Beauty and the Wil'DaBeast Party

The Birthday party was so much fun. I really can't image it could have gone any better, but that is thanks to my wonderful in-laws, my amazing hubby, all of our amazing friends and Mr. Mike who saved the day from a miserable rain out.

I decide to do a Beauty and the Beast party because it is Caleb's favorite Disney story, I thought it would be a perfect way to do a boy, girl party and I thought it would be easy to find everything needed for a themed birthday party. Finding the Merchandise posed a real challenge. There are no longer any items that have the Beast. Everything Belle related is total Princess, so what was supposed to be easy turned into a nightmare. There was literally only one item in all of the Disney merchandise that even remotely incorporated the Beast. This was a 7 piece set of figurines that included all the characters from Beauty and the Beast and thank goodness for that or my sweet little boy who only cares about the Beast would have been very disappointed. While we were at Disney World he watched the play at the Disney's Hollywood Studio (MGM) and every time the Beast would leave the stage he would say, "where'd the Wildabeast go?" He got a little confused, because the day before MGM, we spent the day at Animal Kingdom where there are real wildebeests. But needless to say he is a huge fan of the big scary Beast. So after much searching brain storming I came up with some fun activities, which didn't require merchandise and I could make on my own. Easy right. Not so much.

The Craft




I love scrapbooking and with our pending move I thought it would be fun to have each kid make their own scrapbook page so we could have a special memory and I would take pictures at the party to put in the scrapbook. I turned this into a chore because it really was a craft way over their head, so coming up with something that 3 year olds could do and would still look pretty took some major effort on my part. I cut all the items up and prebagged, so it would be easy but this process took me some time. It did however, turn out great. I especially loved the one done by Jay and Jack. It definitely had a masculine twist.

Story time



Our friend David read the story and put his own entertaining twist on it. The kids loved it and the adults had a number of good laughs. I purchased personalized Beauty and the Beast books from Disney that incorporated the child into the story as the party favor. I was really excited about these.

The Rose Petal Hunt



I found this fun game on the Internet and I thought it would be a great way to incorporate the rose from the story. I put stickers on 12 of the petals and scattered them around the room. There was enough for each child to find one. Once they found their sticker they were allowed to claim a prize out of the goody bag, with princess stuff for the girls and a random arrangement of toys for the boys Caleb picked out. I would say the harmonica was a hit.

The Beast Foot race



This one had me worried. I figured it would be either a blast or a disaster. For the most part all the kids did great and I was thankful there were no injuries. Only a few tears. Sweet Caleb got inches from the finish line and fell down and then had a meltdown and never completed the race. And Jack went home and told his mom, "don't make me where the fury feet."

Cory and I made these fun little beast feet out of cardboard and faux fur. I'm pretty sure I got high on the glue I used. The day after we worked on them all night I woke up with a splitting headache and a terrible case of nausea.

The Cake



I purchased the Cinderella cupcakes from walmart and had them leave off the Cinderella figurines and used the ones mentioned above. It was actually really tasty.

The Castle



This was a total hit, and I was very grateful. I found this fun website http://www.mrmcgroovys.com. He sells these rivots for cardboard and then gives you the plans to make just about anything you can image. The only thing that was a little misleading was the assembly time. He claimed the whole thing takes 2 hours to make. Maybe if you are a super builder. It took me 4 hours to cut it out. Then 4 more to paint. We had a great time as a family painting it.



Caleb was very helpful and he probably enjoyed painting it as much as playing in it. I probably spent 5 more hours going back and forth to the Conn's distribution center to get 8 refigerator boxes. In the end though the kids had a great time playing in the castle and it really made the party theme come to life. All the time and energy it took to put this thing together was worth every minute to see all the fun smiles on our precious kiddos faces.