The Birthday Ball

So, I'd been planning Marina's birthday party for about nine month. Yes, I have no life. Last year I saw a birthday party where a teacher taught ballet to a group of girls. That morphed in my mind into a Ball. So, this year, we had a Birthday Ball for Marina.

Last year I bought Marina a Giselle dress from Enchanted. Then this year I saw the Disney store had a sale on the Giselle dress for adults. I couldn't resist. Marina was thrilled to learn we'd be matching Giselle's for the party. Of course, her dress was glamorous and beautiful. Mine made me look like a house.

Since I had so much time to plan it, I had time to fuss over the details. I planned everything down to the napkins. So there was plenty of room for something to go wrong. Plenty did, but no one seemed to notice. I had wanted each prince and princess to be formally introduced. That didn't happen. Everything went so much faster than I planned. My friend Joe acted as MC (He was dressed as Hagrid - it was awesome!). He really kept the pace up. So we served dinner way earlier than I planned.

I made the cake myself - a wedding-like tiered cake which was followed by presents. Marina got a ton of them! I must have done a good job with the pinata because it took the kids more than 20 minutes to scoop up all the goodies.

The party was over 2 1/2 hours after it started. That was good considering I was worried it would be over three hours. But clean up took two hours. As we got everything together, Marina said, "I want another birthday." Yikes!