Ooh, La, La...Fancy Nancy Birthday Party

I consider myself fairly low maintenance. I'm not a fan of lace, jewelry, or fluff and am not ashamed to call myself a plain Jane. As evidence of how much I love our youngest daughter, I hosted a pink and purple party even though I abhor (that's fancy for I can't stand) the color combination. If you have daughters, you may be familiar with Fancy Nancy books. We enjoy them because the main character has red hair, likes to dress up, accessorize, and decorate, and teaches the meanings of fancy words. We decided to use this as the theme of our party. Thanks to inspiration from my best friend Pinterest, BirthdayPartyIdeas.com, and FancyNancyWorld.com, the birthday girl thought it was spectacular!

This is what I came up with for the invitation:

 

 

                                               

     DELLA Turns Six!

 Oooh-la-la darling, let’s celebrate with a birthday soirée.

(That’s fancy for a party.)

Wednesday, May Thirtieth

Two o’clock until four o’clock in the afternoon

Address

Rèspondez s’il vous plaît

(That’s fancy for email or call my mom Jane)

Email or phone

Please wear your most exquisite attire!

The front door invited guests with two ideas I found on Pinterest: a ruffly six made from cupcake liners and a welcome sign in French.

 

Since the guests were asked to dress in their most exquisite attire, and they received a feather boa and tiara, we created a photo area by stringing ribbons across the fireplace. We also displayed our own collection of FN books as well as others we checked out of the library.

 

We made bracelets out of candy and cereal strung on curling ribbon. (This isn't my photo - I couldn't find any purple licorice, but we used this idea.) We added beads made out of fruit flavored tootsie rolls.

If you are familiar with the books, you know we had to serve parfaits! We lucked out to have a set of parfait glasses given to us awhile back. The kids enjoyed building their own. I tried to speed up the serving by pre-freezing scoops of ice cream on a baking sheet. I recommend it. (On another food related note, I made marshmallow pops. No photo, but the girls gobbled them up!)

The birthday girl wanted to use feathers to decorate the cake, but I resisted. (I shouldn't have shown her the over-the-top parties and cakes I found online.) Our cake was pretty simple. 

For a craft, I wanted to have the girls decorate a picture frame. Buying frames wasn't really in the budget, so I created some myself out of craft foam I had on hand. (Who really keeps their kids' projects forever, so why waste the money?)

It may not be the fanciest party on the web, but for this plain Jane mom, it was fancy enough.