{ Beauty & the Beast Party }

Today is the Girl's birthday!  You can see her former birthday parties here: Mary Poppins Party & Budget Friendly Disney Party.

I present to you, the third is this series- another Disney party- this time, Beauty and the Beast! And guess what... it's a budget friendly party too! I will have a break down of the budget a little further down in this post.

Setting the scene here with the table:

As you can see, I went with glassware vs paper plates, books, candles, and of course, roses to decorate.

For the tablecloth, I used a lace that my mother in law made (it's our special occasion tablecloth) which I festooned with yellow plastic tablecloth swags. I decorated the swag portion with a red rose.

I created the pennant banner with my Silhouette, but you could easily cut it out by hand and add sticker letters.

For the Enchanted Rose, I used a tall cylindrical vase, glass pebbles, & a submersible LED light,

Here is what it looked like with the lights off:

Behind the rose, you can see I bought some cheap 4x6 frames and printed some photos I found on the internet to go in them.

For favors, I made Chip mugs. I know that Chip should be a tea cup, but these came from the Dollar Tree, so, score! I simply painted the handles with metallic gold craft paint. For his face, I found a photo of chip and recreated his face as best I could in Photoshop. From there, I used my Silhouette Machine to cut out vinyl which I then applied. If you are very crafty, you could just as easily paint his face on. I have one, and only one, a vinyl 'chip'. That one went to the birthday girl. :)

For food I did nice and easy. I made a cheesy potato soup that everyone loves (Soup D'jour!), made croissant sandwiches, and had a basket of French breads.

Bean had the great idea to make LeFou's Brew and have the drink station be Gaston's Tavern.

Labels made in Photoshop

LeFou's Brew at Gaston's Tavern in Magic Kingdom is a slushy apple juice with hints of marshmallow, and topped with a mango passion fruit foam. Bean really liked it when we went. I didn't care for it at all. I actually quite liked my own version, however. (Recipe below).

For desserts we had, of course, cupcakes.

These are my Snickerdoodle cupcake recipe.

I tinted the icing Belle's dress yellow and topped with Haribo red raspberry candies.

There was also Grey Stuff- of course!!

I have a recipe for a very accurate Grey Stuff, an actually cookies n cream panna cotta. This, however, is even easier than that (recipe below)!

I also served tea, Mrs. Potts would hope so, for heaven's sake! Bean created a playlist of the Beauty and the Beast Soundtrack on Spotify and I had that playing, and of course.. we watched the movie.

That's it! It was a great night and she loved it.


Here is a price break down of the party:
Dollar Tree; $19

6 mugs, 3 tableclothes,  rose bunches, candles,  2 candlesticks, 2 mirrors (candles sat on), 2 frames, vase, 2 packs of silver plasticware.

Fresh Rose: $2

Food:

Bread & croissants- $9
Soup ingredients - $10
Lunch meats & cheese- $10
Drinks (2 liters were on sale)- $5
LeFou's Brew- $5
Grey Stuff- $5
Cupcakes- $4

Items on hand:

Lace tablecloth, submersible light, glass pebbles, books, ribbons, glassware.

Total Cost of party for 6 guests: $69

plus the cost of paper and ink for printing


Not bad, eh?


Happy 18th to the girl!


Tina



Recipes:


LeFou's Brew
recipe by Tina @ Sugar Bean Bakers
1 bottle apple juice
1 liter lemon lime soda
1/2 container of vanilla ice cream

Chill juice & soda, when ready to serve, pour into a pretty bowl and top with ice cream allowing ice cream to melt slightly before ladling into glasses.


The Grey Stuff (simplified)
recipe by Tina @ Sugar Bean Bakers

1 package French Vanilla Pudding mix
1 container whipped topping- thawed
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 of a package of cream filled chocolate sandwich cookies

Prepare pudding with 1 1/2 cups milk. Fold in whipped topping.

Crush cookies super finely- using 1/2 of the package. Stir into mix.

Chill for a few hours before serving.

The Grey Stuff Original recipe

{ Harry Potter Roundup Post }

Hello, my lovelies!

This year, instead of just watching, I am playing along in Raegun Rambling's awesome Harry Potter Weeks celebration!

She has SO much fun planned from now until Harry's Birthday on the 31st. You have to check it out! She also has an amazing giveaways! Stay tuned for more info on those later in my post here.

I've opted to do a Harry Potter post roundup since I already have so many (that doesn't mean there won't be more in the future, because, my friends, there WILL be more), but this time we are going with these.

I  tried to get a good variety of posts for this. I've got travel, party, craft, and food. Sound good?

Ready? Here we go!

Travel:

Our Holiday to Hogsmeade- a full guide to your visit to the Hogsmeade portion of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando's Islands of Adventure Park.

Diagon Alley Guide: a full guide to your visit to the Diagon Alley portion of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando.

Crafts:

Harry Potter Wand Tutorial: Make your own authentic looking wizarding wands. You can make a bunch for only a few bucks!

