A Tangled Celebration

My daughter (who has a thing for hair) was heart-set on a Rapunzel birthday. Using some great internet resources, a bit of imagination, and a lot of friends and family, we threw a Tangled adventure for the birthday girl and her friends.

Tangled birthday girls

Tablescape of tower cake, lanterns, and banner

Where to begin? How about with my little Rapunzel herself and the gorgeous dress and wig her grandma made and sent to her for her birthday present?

 

Costume & Wig

 

Rapunzel Tangled costume

 

My mom did an amazing job on all of the details of the dress! I love the gold design she painted on the edges and the shimmery purple fabric.

She made the yarn wig thick and full looking.  It is made off of a headband base, I think it might also be helpful to attach a comb to the top to keep it in place.

My other favorite thing she did was fill the braid with removable flowers (on bobby pins), just like when Rapunzel’s hair gets braided in Tangled.

 

Lantern Invitations

 

 

I wanted to highlight the lantern part of the party so I designed these invitations out of vellum to look like the lanterns from the movie.

 

The Invitation part pulled out from the 3D lantern (We hand delivered most of these–the ones we mailed were folded flat, but could have been sent in a mailing tube). I told a few of the parents that they could take the out side of the lantern and set it over a battery-powered tea-light for a little Tangled Lantern nightlight for their kids’ rooms.

 

The Kingdom of Corona

 

We have some wonderful friends, with a wonderful expansive yard, that made the perfect setting for our Tangled adventure. As guests entered the kingdom they were welcomed with giant wanted signs and royal banners.

 

(We could’t take down the dog sign–when we were setting up one of the dogs got loose and ended up getting hit by a car. 🙁 He was wearing the “cone of shame” by the party)

We used our friends’ tent and sheer curtains as the setting for the “festival” I had garland strung with twinkle lights (left over from past family weddings), crossing under the tent ceiling–like it did across the streets in the movie. I made a pennant banner (modifying this template), and used lanterns from my wedding 12+ years ago, and yellow paper sunbursts as the backdrop for the cake table.

 

When will it begin?

 

As the guests arrived {and we scurried around finishing preparations}, we had a few stations set up.

image from Family Fun

One was a make-your-own Pascal like the one from Family Fun (except the adhesives wouldn’t hold, so the adults pretty much had to make these, coloring pages (also from Family Fun), sidewalk chalk–my daughter had already drawn a giant sun design like Rapunzel does in the town square. I had palettes and smocks ready for the kids to do their own muraling, but the giant cardboard pieces they were going to paint on were accidentally left at home. BSB thought it was just as well, since they would have made a big mess!

 

 The Snuggly Duckling

 

When our ruffians got restless and hungry, we all headed over to the Snuggly Duckling for dinner.

1. Frying Pans–who knew? Our guests got to eat off of their own frying pans (black paper plates with the handle of a plastic knife hot glued to one side).

2. Rapunzel’s hazelnut soup. (Recipe from Family fun) I was surprised how many kids ate and liked this. It was really quite yummy (thanks to my sister for making it and the breadsticks!). It’s more of a squash soup and you add the hazel nuts on top.

3. Rapunzel’s braided breadsticks-these disappeared quickly!

4. Jello boats with corona sails (you know, because Flynn Rider and Rapunzel go out on the boat together). This idea was from SuperMom Moments. I used small plastic cups and clemetine oranges to make sure they serving size would be appropriate for kids.

We also served cheese and chicken cubes, and grapes and strawberries (at the birthday girl’s request). I think we may have even forgotten to pull out Max’s apple slices.

Vlad, peasants Tangled

Here you see Vlad, er BSB, bringing more lemonade to the Snuggly Duckling. We had lots of pretty princesses and even peasants at the party.

 

The Stolen Crown Adventure

 

I love to have an element of adventure and/or a Treasure Hunt at most every birthday party–especially one like Tangled, that already has a storyline.

