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Ballerina Party - Pin Ballerina in the Spotlight

May 2003

Erin in Austn, Texas, USA

Honorable Mention

Ballerina Birthday Party Several months ago my daughter decided that she wanted to have a pink birthday party. Over time, her list of favorites grew to when her birhtday finally arrived it was a Pink Princess Barbie Ballerina Birthday Party!

We started out by the girls decorating paper crowns with stickers. I was going to cut them out of poster board, but I couldn't locate the gold, so I ordered precut ones from Oriental Trading. Since they just used stickers and no glue or paint, they could wear them right away. Then we also made Princess wands with wooden sticks and gold pom-poms with ribbon streamers. When the finished I colors and paper for them. 

Instead of Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, we played "Put the ballerina in the spotlight." I asked my husband to print out the ballerinas, and after I located a picture I liked on the web, instead of just tracing it to my specs (we had to make it pink) and printing it out, he used the computer to trace a picture of my daughter and add her head to the ballerina body! I watercolored (simply, with the kid's watercolors) a poster stage for them to go on. 

When the girls did that, they earned their ballerina skirts, or tutus. I was going to make the girls paper skirts, maybe out of paper table skirts or something, when I figured that since there were just 5 (7 with little sisters) it would be cheap enough to make them out of net, and maybe just as easy. Well, it wasn't as easy as I thought, but not too bad. I made the first one, then I had the benefit of having my mother-in-law to help with the rest.

Net, it turns out, is really hard to fold and it helps to have someone to do it with. I found that net is easier to work with than tulle and looks better with less, so it is cheaper. You need a piece at least 3 yards long to make a skirt, 3.5 is better and you could use up to 5. (I used 3.) Net comes 72 wide, so I cut each in half (you get two skirts out of every 3 yards). I then folded it to make the skirts four layers, nine inches long. I sewed an elastic casing 1/8 inch wider than the 1/2 inch elastic on the folded edge. One of the bottom edges of the skirts was then folded, so I slit that. Then I ran the elastic (20-22 inches long for three year olds) and sewed the elastic together with a zig-zag stitch and trimmed the edges. 

Then I lined the girls up to learn some ballet steps. They had a lot of fun with these, especially the jumping. Then we put on the Nutcracker and let them dance. The riding toys, horses, sit-n-spin, and trampoline, that I left out (we put away all of the other toys) were perfect for mixing with this activity and keeping the interest of everyone. Next we had a ballerina Barbie cake, with Ballerina Barbie, of course, with a cake skirt. Aili was very excited about having Barbie in her cake, but she wasconcerned that she didn't get "ice" (icing) on her.

So, Barbie got an outfit of a tin foil bodice and saran wrap leggings, first. (By the way, you can now style Barbie's hair, even the curly ones, with water and a comb. The things that take up time in birthday preparations! :)  ) The skirt was two cake recipes, a bunt pan on top of a 9 inch spring form layer. It took three recipes of icing! I found that Land-o-lake's butter is the lightest in color, and I used 1/4 tsp almond extract for the triple recipe instead of vanilla so I wouldn't mess up the color. (When I made the cookies for her birthday at school today, I found that Wilton's Red Red makes more of a peachy pink, and Christmas Red, makes a cooler, bluer, pink.)

Then we did presents, played with presents, and played on the swings outside. With 5 little girls and younger siblings, this all took about one and a half hours.

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