ROYAL meets TOY (The Challenge)

When it comes to “Royal” party themes, glitzy details and fancy-schmancy decor typically come to mind first. (As evidenced in my friend’s royal baby shower, where I had to restrain myself from glittering everything in sight!).

So, when Fisher-Price asked me to come up with a Royal First Birthday Bash theme that aligned with their (very clean, very modern-looking) brand and classic toys, figuring out the right way to merge these 2 looks was definitely a design challenge!

I was excited to take on the challenge, though! “Royal” and Prince/Princess themes are super popular for first birthday parties, so a childlike, toy-inspired twist on this theme sounded very fitting! PLUS, Charm City Cakes bakery was already doing the cake, and I’ll jump at the chance to rub elbows pixels with Ace of Cakes any day. 😉

Royal Birthday Party Printables

My Castles & Crowns printables are available in our store! Use them to add instant style and personalized details to your party. 🙌 You can edit the text yourself – right on the website – whenever (and as often as) you need to! Click here to buy this collection.

The Starting Point

Whenever I’m working on a new theme, I try to come up with 1 or 2 ideas that really make sense for the project, then use those as the foundation for the theme. For this project, it was the Rock-a-Stack^® castle (as seen on the far right of the top image here) and the Corn Popper Inspired Cake Popper (more on that later).

For the first idea, a spray painted sugar cone + felt flag quickly transformed this classic baby toy into a “castle turret” – which then led to a full DIY Birthday Castle Centerpiece idea and also gave me the starting point for the paper details/printables, which you can download below! I also used the “turrets” on their own as accent decor:

The “party guests” were friends and friends-of-friends. The littlest ones were quite enthralled with the ball garlands in particular (see the DIY tutorial here). My own daughters jumped in on the action too, and Sonny caught what is easily one of my favorite pictures of our youngest daughter (Rylie) ever. ;)

Of course I couldn’t resist getting just a tiny bit of sparkle into this royal theme… glittered washi tape on the bamboo forks did the trick! The party straws also had metallic gold stars:

The aforementioned ball garlands were used as both inside and outside decor. The best thing about these is how EASY they are to make. Of course I tried the hardest methods first though… live and learn! ;)

Here’s a closer look at the DIY Castle Centerpiece. You can find the step-by-step tutorial over on the Fisher-Price site.

Activities are especially important for the older party guests, so we set up an activity table with simple themed crafts like “decorate a crown” and “color a castle”. I made simple coloring pages that matched the rest of the printables. You can download them below.

Of course, bubbles are always a great way to entertain kids of all ages!

For a simple food idea, I used cookie cutters to make 2 kinds of royal crown sandwiches.

The pint-sized guest of honor will most likely be hanging out with the toys or sitting happily in mom’s lap, but it’s always a great idea to set a special royal-inspired table for the older kids! Baby blocks and a felt runner inspired by the Fisher-Price logo were used as decor, and colorful party crowns (tutorial coming soon!) sat on each plate.

The Fisher-Price Corn Popper^® is one of their most famous classic toys, and it’s probably a side-effect of my profession, but I just could not get past the idea of merging “Corn Popper” with “Cake Popper”. So that’s exactly what I did… but recreating just the base to keep things easy. :) Big thanks to Roni for whipping up the cake pops so quick!  See the full Corn Popper Inspired Cake Popper tutorial at Fisher-Price.

Scalloped felt, honeycomb, and plastic balls were all key elements in this theme. Not only are all of these items playful and fun, but they are super affordable! Here’s how they were used to transform our hutch into a party-friendly backdrop (3D glue dots were used to secure all of the balls):

Another thing that the Corn Popper^® toy instantly brought to mind was popcorn… shocking connect, I know! ;)  So we created a Royal Rainbow Popcorn Buffet that doubled as both a snack and a take-home party favor for the older guests. (Just make sure that your popcorn buffet is high enough to be out of reach of the very littlest ones.) Honeycomb balls and ball garlands were used as another nod to the look of the Corn Popper^®.

Last but not least… can’t forget the smash cake!

Smash cakes should be simple, just like this one by Charm City. The DIY smash cake topper is simply one of the hand-cut party silhouettes attached to 2 paper straws.

I hope you like how everything turned out! Judging by the smiles on the little ones’ faces, this royal party/playdate was definitely a *smashing* success! 🥳👑

Royal Birthday Party Printables

Printables are my favorite *secret weapon* for adding unique style to any celebration! Click here to customize my Castles & Crowns collection for your own party – instantly, online. 🤗