by Fancy Free Diva
Here in New England, the chill is in the air, and we’re all starting to feel the cold creep into our bones. It gets pretty frosty up here in the north, but maybe not quite as cold as things got in Arendelle when Elsa froze it all. And of course, because we live in a house with a little girl, we know all about all things Anna and Elsa. Even my 2-year-old son yells out “go!” (for “Let It Go”) whenever he sees Queen Elsa. Needless to say, it was inevitable that we would host a Frozen-themed party at some point. In our case, it was just a small movie-night party, thrown together at the last minute, with a few friends from our daughter’s school. And when I say “thrown together,” I mean it. This whole event was planned and executed in just under a week, with invitations going out over Facebook and no real time for Pinterest party searches. Despite my utter lack of preparation, it turns out that I already had most of what I needed already here at home.
We hosted the party after school and work on a Friday night, so instead of going home, the parents just brought their kids over to our house. It was a small get-together consisting of four families, and all the parents stuck around to have dinner and chat while the kids played, ate, and watched the movie.
Diva Tip: A kid-friendly dinner party like this is the perfect precursor to sleepovers. It’s also more fun than an afternoon party, at least according to my daughter, because you get to stay up a little bit later than usual. Not only that, but little parties like these are a great way to keep the Disney magic alive between trips or drum up excitement for a future trip or experience, like Disney on Ice.
Here’s what our little kid dinner-and-a-movie party looked like:
We used all of our Frozen-themed toys and books as decorations, including our stuffed Olaf and Disney Infinity figures and Barbie-size dolls. I also pulled all of our Frozen books from the kids’ bookshelves and artfully stood them up to make a decorative display.
Because this was a last-minute affair, I didn’t do party streamers or balloons, but a quick trip to our local dollar store yielded blue plastic tablecloths to go with the blue paper plates and plastic utensils that were leftovers from a previous party.
I printed out a bunch of Frozen-themed coloring sheets and activity pages (you can find some here and here), and set them out with markers and crayons so that the guests had something to do while dinner was cooking. I had some aqua blue plastic buckets (the same color blue as Elsa’s dress!) in my party cupboard, so I pulled those out to house the art supplies.
Diva Tip: I find it’s always a good idea to have these sponge activities on hand when you’re entertaining. Different families arrive at different times, and having simple coloring sheets or games on hand that the kids can easily engage in prevents anyone from getting bored while they’re waiting for the real fun to start.
Once everyone arrived and had a chance to color for a bit, we also did a special snowflake ornament craft using craft foam snowflakes and glitter glue to decorate them. I think I bought this snowflake craft kit in an after-Christmas sale at our local craft store years ago. All it took was a quick trip up to the attic and some rummaging around in the Christmas totes to find them. Perfect! I think Elsa really appreciated how glittery they came out!
In terms of the food, we purchased special Frozen-shaped chicken nuggets, and we snacked on Olaf arms (pretzel sticks), Olaf noses (carrots), and snowball popcorn (Smartfood popcorn). I included a variety of condiments and sauces for the kids to dip their nuggets and carrots in, and all the grown-ups agreed that since this was a dinner-and-a-movie party, the kids had to actually eat something (sort of) healthy for dinner before they partook of any of the sweet treats.
After dinner, though, it was time to break out the sugary movie snacks, including Frozen-themed fruit snacks, jelly beans, candy, and blue lollipops. I found the Frozen fruit snacks and jelly beans at my local grocery store (where I also got the chicken nuggets), and a quick trip to the party aisle of my local Target helped me find the Frozen-themed candy.
I also made brownies and white chocolate-covered Oreos. For the brownies, I used just a dab of chocolate frosting from a can to attach edible snowflakes as decorations. I dipped the Oreos in white chocolate to make them look snowy, and I added some blue sparkly sugar glitter to make them match Elsa’s ice get-up. And there was popcorn; you can’t have a movie party without popcorn!
The kids had such a good time, and of course they enjoyed the movie. Fortunately, our living room has hardwood floors, so I was able to move two of our small tables and chairs out to the living room so that the kids could sit at tables while they had their movie snacks. All of us piled on the couches or onto fluffy floor cushions to watch the movie, though, and I printed out some of the song lyrics so that the grown-ups could sing along, too (just in case they didn’t already know the words).
Even though this event was sort of thrown together, I think it worked as a celebration of the movie and the power of warm hugs to bring friends together in even the coldest of weather.
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***Parts of this article originally appeared on funfancyfree.weebly.com.
