Phoebe's Fancy Fete

On the last Saturday in July, a bright and sweltering day, we celebrated Phoebe's fifth birthday. For years she had asked for a princess party. Then, just a few months before the party, she decided she would rather have a Paris party. I responded with something like, "You do love Paris. Kind of like Fancy Nancy loves Paris. What if we did a Fancy Nancy in Paris party?" She excitedly agreed and that was the beginning of several hours spent scouring boards on Pinterest looking for Fancy Nancy party ideas.

Our location was an open green space with a handful of picnic tables. It's just inside the gates of the gated community in which we lived in New Jersey. We discovered a walking path that led from our party place to a park just outside the gate. We started the party by playing at the park, then, when everyone had arrived, we hiked the path together to unveil our fancy setup.

The party went from 11am until 1pm. I agonized over how to organize the games and the food. No one opens presents at New Jersey parties, so we couldn't count on that as an activity. Finally, we settled on this:

• play at the park
• read Fancy Nancy
• eat pizza at the King's Crown (from the first book)
• get fancy
• play games
• decorate and eat cupcakes

And that's just what we did.

Some of the kids knew Fancy Nancy so well that they were yelling out details before I read them. During our setup I had placed all the tutus on a picnic table and covered them with a tablecloth. When we finished our pizza, grapes, carrots, and juice boxes, I told the kids it was time to get fancy. I walked over and threw off the cover and heard a collective gasp at the sight of all that tulle.

Then we all got fancy. The girls wore tutus, bracelets, necklaces, and tiaras. The boys wore white top hats, bow ties, and stick-on mustaches.

Sophie is modeling our girl look, sans tiara.

And here is Peter excitedly showing the boy look, sans mustache. Actually, no one wore a mustache for very long, but it was fun in theory.

We used the tree to hang our awesome Eiffel Tower shower curtain. It was much less expensive than a print that size would have been. Then Bryan created a fishing line triangle between the tree and two out-of-order tall black lamps he had lashed to the end of each row of picnic tables. Bryan (because I was too short) then tied upside balloons to the wire. It looked very fancy.

Here's the birthday girl, wearing her own special birthday crown.

After letting the kids run around in their sweet swag, I gathered them together for a quick French lesson. We learned how to say thank you, pardon, good day, and goodbye in the fanciest language Phoebe is aware of.

Next was a game of Is It Fancy? I told them to listen closely to the items I would list. If it was something plain they should crouch down, but if it was something fancy they should jump high in the air. They loved this game! Just in case you were curious, cupcakes are fancier than muffins, unicorns are fancier than horses, and skipping is fancier than walking, according to the kids.

After that we played a fancy version of Simon Says.

At this point it was getting really hot, so I ushered the kids over to the table for a less-sweat inducing activity. They decorated spectacular spectacles. In other words, they stuck stickers to inexpensive sunglasses.

Then we moved to a dizzying game of stick the bow on Nancy. We used dollar store mini gift bows and a poster-sized printout of Fancy Nancy.

Finally, since the adults were melting, we did our final activity: decorating delectable cupcakes.

All in all, I think it was a success. I was concerned that we weren't really focusing on Phoebe, but she just loved getting to be fancy with all her friends. And once again Bryan and I make a great birthday party team.