 

After the children finished eating, I told them that the brothers had stolen Rapunzel’s crown and left clues so they would remember where they hid it. The children were to to to each location in yard with a sign, like the one above that says “the cave”, and look for a puzzle piece. They were so excited to run off and do this. When all of the puzzle pieces were collected, the birthday girl put the puzzle together to reveal a picture of a tree with two trunks and a little rhyme directing her there. My helpers had snuck all of the presents there, as well as the missing crown.

Here is Rapunzel after being reunited with her crown.

You might see the big train in the above picture and wonder where that fits into the movie. I called it the “Royal Parade” and had hoped to decorate it to look more like something from the movie, but the truth is, it belongs to the friends that own the house, and the kids adore taking rides on it. If I were smart, I’d have just let them ride the train the whole time and made my life much simpler! 🙂

 

Cake and Presents

 

rapunzels tower cake

After the presents were found it was time for cake and presents. If you’d like more details on how I made the cake, I’m thinking that will be it’s own post (since this on is already longer than the movie). Do you notice the special flower (“gleam and glow”) next to the cake?

I handed out cake while she opened her presents (which means I have no idea who gave her what).

 

Favors

 

But here’s what we gave her friends: They boys got Flynn Rider satchels and the girls, purple sun drawstring bags, each filled with a miniature watercolor paint set, saltwater taffy (seemed old-fashioned enough) and something (a comb or brush) with which to groom their hair, of course! I finally decided to out-source a little for this party and asked my mom to sew up the satchels and bags (based on the patterns found at Fleeting Things). Another sister makes hair clips professionally, so I ordered yellow flower clips for each of the girls.

braiding Rapunzel's hair

Our favorite baby sitter helped braid hair and attach the clips for each girl earlier in the party.

 

The Lantern Festival

It wouldn’t be a lantern festival with out lighting and sending up real lanterns. These are surprisingly easy to find–I bought a package of 10 Sky Lanterns for around $18. Less easy is determining the local regulations regarding them. BSB and I debated much and ended up tethering them to stakes on the ground so that they wouldn’t fly up into the flight pattern and get us in big trouble (they are supposed to be able to go up hundreds–even thousands of feet). The trouble with tethering is that they might move around a bit and burn holes in the side of the lantern (they are flame resistant-so it won’t catch fire, but may come back to earth before the fire is burned out as designed). That one with the hole you can see in the picture, actually kept flying for quite a while. They were very cool and very beautiful, but they did make me a little nervous, so I was very happy when all of the lanterns we let go returned with out any extra fireworks. Of course, we had the children keep a safe distance and watch as we let them go.

I think everyone had a wonderful time!

 

Inspiration

 

Here are some of the great Rapunzel parties before mine that inspired me:

SuperMom Moments

Stephanie Burt

Fleeting Thing

Sun graphics I modified for the invitations and signs.

For more great ideas, check out my Rapunzel board on Pinterest!
 

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Comments

  1. Holy cow, woman! You are AMAZING!

  2. Wow! So creative! I love the bread sticks and especially the cake!

  3. WHOA! You are the mom! Thanks for sharing!

  4. How much fun! You can thrown my next birthday party!

  5. Holy Cow! That was awesome! I absolutely love a good party, so fun to read!

  6. It turned out SO great! what a fun party.

  7. That is absolutely amazing! I don’t know if many could pull it off like you did. What a lucky girl!

    Thanks so much for sharing with us!

    • Thank you, Wendy! It was a lot of work, but that is the way we tend to roll around here–much to my husband’s chagrin. 🙂

  8. Amazing. Even more certifiable than I am, and I didn’t think that was possible!

    Thank you for the pins from our How to Host a Tangled party post!

    Best wishes,

    Ashley

  9. Can you tell me where or how you made the snuggly duckling sign?? Great ideas!

    • I actually just found a picture from a google search and had it printed big and then cut it out the shape. I mounted it to a stake and stuck it in the ground. Ideally I’d have created some image I could share with you, but that is what I had time to do. I hope that helps!