Parties:

My Big, Fat, Harry Potter Party: A full blown Harry Potter party on a budget. Tons of fun that won't cost you tons of money.

Harry Potter Party the Second: My second Harry Potter party. New ideas, new fun.

Food:

This is where it gets really fun!


Sorting Cupcakes

Hogwarts Acceptance Letter Cookie

Weasley is our King Cupcakes

All Hail Butterbeer!

While I have my own Butterbeer recipe here on my site, I actually recommend my friend Darla's (of Bakingdom) over my own. I made mine prior to visiting the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and she made her's after. Her's is definitely super simple and tastes so similar to WWoHP!

Bakingdom's Butterbeer

photo property of bakingdom.com

 Of course I have a few Butterbeer treats of my own...

Easy Butterbeer Cupcakes

Butterbeer Ice Cream

and... a Butterbeer Shake!

I have several other Harry Potter inspired posts, you can see all of them here. You can see all of my geekery here.


Now, about that giveaway...

Look..at..all..this..awesomeness...! I want it ALL.

The photos aren't all necessarily the prizes that will be awarded, but represent some items you could purchase with a store credit prize.

The winner will receive the following awesome Harry Potter and bookish prizes! 

• The September Bookish Box from Appraising Pages (includes a shirt by Appraising Pages Shop and 3-5 feminine home, beauty, and fashion items)
• I Solemnly Swear That I Am Up To No Good Necklace from Bookish Sphere
• Marauders Map Stacking Mugs from A Bird in the Hand Crafts
• 25$ Shop Credit (for in stock items) from Tiny Book Town (super cute bookish jewelry pictured Narnia book necklace and Mystery and Adventure necklace)
• Deathly Hallows Necklace, Personalized Hogwarts Acceptance Letter, and Golden Snitch Ornament (any house colors) from Pieces by Polly
• 40$ Shop Credit from Rae Gun (pictured above House Elf Apron, Hogwart's House Tie Necklace, Make Love Not Horcruxes Bag but anything in the shop is available)
• The August Owl Crate from Owl Crate (this will include an upbeat mystery novel, as well as a bunch of items paying homage to literature's most-loved detectives)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Have fun! P.S. If you haven’t already, you can ‘like’ my Facebook page here, and follow me on instagram here.

x, Tina

{ Oh The Places You'll Go Party }

I'm finally sharing Bean's graduation party!

I wish I could tell you that everything went off without a hitch and that I have beautiful photos to share with you, but that is not true.

After having not rained for weeks, the weather report was for, you guessed it, rain.

We went ahead and set up the tent and got things ready, but then, it started to rain. It was a few hours before the party though, so we thought it would be ok. Well, hubs was more convinced than I.

One and a half hours before the party, I decided it would be best to move the location from our backyard to our church.

A lot of scrambling to get things moved and set up took place in that amount of time. I arrived at the church less than one hour before the party began. Thanks to awesome friends who showed up to help, everything got set up.

It may have not been how I'd pictured his party, in our lushy green backyard with hot air balloons hanging from the trees, but this was the party that we had and Bean was still thrilled.

Also, I left my camera at home in the rush. Oops. These are all taken with my phone.

I found the poster decorations on Amazon.

These are what were supposed to hang from our trees. Instead they hung from the basketball hoop in our church gym. Oh well.

I found the tiny baskets on Amazon as well and tied them onto balloons.

For the food I had a Walking Taco bar.

Bags of Fritos and Doritos along with taco meat, salsa, nacho cheese, shredded cheeses, onion, sour cream, jalapenos, onion, and lettuce.

Multi colored Goldfish crackers became Fish in a Dish

Truffala Treats (make the same as Rice Krispy Treats but with Trix cereal instead)

Dipped Marshmallows and Pretzels in Seuss colors

And a Candy Bar

I went the day after Easter and snatched up all the pastel colored candy I could grab for this. The colors match perfectly and 50-75% off, heck yeah!

You can barely see them off to the side in this second photo, but I had fry boxes and crayon boxes for people to take their candy home in.

I have cotton candy in the large cookie jar, which was a huge hit, but be sure to put it in something with a lid and to make sure it gets put back on. It will quickly shrink and harden otherwise.

Lastly, the cupcakes.

These are made with my Cotton Candy Cream Cupcake recipe & my Chocolate Filled Cupcake Recipe (using Red Velvet instead of straight chocolate).

To make the swirled icing you will need 3 small icing bags, each filled 1/2 full with a different color. Snip a medium sized opening off of the bag. Insert the three bags into a large pastry bag fitted with a large tip. It will take a good bit of squeezing, but the result is lovely :)

For the guest book, everyone signed a copy of Oh The Places You'll Go, which I had already had gotten signed by his teachers K-12.

So, there you have it.

Not how we wanted it, but still a very happy grad party for my Bean.

Pictured here on his graduation night with my niece.

National Honor Society, Honor Thespian, and Honors Diploma Graduate. Momma Bear is proud

And will you succeed? 
Yes! You will, indeed! 
(98 and 3 / 4 percent guaranteed.) KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS! 

<3

Tina