Unicornucopia

Unicornocopia

That's right.  Last year was Pandamonium, this year was a Unicornucopia.

Otherwise known as, a Unicorn themed party for my newly three year old daughters.

I knew what they probably really wanted was a Princess party, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.  As you may know from reading this blog regularly, I despise the whole Princess thing.

So I figured, what else do my children love that will appeal to the same aesthetic?

Why, unicorns, of course!

After all, I have previously turned my daughters into unicorns, why couldn't I turn all the kids into unicorns?

It was incredibly simple, and cheap.  Nearly a perfect party.

See those cookies?  Grandma made a heap of unicorn poop cookies!

First, the favors.  I have lots of paper hanging out- it's kind of a side effect of being an artist.  One large sheet of watercolor paper and a little rainbow ribbon became...

DIY unicorn horns and puppets

That's right- unicorn horns for all!  I cleared off the girls' little table, set out the markers, and let them go to town.

Even RH got to be a unicorn!

Bonus- lots of little unicorns for them to color, and some popsicle sticks so that the kids had the choice to make their unicorns into puppets, or put them on...

The castle!

It's a castle!  We always have tons of cardboard recycling around here.  Disposable diapers, pull ups and wipes come from Sam's Club or the like, and what with the regular packages filled with toys for the girls... there was tons of cardboard to go around.  One of these towers is actually made of a Mrs. T's Pierogi box.  I used packing tape to put the whole thing together, and then covered it with art paper.  Best part?  This is hiding the awesome toy kitchen... which is great for a few kids, but when presented with the likliehood of total toddler chaos at a party, I decided that hiding the kitchen was best.  With all the food and magnets and whatnot, it seemed like a recipe for disaster.  So- the kitchen became a castle.

So, the favors for the kids were, unicorn horns to color themselves, unicorns to color and turn into puppets or art, and...

Unicorns!

I picked up these little ponies from a local toy store.  Local?  Awesome.  Unicorns/ponies?  Perfect.  When half the kids coming are two year olds, you can be confident that they won't notice that their "unicorns" are horn-free.  So, I picked up a heap of two dollar unicorns/ponies, stashed the little things that could be choking hazards for little kids, and gave them each a tag with a kids' name on them.

But the most important thing for any birthday party?  The cake.  We were anticipating eleven adults and eight cake eating aged children, so I figured that making each of the girls their own cake was a safe bet.

SI insisted that she wanted a yellow cake.  DD insisted that she wanted a pink cake.  So rather than use food coloring, or just color the frosting, I kinda went all in.  I made DD a strawberry cake, and SI a lemon cake.  From scratch.  The only artificial anything that went in was a little yellow food coloring to make that yellow frosting just a *bit* yellower.  And to decorate?  Unicorns, of course!

Recipe here

A pink strawberry unicorn cake

Lemon sour cream cake- yeah, it's as good as it sounds

A yellow lemon unicorn cake

 Aren't those unicorns cool???  I made them using this super easy technique.  The only thing?  You've got to make sure that the frosting is *really* frozen before you try to transfer your decals.  Really, really frozen.  And just in case, keep some frosting for fixing any... injuries.  Also?  Unlike me, you might want to have real decorating tools.  I think some more precision tools would have really helped me out.

So how did it go?

This castle has a few princes and princesses, a dragon, a cat, a gargoyle, and plenty of unicorns!

I think everyone had a pretty good time.  :)