  10. The cake is gorgeous. People tell me I’m crazy too, it’s more fun being crazy! :p

  11. Wow!! Amazing! I love the idea of having a party towards evening. Especially since my daughters birthday falls in april and we live in the hot hot desert! She asked for a tangled party and I am doing all my research to make it as fun and gorgeous as possible! I am a freak and a perfectionist and tend to spend INSANE amounts of time (and money ..uhem) I was hoping to scale myself back this year as we just had another baby whos birthday is almost exactly a month away to the day! But after seeing this birthday I just HAVE to go big… My type A personality, Its a blessing and curse =]

    • Ha Ha! I always tell myself I’m going to scale back, but it’s against my nature. 🙂 Especially with a party like this that has a whole story to go along with it. It just doesn’t feel like I’m doing it justice if I leave out a bunch of good ideas. I’d love to hear how your party turns out!

  12. I can’t find how you made the cake. Did you ever end up writing a post about it? I am desperately trying to make a tower cake and I like yours best. I’d like to know what you used for the top of the tower. Thanks.

    • Hi Krystal,

      I haven’t had a chance to write up the cake post. Sorry. The base it a bunt cake. The tower is rice crispy treats built up around a dowel. I used small (4″) cake pans to bake the “house” part of the tower and rested it on a cut out piece of cardboard on top of the dowel/rice crispy treat. I used fondant around the rice crispy treats and around the top of the cake. I’m sure you figured out I used sugar cones on the roof. I dusted them with purple petal powder. I also used those wafer cookies as shingles around the roof. Supports are rolled tootsie rolls. I made paint with petal dust and and clear vanilla extract, for the details.

      We used various sprinkle for details.

  13. What a fabulous party! I enjoyed seeing every part. Lots of wonderful ideas!! What a lucky girl~

  14. OMG……just the cake itself makes me wanna have a tangled birthday party!! And I’m old! HAHA! This was such an inspiring post 🙂 Quick question…how long did the lanterns float? 10 mins?

    • Hi Eunice!

      Thanks so much! Who says you have to be young to have a Tangled birthday party? 🙂 I don’t remember exactly, but I would guess that the lanterns stayed in air for an average of 5 mins. If we hadn’t had them tethered, it would have been longer, since they would have flown much higher.

  15. Okay so all I have to say is wow. I was “stumbling” around and came across this awesome themed birthday. Amazing! You inspire me girl!

  16. AWSOME party! My 4 yr old really wants a “Rapunzel party” this year so I guess we’re giving in too. =)

    One quick question, how did you make those braided breadsticks??

    • I would also like to know how you did the braided breadsticks!! we are doing a tangled party as well and I just LOVE all your awesome ideas!!!

      • Hi Amber! I don’t remember precisely since I delegated the task to my sister. I think we just used a favorite breadstick recipe (could use pre-made dough),rolled out the dough, cut it into thin strips, pinched the end of 3 strips together and braided the dough. I do know we brushed them in butter and sprinkled yummy seasonings on top. They were delicious! Good luck!

  17. Brandi Gentry says

    Hi,
    Your party looks so fun! Awesome job! i do lots of things for my kids parties too. I was wondering if there was anyway you still had the pdf or an image of the invitation? I tried to use the link you posted on your page but it is asking me for payment and I really only want the one image. Thank you

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  19. such a cute party! I also tend to go over the top. Could you tell me how you did the large banners that were hanging next to the gate?

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  20. Great inspiration! I’m doing a tangled themed bday party for my coming 5 year old. I had the lantern idea, but it made me nervous for all the obvious reasons so I decided not to do it. However I had not thought of using a tether, which I love. What type of string/material did you use as a tether and how did you attach it? Would you do the lanterns again or is it not really worth it?
    Thank You!

  21. My mom did something sliamir for me oh 20 years ago. I loved Rapunzel. You way is a lot easier. I remember her stretching the yarn between two chairs to braid it. Super cute!

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