4 yr old Princess & Prince Party We got many fabulous ideas from this site and tailored them to our taste & budget. Invite: We did it ourselves on the computer with type and clip art of cartoon princes,princesses and castles. We wrote"Hear Ye, Hear Ye, By order of the King and Queen, you are cordially invited to the "family name" Castle to celebrate Princess "name". The royal celebration will commence on "date & time" There will be festivities including games, food, crafts. Royal garb is optional but would be greatly appreciated by the Birthday Princess" Everyone came dressed in prince/princess dress-up clothes! My daughter was thrilled. We went a bit crazy decorating in that we strung flag streamers across the house and front yard, and removed all the furniture from our living room and covered the walls with cardboard "castle walls," which we painted to look like bricks (used a huge rectangular sponge dipped in housepaint to make a brick pattern on huge pieces of cardboard, then nailed it to the walls. This was the main room where we had a long table set up for crafts and food. We also used large painted appliance boxes to add to the castle look, painted with cut-out turrets and draped with plastic ivy. we made the front door look like a castle door with the same large appliance boxes painted to look like brick surrounding a castle door. Mom & Dad, dressed as a King and Queen (sort of, Dad wore crown and Hawaiian shirt, Mom in crown and sundress)greeted guests at the door.  Activities: Upon arriving, all guests made their own crowns. (crown kits purchased from Oriental trading). They sifted through sand in a treasure box (painted cardboard box we made, filled with playground type sand and gems) to find gems to glue onto their crowns. All loved this. They were also given stickers and glitter glue to decorate crowns.  We made a "Pin the Kiss on the Frog Prince" game that was not a big hit. I would skip this sort of game. For prizes, we gave wands to all the girls (made from 2 foam shaped purple stars hot glued onto wooden dowels spray painted gold with ribbons and sparkle glue to dress them up) and shields for the boys (cardboard, spray painted silver, with elastic hand holders hot glued on). We gave every child a press-on tatoo on his/her hand and they loved that. We served Pizza and Mom made the Barbie cake with the Pampered Chef Classic Batter Bowl and the recipe comes with it, plus two round cakes to give it more height as Barbie is tall. This was a huge hit and the kids truly ooohed and Ahhhhed. My daughters eyes bugged out over it--it was great. We made a throne by throwing a cheap red fabric from Walmart over a large cushy chair and took each child's photo in it wearing the crown they made. They really posed and loved the attention. A double of each photo went in the thank you notes. The cheap red fabric was also used as a "red carpet" in the entry, but was slippery and had to be removed! All the children toasted with sparkling grape juice in goblets we made from plastic goblet-style glasses on which gems had been hot-glued.  For goody bags, I purchased tiny plain wooden treasure boxes at Michael's and spray painted them gold, and put little plastic watches inside for the boys and bracelets for the girls. Plus of course they had wands/shields, crowns and goblets to take home. Purchases: We bought all the craft supplies at Michaels, including tatoos, makings for wands, tiny wooden treasure boxes, ribbon, poster board, etc. Fabric for throne was from Walmart. The flag streamers and crown kits were from Oriental trading's website. We did this relatively inexpensively considering what people spend on parties these days. We got solid-colored paper plates, purple plastic tablecloths and napkins instead of the expensive character ones. It was a lot of work but age 4 or 5 is the perfect age for this. They'll remember it, they understand it, and they are not yet too cool for this stuff! The kids loved it and we had a ball.  What I would have done differently: skip the pin the something on something... it's boring. Have separate areas for doing crafts and eating--we had to clean up the whole craft table and crowns so the kids would have a place to eat pizza. Don't be afraid to delegate at the party if there are a lot of Moms/grandparents/aunts hanging around. I was trying to do it all myself while everyone was chatting and my husband was dealing with our 1yr old. Finally one of my friends said loudly "We have a lot of hands here, why don't we help her?" You need help serving pizza, clearing the table, putting on tatoos, running any games, etc.