Recycled Castle Craft!

For my daughter's recent 2nd birthday party, we decided to keep it small. We invited only a few friends and planned it for when the "big kids" would be busy elsewhere so the little ones would have some nice relaxing tea-party action without being bowled over by the lego construction fleet. A small party meant less stress, less preparation and fewer spills...but it also meant less cake.

Baking a big cake seemed a bit like overkill for a party with 4 little 2 year old girls, so I decided to bake cupcakes. But even if I included one for each mom too, 8 cupcakes sitting on a plate seemed kind of lame. Well, since I wasn't running ragged the night before getting 'everything' ready, I decided to try to make the idea that had been forming in my head over the last few weeks materialize. As I set about with paper, tape and a bunch of recyclables on my living room floor, my husband asked, "what are you doing?", to which I replied as if it were the most obvious thing, "ummm, making a castle!". Well, when all was said and done, here's how it turned out.

Voila!

To make one of your own, you can modify and embellish as you see fit, but this was my low-key method:

Raid the recycling bin and collect...

Paper towel and toilet paper tubes, which are the perfect size for supporting cupcakes!

Tissue boxes. I used the cube shaped ones, but either kind of even a combination will work.

Paper. I used construction paper since I wanted a color-block look, but you could use any paper that goes with your theme. Wrapping paper would be perfect too.

Make the flags and windows.

Cut as many little tissue paper or foil triangles as you have cupcakes and tape the narrow side to one end of a toothpick. It's OK if they are a bit wrinkled since that adds to the effect!

You can also cut out little squares or arch-shaped pieces of paper and glue or tape them to the towers and boxes as small windows.

Start assembling.

I covered the tubes and tissue boxes with the paper and taped the seams. Next I arranged them on a large tray until I liked how they looked, and then used the tape again to tape the tubes to the boxes and a little more tape to affix them to the tray.

Add your cupcakes!

I frosted the cupcakes and then just sat them on the top of each tube. But after trying to add sprinkles to the cupcakes while in place, I recommend you place them after frosting and decorating them! I also learned it's best to put the castle where you'd like to display it before adding the cupcakes to the castle. Then all that's left to do is add your candles and sing the Birthday Song...and eat!

And here's my little princess happy as can be with her cupcake castle. :)