We had a PRINCESS party for my 5 yr old daughter. We had 15 invited children (and their siblings) ages ranging from 2-10. The invitations had a castle and was written in appropriate language "hear ye hear ye>..this is to proclaim the celebration of the Princess .... birthday celebration etc. Some of the kids came dressed up but I left this as optional because we were outside at a park. THERE WERE BOTH BOYS AND GIRLS AT THE PARTY SO WE HAD TO MAKE IT BOTH GIRLY PINK AND PROPER YET FUN FOR THE BOYS. The first project was of course a castle. We got appliance boxes and painted them with grey paint (I used a sponge and stamped it on to look like blocks and cut out windows and doors). and even made a dungeon and a working drawbridge! (all out of cardboard) It was labeled "Park Kingdom" on the flags cut from tagboard since we were at the park. \*\*I made all the girls princess hats from pretty pink felt with purple, ivory and pink curly ribbon and lace trims glued to the top of the "cone". These are easy as you just cut out a "cone" and there is only one seam to sew. (you could take a party hat apart for a pattern)I also made wands from the left over felt. I bought dowel rods and cut out pink felt stars and hot glued them on the rods with ribbon bows, lace, and iridescent glitter as well. The BOYS got crowns (I used blue poster board and traced a crown from Burger King) and then I cut out cardboard shields and covered them in foil. I pasted their names on the front "prince James" etc and made them a cardboard sword. The dollar store also carries all sorts of swords too if you would rather. I also took extra shields just in case a princess wanted one! AT THE PARTY: I let them glue on baubles on the shields and princess hats. I decorated the tables with vases of wild flowers (each girl got to take one home) I actually used empty plastic kool aid containers (hug jugs) so they weren't breakable and put pink, ivory, and purple curly ribbon bow on them.  I put very little water in the bottom just in case they would get spilled. I dressed up in an old sparkly dress and put sparkly polish and body glitter on and was the fairy god mother. We had FACE PAINTING, NAIL POLISH AND BODY GLITTER. (the older siblings helped with this and had lots of fun. We PLAYED PASS THE POISONOUS APPLE(when the music stopped the person with the apple was out and received a candy necklace). We also had the children take off their shoes and put one at the end of the room in a pile and they had to race to find the "glass slipper" of their own and get back first. We had a purse piñata and the CAKE WAS A PRINCESS CAKE simply made with the Barbie cake recipe but I chose to make a kelli doll cake instead of the Barbie cake and it was really cute. The dress is actually the cake and doll sits in the middle.  For GOODY BAGS  the kids had their decorated hats, wands, shields swords. I put rings, bracelets, body glitter and squirting animals and straws for the boys. They also had tons of candy from the piñata. THANK YOU NOTES were actually a copy of a picture we took of all the kids in their costumes in front of the castle at the party. We made posterboard frames and wrote the thank you on the back of the picture frame. My 8yr old after 2.5 hours said is it over it? We are having so much fun so I know it was lots of fun for the kids and everything was so "beautiful but not too girly for the boys."