Naomi's Frozen Party

Frozen has become a family favorite around here.  It's such a fun movie- especially the music!  It's especially fun to watch Anabelle sing (and act out) the songs.  She'll say, "Naomi, I'll be Anna and you be Elsa" or the other way around.  She'll then proceed with acting out different scenes, voice inflections and all.  And believe me, she'll quickly let you know if you're not getting something right!

Anyway,  Naomi always has so much fun planning her own birthday party.  As soon as the credits were rolling the first time we saw Frozen, I had a pretty good idea what this year's theme would be.  Sure enough, she was quickly planning her party around the movie.  When it comes to her parties, I usually just follow her orders requests as far as the food and decorating and she takes care of the games and activities.   We have fun looking at pinterest to come up with fun ideas, but have to keep in mind that easy/quick decorating stuff that is readily available and inexpensive in the states, is not so easy to find here!

Decorating was easy with the blue and silver balloons Jason brought back from a recent trip to the states, and these helpers who've been making snowflakes in their spare time for weeks...

Daddy was the designated balloon/snowflake hanger from the living room ceiling...

A dear friend in Lebanon made this paper mache snowman with Maddie years ago and it has remained a fixture in Naomi's room to this day.  She changes his hat and decor with the season.  Anyway, he was the perfect centerpiece for our food table....

Speaking for food, we all had lots of fun making the snacks.  

Click here for our favorite (very versatile) popcorn recipe.  You can change it for different seasons depending on what color sprinkles, food coloring and m&m's you use.  

Most of our other food ideas can from this website.  She had some really fun (and pretty easy) ideas.  We had to improvise a little based on what we could get here.   For example, I couldn't find bright blue jello, so we had to use purple and add some blue food coloring so it was a bit darker than in her pictures.  Also, her punch called for blue Hi-C.  Also not available here, but I did find purple Koolaid.  So our punch was equal parts purple Koolaid, sprite, blue food coloring and vanilla ice cream.  Ummmm- yummy?  Well, at least the kids thought so!

I knew the ice castle cake would be something fun to try.  I used my old favorite recipe for birthday cakes which is this yellow cake (with coconut flavor).  It makes enough for our favorite 6 layer rainbow cake.  This time we did 3 thicker blue layers.  I did use the icing on the Frozen blog though as I've yet to have any luck with the cream cheese buttercream in this climate.  It worked great and the cake held together well!  

We had fun making the blue candy that served as the ice castle.  

Heating the sugar mixture to "hard crack" stage...

I'm still scrubbing this dark blue sugary goodness off my floors after the party yesterday!

It worked perfectly and was fun to break up and decorate the cake with.

Here's the inside of the cake.  I almost forgot to get pictures before it was gone!  The good thing about this cake is that it's yummy for adults too and isn't the typical "kid's birthday cake" with crisco icing that, in my opinion, is not worth wasting calories on!

The girls enjoyed making snowflake sugar cookies.

We also had carrots and ranch dip (Olaf's nose), and jello cubes (ice cubes) along with the snowflake cookies and popcorn and cake.

Naomi's had the games planned for weeks.  I had to scale them down a little bit.  For example, I'm pretty sure the ice castle building that she had planned would have been a little hard to execute.

We played "pin the nose on Olaf"...

(She drew the Olaf poster and a little holder for the carrot noses)

... and a Frozen version of Hot Potato.  The doll is Elsa (notice the blue frozen heart that Naomi taped on her).  Elsa was the hot potato that you didn't want to end up with or your heart would freeze...

They also played "freeze dancing" which best I could tell involved playing the soundtrack to Frozen really loudly and bouncing all over the living room.  Was very entertaining but I didn't get any pictures.  

We also played some Frozen trivia while the girls ate with extra points if you sang your answer.  Questions like, 

What is Anna surprised to discover they own?  (1000 salad plates)

What will Olaf be if you put him in summer (a happy snowman)

What does Anna tell Else that Arrendale is in? (deep, deep, deep, deep snow)

What doesn't bother Elsa (the cold)

That's just a sampling- we had about 30 questions!

Anyway, it was a fun party and the birthday girl was thrilled (the most important part).  Here are a few more pics from party day...

Happy Birthday Naomi!  We love you!!