E and her very Frozen fifth birthday

E turned five with a bang on Good Friday. After counting down for more than 100 sleeps we were finally there. We spent several months negotiating the list of invitees, from a starting point of every child in the class ("absolutely not!"), to all the pre-primary girls (it is a mixed kindy/pre-primary class), to two girls from school plus an assortment of playgroup friends and family friends (a total of nine plus E. Once they each brought one or two parents it was still quite a crowd!)

E is (...still...) Frozen obsessed and, accordingly, wanted the least original party theme around. At least when this is the case you don't have to waste time thinking up any ideas yourself, the internet is full of stuff just begging to be plagiarised. Her party food and activities involved a bit of time and effort on my part but minimal cost. Seeing as I was not keen to spend $500 so a lady dressed up as Elsa would sing Frozen songs in my living room, this suited me fine.

So we played musical statues (to the Frozen soundtrack, of course), hunted for blue and silver chocolate hearts (from the bulk food shop), decorated cardboard crowns, and pinned the nose on Olaf.

For food we handed out sandwiches (because "we finish each other's sandwiches"), carrot sticks ("reindeer food"), "snow cups" (popcorn in blue and white paper cups), "Queen Elsa's magic bread" (fairy bread), "snowballs" (marshmallows) and "melted snowman" (bottles of water with printed labels stolen from the internet). Also , seeing as Granny and Grandma kindly offered to bring them, "Arendelle's finest sausage rolls" and "samosas to warm your frozen heart." 

The cake was also a lesson in the art of negotiation, as I refused to use blue food colouring. I convinced E that snow was suitably themed, made two round butter cakes, sandwiched them together with jam and a thin layer of buttercream, slapped a whole lot more buttercream on top and marshmallows around the base. With some blue and white candles, and some printed characters on toothpicks, she was a happy little Elsa.

For party bags we handed out the ingredients to make your own snowman, plus Frozen sticker sheets courtesy of ebay, plus bead hearts made by E.

It was all pretty manic, but E was very happy and has said several times how much fun she had. Which seems like enough to set against a house that may never be glitter-free again.

In case it is of use to anyone, here are where all the internet-stolen goodies came from:

• Elsa crown templates;
• "Do you want to build a snowman" party bag toppers;
• Water bottle labels and cupcake labels (used to make food tags); and
• Happy birthday banner.