Saturday, February 15, 2014

Frozen Birthday Party

You're invited to a Frozen Birthday!
I created this invitation using free downloads from Disney's Frozen website, text effect videos, free fonts found online and shapes within my photo editing software.




 I started with window clings and gift tags left over from Christmas to decorate my sliding door and hutch.  I spent several evenings mindlessly cutting out snowflakes of all shapes and sizes to string into a "blizzard" on my chandelier and in the corner behind the birthday girl's chair.  My Pinterest Board has links to the many different snowflake design ideas and "blizzard decor" ideas.





The buffet was set up on my island.  I used glitter snowflake ribbon left over from my Christmas decor to weave around each plate.  Underneath my three-tier stand I made 3 small tissue paper puff balls (you can find many videos on how to make these online).

I threaded cottonballs on thread and taped them to my cooktop overhead to create a snow-flurry effect over the buffet.
























I used free download images from Disney's Frozen website to make buffet tags for some of the menu items.  These were then glued to cardboard from cereal boxes that were due to be recycled.


Menu:

Snowflakes (decorated sugar cookies)
Snowballs (cake balls)
Marshmallows (brushed with corn syrup and dipped in sugar)
Snowman Pieces (white cheddar puffs)
Snowflakes on Crackers (miniature snowflake cookie cutter used to cut cheddar cheese)
Reindeer Treats (carrots)
Icicles (apple slices)
Glacier Juice (Our Journey)
Snow on Toast (cheese pizza)
Pigs in Blankets
Hot Coca Bar (whipped cream, mini marshmallows, blue rock candy)




























We played pin the nose on Olaf.  I drew this on some of our art paper and the kids loved it!













The cake was inspired by Bubbly Nature Creations.

I found a glass candy recipe on Sugarhero that worked great to make my ice.

I started with two layers of chocolate cake and a center layer of vanilla cake baked in a 9" pan.







I used Roxanne's Home Baking chocolate cream cheese recipe for the filling on the layers.  I found this a bit bitter with the unsweetened chocolate and the tang of the cream-cheese.  I think the next time I try it, I will use a sweetened chocolate.  The small upper cake was vanilla cake baked in mini-cake tins.  This again was a three layer cake with cream-cheese chocolate frosting.

I used Blissfully Domestic's royal icing recipe to pipe the snowflakes on waxed paper and let them set until hard.













The exterior frosting was a double recipe of Allrecipes cream-cheese frosting.  

Make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature.  I didn't realize that my stand mixer bowl was insulating the center of my ingredients and when I mixed up my batch I wound up with lumpy frosting.  The butter was not soft enough to mix in smoothly.  I placed the frosting in a microwave safe bowl and microwaved it at 20 second intervals, whipping it with a fork in between each heating until the frosting smoothed out.

I set aside about 2 cups to color blue for edging and finishing.

I found that the cream-cheese frosting got very soft when it got too warm.  I found it easiest to crumb coat each cake, then refrigerated the frosting and cake for 20 min.  Then add another layer, and refrigerate again.  I made three thin layers on each cake to be sure to have full even coverage.  I placed the small cake onto the big cake after both were fully frosted.

I colored the reserved frosting with blue food coloring and used a #21 star tip to make the edge piping.

I smashed my sheets of blue rock candy and placed the shards around the small cake.  I bought a mini-figurine set with all the Frozen characters and placed Elsa in her "ice palace" and had Olaf with some snowballs (small candies) on the larger cake.

For the going away gift bags I had my daughter make star-burst rainbow loom bracelets for each guest.  Then the bags received a small package of snowflakes (miniature snowflake sugar cookies dipped in blue sugar) and a snowball (cakeball)



Lovetheday inspired me to create the gift bag tag.  Again I used a font effect, free fonts and graphics in my photo editor software.

The party was a great success and it was a lot of fun to plan and create.






1 comment:

  1. Oh I LOVE that you used the Cinderella juice for Glacier juice!! I mean..brilliant! We are HUGE frozen fans and I didn't even think to use the same juice we used from the Cinderella party for a frozen party! Thanks for the link back as well!! GREAT party!!

    ReplyDelete