My Perfectly Imperfect Life & the Minor Details...: Chuck E. Cheese

It was another round at Chuck E. Cheese's for Makenna's 3rd birthday. Her party theme was Tangled/Rapunzel. I started off by ordering her invitation template from DarlingDesignsbySara on Etsy.com. You can view a sample of the invitation template I chose here (Sample Tangled Invitation). Then I had multiple copies printed at Walgreens for super cheap. Sending personalized invites has become a staple for the parties I throw. I absolutely love the ideas I find on Etsy. I also ordered the rings for her cupcakes there as well. I could not find Tangled Rings anywhere but of course as soon as I searched for it on Etsy there it was. They shipped them out the same day which was also a plus considering that I waited til the very last minute to add cupcakes to my dessert order. Big thanks to PlatesAndNapkins on Etsy.com You were a huge help!

I did like most people and visited the party sections of Target & Wal-Mart where I found a few items for her party bags. I decided to buy the Tangled Cups and use those to fill with items instead of the cheap baggies that were sold in the store. Obviously the boys would not be excited about such girly cups so while at Wal-Mart I picked up a few red cups with the Cars theme on them. Then I ran into the problem of figuring out what to get the babies that would be at the party. They obviously couldn’t have the same items as the 3 year olds attending so I made this gift bag instead. Great for the almost toddlers we had attending the party. =)

Here is a picture of the finished party favor I did for one of the girls and the contents inside. I made the labels to place on each bag using free Tangled clip art I found online. Most of the bags were personalized saying, “Thank you for celebrating my 3^rd birthday party (Fill In The Name)” however I made a few that did not have names for those extra guests that may show up without responding to the RSVP.

I also decided to personal sets of washable paints and hand those out with printed coloring sheets that were also part of the Tangled theme. I found those sheets at http://www.colouring-page.org/kids/tangled-coloring-pages and http://www.free-coloring-book.eu/coloring_pages_tangled_rapunzel_1.php . The paints I picked up at HEB. The HEB brand was the cheapest and no one would ever know they were generic because I just took out the front label. For those on a budget this makes a difference. I forgot to take pictures of them so here are two pictures I found online so you can get the idea of what I did. I personalized these as well just like you see below. The kids loved them!

The last thing left was dessert. I could not afford to go all out and have a custom cake made this year so I started checking with the bakeries at Target, Wal-Mart, Sam’s, and HEB. Target, Wal-Mart, and HEB all had the same basic Tangled themed cake and Sam’s did not carry any Tangled items. Since we were expecting approximately 50 people to attend we decided to get a ½ sheet cake and ordered 30 white cupcakes from Sam’s. Since the cupcakes were only $13.99 this was the best deal I could find and so even though they were not helpful with ordering the cake I decided I would still get my cupcakes from them. Smart decision because they were absolutely delicious. Then I went to HEB to order that basic Tangled cake but while there we saw a two layer castle cake for the Disney Princesses. It was only $10 more than the plain sheet cake and the baker told us she could change it to make it geared towards Rapunzel instead. Jackpot! I gave her the mini Rapunzel figurines I had found on Amazon.com a few weeks ago to replace the standard Disney Princesses that normally come with the cake. All in all the cake & cupcakes turned out fabulous. When you factored in the rings, figurines, cake & cupcakes I spent about $80 on the dessert. A little higher than I budgeted for. So while I loved everything I think next year I will just do a few orders of the cupcakes instead. After all, the only ones who ate the cake were the adults. Kids seem to just love cupcakes. =)