted over the grass to look like that weird deep red and purple vegetation found in the Enchanted Woods.

Don’t forget the Piñata!

My daughter was adamant that she needed a piñata for her solo party. I had recently made us a homemade one for Cinco de Mayo, so I figured, why not? Using recycled Amazon boxes, I cut out the number shape twice and then measured equal length pieces around the sides to make it 3D. Plain old scotch tape worked to hold it together. Don’t forget to leave a part open for putting the candy in! Then I cut a ton of tissue paper, because my daughter wanted like every color possible for a striped pattern. On areas where fringe couldn’t really go, I just put flat tissue paper. For a finishing touch, I added some Fall leaves to look more Frozen 2. It literally was a hit! (Bad mom joke)

Attire

My daughter really loved Elsa’s dress at the end of the movie. Instead of buying one of the expensive costume dresses, I decided that I would purchase a white dress that she would get a lot of use out of, and use puffy paint to create the same look. I bought the dress on Amazon. We’ve purchased this brand before for her Frozen Fever party and love how it fits, feels, and holds up in the wash. For shoes, my daughter is extremely finicky. The only type of shoe she will wear these days are Mary Jane style, slip ons (like Toms), or rain boots. We found a pair of clear glittery jelly shoes from Walmart that we liked and Mary Jane style, so they worked perfectly.

And then, the games

Yes, games were necessary, said the soon to be 5 year old, even though she really didn’t have anyone to play against. We decided to do “Kristoff’s Ring Toss” since he kept trying so hard to propose to Anna. I took a paper plate and hot glued a paper towel roll in the middle. Then I painted the whole thing and added some designs from Anna’s dress with puffy paint as well as used the element stamps (from the Northuldra scarf kit we previously bought). To make the rings, I once again used a paper plate and wrapped with gold tissue paper. Then I added glitter gold puffy paint and added a cardboard diamond covered in glitter. My daughter and niece played a few rounds and my son even joined in a bit. Well, sort of…

Next, we decided to make “Break The Dam”. We used my son’s foam blocks to build a bridge like feature and we hit them with snowballs that I found on clearance at Target after the holidays and I painted them gray to resemble boulders.

Lastly, we played “Lost in The Woods”. Basically a version of the old school game of “pin the tail on the donkey“, but we placed a picture of Anna in the middle of our woods backdrop and had to be spun around a few times with our Northuldra scarf blindfold covering the eyes and had to get Kristoff to Anna. Our enchanted forest even came with a fog machine to make it feel real! Oh, and the small chalk boards were found at Dollar Tree. I know we will get a lot of use out of them.

Special Guest

We’ve never had a character come to our parties before, and we definitely couldn’t this year with Covid-19. But because we couldn’t invite guests, my friend, and daughter’s friend, decided to gift us with a Zoom call from Elsa herself. During this pandemic, many character actors have been without work and unable to attend parties. Several are offering this service, which also includes singing a song of their choice, a story, and also just talking to your child and interacting. Our Elsa was amazing and even showed excitement at all the random things my daughter showed her and told her. She truly was Disney worthy and very affordable.

Food

Now normally, I like to try and make my food go along with my theme. In this case, we didn’t. It’s a freaking pandemic and we didn’t have people to really feed besides ourselves, so my daughter picked the food. Cheap mini frozen pizzas, mini corn dogs and nuggets. Mmm. For the adults, I threw together some cheese dip, variety of cheeses and meats. We also had some veggies and fruit.
For a fun beverage and to add to our dessert table, we used my mom’s glass beverage dispenser and filled it with that blue Hawaiian Punch but added this really cool stuff called Prism Powder, to make it all sparkly and fun. I used this powder to decorate many of the desserts as well.

Desserts

Ok, so I’ll admit. This is where things got a little out of control and my coping quarantine baking habit went overboard. For our fun dessert table I got some blue rock candy for decoration, and then I made teal rice crispy treats with sprinkles and dipped in white chocolate. Honestly, I screwed up the teal on this one and it really looked kind of gross, in my opinion. Tasted good though! I re-used our leftover brownies from my daughter’s actual birthday (which was two days before) and they were covered in bright teal frosting and sprinkles. I made homemade macarons in purple color with prism powder on top. I made sugar cookies (bought the roll of dough as a shortcut) and decorated them into snowflakes. This snowflake cutter was in a Frozen Christmas cookie making kit we got around the Holidays. Then I also cut the cookies into the outline of diamonds and filled the center with crushed jolly ranchers to give it that look of the ice diamonds in the sky from the movie. I also found an Olaf brownie ball making kit on clearance a while back and knew that would be a fun addition. Then I also dipped pretzels and marshmallows in chocolate melts and decorated with prism powder and sprinkles. Oh and my local Kroger had a huge clearance on Frozen 2 stuff months ago so I grabbed a Frozen 2 candle for like $1 or less and grabbed Frozen chocolate chips (blue and white) for just around $1 too. I used those for some random sugar cookies too.

Our dessert table was the center of everything. I had found a perfect set of risers to use for food/desserts on Oriental Trading that had a birch tree design. They are sturdy and large and will be perfect for all our parties. They are hollow too so you can store them inside each other. Some other things added to our table were Fall leaves that we purchased from Amazon as well as all of our Frozen toys, even ones from McDonald’s Happy Meals! I had also made a number 5 out of hot glue and glitter on a skewer. Originally, I had planned to use on her cake but we switched to cupcakes so I used it as a table decoration and we used it on my daughter’s actual birthday on a brownie cake.

Cake

Now normally, my sister is the baker and always makes our cakes. She does a great job with the outlandish requests my daughter always has. This year, we decided against cake because it’s just too much and cupcakes seemed easier. She made a colorful vanilla batter with teal, blue and purple. She frosted a few with a fun twist of the Frozen 2 colors and added these beautiful sprinkles I found on Amazon. Then we decided to have each spirit and element cupcake. So she made an earth spirit cupcake with green moss on top and chocolate rocks I ordered on Amazon and my niece added a hand made drawing of an earth giant on each. Fire spirit cupcake was with orange and purple fire buttercream and melted candy fire on top, Water spirit cupcake with blue and white wavy buttercream and melted candy on top, and an Air spirit cupcake with white buttercream and fall leaves made of fondant and fall sprinkles. They were delicious and beautiful!

My daughter may or may not have gotten sick from all of the sugar we consumed. Just beware of all the food coloring that goes in. That’s all I have to say….

The best part of it all, was when my now 5 year old, gave me the sweetest hug and kiss followed by a “thank you for the best party ever!”.