It is easy to create a birthday party with a fairy tale theme. Ideas for fairy tale themed party invitations, decorations, food, games, costumes and prizes.

Everybody loves a good fairy tale, and your little guests will enjoy being a part of a fairy tale world. It’s an easy party to create, no matter how many little guests come to play. It’s a great old fashioned childrens birthday party!

Fairy Tale Invitation Ideas

There are plenty of great ideas for Fairy Tale style invitations. Here are a few to get you started.

• Make an old fashioned scroll to announce the party. Paint the paper with cold coffee to give it an aged look, and carefully burn around the edges using a candle. Start your invitation with ‘Hear ye, hear ye. There is a party to be held at the royal castle……’
• Cut your card into the shape of a mirror and make an ornate frame around the outside by squirting squiggles of PVA glue. Once the glue is hard, you can paint over the top with gold or silver, to give the impression of a carved wooden frame. In the middle of the mirror write ‘Mirror mirror on the wall, who will come to Eden’s ball?’ On the back you can write all the party details.
• Make a miniature story book, and on the cover have the title as ‘Eden’s Fairy Tale Party’. On the inside you can write a little story which includes all the party details.

Fairy Tale Decorations

• Dress the whole house up to look like a castle inside and out. Use empty fridge boxes (you can get them from Farmers or Noel Leeming) to make tall castle turrets on either side of your front door. Paint them up to look like bricks, and cut a window out of one side about 2/3 of the way up. Wrap ivy and fairy lights around the turrets for extra effect.
• Make the inside of your home look like a castle by hanging shields, swords and helmets all around the walls. Put big candelabras in each corner, and make sure you have a big magic mirror at centre stage.
• Lots of fairy tales and nursery rhymes happen in an enchanted forest. Bring in all the pot plants you can find, and cut out giant flowers and leaves from coloured card. Wrap ivy (real or plastic) around the furniture, and hide forest creatures in every corner. You might like to have a garden arch at the front door, so that the guests can walk through a magic entry to the enchanted world.
• Turn your living room into a fairy tale world by setting the scene of the most common stories and rhymes. You might like to have a sheep pen in one corner (Little Bo Peep), a brick wall made from cardboard boxes in another (Humpty Dumpty), and a spinning wheel with piles of straw in the middle (Rumplestiltskin and Sleeping Beauty). Use your imagination and make use of the everyday things you have at home.

Fairy Tale Games and Activities

• Have a table set out with coloured card, scissors, tape, glue and glitter and get the kids to make a wizard’s hat, a knight’s sword, or a fairy wand as they arrive.
• Paint up a whole lot of cereal boxes or wine casks to look like giant bricks, and stack them up to build a wall. Put a little water in the bottom of a balloon, and sit it on top of the wall acting as Humpty Dumpty. (You can decorate the balloon if you like). Give each child turns to throw balls at the wall and try to knock it down.
• Fill a large tub or baby bath with water and toss in a pile of red apples and one green one. (You should have enough apples for every child). Blindfold each guest and have them bob for the poison apples. The child who pulls out the green one wins.
• Let every child decorate a terracotta pot, and give them 5 magic bean seeds to plant – just like in Jack and the Beanstalk.
• For new twists on old favourites try pinning the tail on Shrek’s donkey, or a treasure hunt where the children follow Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs to find their prize.

Fairy Tale Party Food

• Make a plain gingerbread man for every child and let them decorate it with icing and sweets themselves.
• Make ‘Little Miss Muffet’s’ spiders by threading black liquorice twists through mallowpuffs to create long gangly legs. Use melted chocolate to stick red pebbles to their backs and make them extra scary.
• Give each child an individual ‘pudding’ to eat, just like Little Jack Horner. Aunt Betty’s make some delicious individual puddings which can be heated in the microwave.
• Cut fairy bread into little stars, make green punch for a witches brew, chocolate raisins for Bo Peeps sheep droppings, and a bowl of jelly beans as Jack’s magic beans.

Fairy Tale Costumes

Fairies and elves are obvious costumes for a Fairy Tale party, and they can be made relatively simply. Little fairies can wear their best party dress, coupled with some fairy wings, a wand, and some glitter on the face. An elf costume can be made by cutting an old pair of track pants (green preferably) across the knee in a triangle pattern, and teaming them with a matching top with bells stitched around the bottom. Add a floppy hat, red rosy cheeks, and you’re done.

Other easy fairy tale costumes include an evil witch with a pointy hat and a wort on her nose, a princess with a crown and jewels, a knight with a sword and shield, an ugly sister from Cinderella, Puss in Boots (face paint and gumboots), and Little Red Riding Hood complete with a red scarf and a basket of muffins.

Fairy Tale Prizes and Loot Bags

There are hundreds of fairy tales you could use to get ideas for prizes and loot bags, but here are some to get you started:

• A packet of glitter which can be used as fairy dust
• A packet of gingerbread mix and a gingerbread cutter
• A packet of bean seeds
• A prince or princess set with crown and jewels, or a sword and shield
• A little toy sheep (after all Little Bo Peep lost hers)
• A model castle to make up (you can get great balsa wood versions from most emporium type stores)
• Stickers, magnets, and sweets with a fairy tale theme