Magical Medieval Birthday Bash (The Pre-party Set-up)!

Finally, the posts I have been procrastinating to post for months (actually, it has been almost a year, but "months" just sounds less cruel.. hehe..). Every year, we throw one huge birthday party for our three children, whose birthdays are very close to each other. In fact, our oldest and youngest two children share a birthday (it was not done on purpose!), and our middle child's birthday is almost exactly one month later. The party before this one (in 2011), we threw a pirate themed birthday party, which is great for both boys and girls. This year, we went all medieval on them, and had our version of a Magical Medieval Birthday Bash! This post is the set-up post, with photos of the invites, decor, etc. I decided to post it separately, because together, it would have been too large of a post to read, and you probably would have given up before you got to the good part--the party! For our medieval theme, we had a hard time finding decorations for it (go figure..), the same way we had trouble finding pirate decorations the year before. But of course, NOW I see medieval decor literally everywhere.. *shaking my head*..

For the invitations, I used parchment left over from the pirate party invitations. I decided to turn them into scrolls with a traditional wax seal. I bought the wax stamper (not sure what it's really called!) at Michael's Craft Store, along with the Martha Stewart brand gold "wax" tubes, made to use with a glue gun. The Pam was to spray the seal with, so it doesn't stick.

The actual wording of the invitations was as follows:

 Hear ye, Hear ye!

The Kingdom of West, requests the presence of all Knights & Fair Maidens

At a Magical-Medieval Birthday Party for..

Lady Harley, Lady Cheyenne & Sir Riley!

Where: The Kingdom of West Family Home

When: Saturday, September 22^nd

From: 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Guide your noble steed & wagon to:

*Insert Address*

Festivities include: a Feast Fit for a King, Dragon Egg Hunt, Storm the Castle (moon bounce & slide), Slay the Dragon & Raid the Kingdom (piñatas), Splash of the Kingdoms (water balloon fight), & more!

 

(Parents: Turn over for more information!)

And here is the little poem I wrote for this special occasion:

In a place where dragons soar up high

And fairies flutter in the sky

Unicorns prance all over the ground

And knights sit at a table that is round

Kings and queens rule all the land

And fair maidens wait in castles so grand

Gypsies tell fortunes of treasure and gold

And wizards cast magic for all to behold

What mysteries await when you step back in time?

Come see what mystical land you will find..

~Jessica D. West

And of course, no invitation is complete without the fine print on the back:

Join us in celebrating Harley’s 6^th, Cheyenne’s 5^th, and Riley’s 2nd Birthday!

§  Party will last 3 hours. Siblings up to age 7 are welcome to attend. We will not have activities for children over 7.

§  Potty trained children may be dropped off, after leaving your name and telephone number at the door.

§  Parents are welcome to stay. There will be seating inside & out.

§  Party will mostly be outside. Please apply sunscreen and dress lightly.

§  We will have activities & games for older children (4-7 yrs.) and younger children (1-3 yrs.), some separate and some together.

§  Older children will get wet during the last 30 minutes of the party as we participate in the water balloon fight. Please bring a towel.

§  Costumes are not required but highly recommended to get into the medieval mood! We will provide flower head wreaths for the Maidens, and inflatable swords for the Knights.

§  Please RSVP by September 15th. You are welcome to email me (Jessica) at ********@yahoo.com or call ***-***-**** & leave a message with names of children attending and ages so we may plan accordingly.

I wrapped the printed parchment up and tied with rubber bands to get it nice and round, then I started to seal them. Unfortunately, the glitter in the glue sticks stopped up the glue gun and broke it. I tried everything to get the glitter out, to no avail. So I had to compromise...

And went medieval style and used a, wait for it.. candle! Yay... (look closely and you can see all of the tools I tried to stick in the glue gun to get it unstuck..

And viola!

After the whole invitations fiasco, I decided to start on painting the "stone" entrance. I picked up some large moving boxes from the curb of a house down the street and used duck tape to get it large enough to draw and cut out a rounded entrance. Then, I used gray for the base, a ruler and black paint for the outline, and a small foam paint brush to get the rough-looking rock details. I bought an Easter wreath from Michael's on clearance and removed the Easter ribbon to have a nice spring colored wreath for the front door. I also used a few sprigs of faux ivy for the top corners.

Then I repeated the same paint method on two large pieces of plywood for the castle walls the kids would hide behind during the "Splash of the Kingdoms" water balloon fight!

For the inside, I used cardboard and different colors of scrapbook paper to make door signs for more of a "castle" feel. I used my Silhouette to cut out the letters. We put the Royal Chambers sign on my husband and my bedroom door (so no one would mistake it for the bathroom).

 For my workroom, I labeled it the Bakehouse.

For the back door and bathroom, we labeled them the Courtyard and Privy. We also made some extras to put on the laundry room and closet doors. I love the Dungeon sign. Hehehe..

 For a couple months before the party, I started trolling the local thrift stores for gold, silver, and pewter colored platters and dishes for the medieval feast. I scored big! Check out the awesome sword I found for $13! Yes, you read that right. $13 bucks!

I also lucked out and found my son's knight costume for $7.50!

For one of our party favors, we had inflatable swords (from Oriental Trading), and plastic shields & armor (from the Dollar Tree) for the knights. For the girls, I made these flower headbands. We had them hanging up by the front door, so each fair maiden could pick out their favorite, then have their photo taken! Here are a few of the headbands I made..

And that is all for the set-up post. There were plenty other details, but I don't remember some of them. Stay tuned for the next post with photos from the party!