A Fairy Special Birthday!

It's hard to believe that my little fairy princess turned ONE on Thursday! It was enough to make me want to blog. ;-) Well, the party did, anyway! I feel bad abandoning my blog, especially when I spend so much time gawking at so many other FABULOUS blogs like Penny Carnival, I Make Stuff, and Thrifty Decor Chick.

So I have returned to share this beautiful party with you all! All parties must start with a theme, and ever since Little Boo was born people have told me she looks like a little elf. Well, I wasn't really into the whole 'elf' theme, but I thought maybe we could play off of that and do a 'woodland fairy' theme! So I set up a little photo shoot in the back yard and took many adorable fairy photos of my very photogenic angel. It took me all of 5 minutes, and the photos are just precious! I included one on the invitation along with a poem that said,

Peek into the garden and what do you see?

A sweet little fairy sitting under a tree.

Her name is Little Boo and she’s turning one!

Won’t you join us for an afternoon of magic and fun?

Then of course I added the date, time, and place (by the way, I did not write this poem- I found it on another website, but for the life of me I can't find it now! Sorry!). I wanted to include a picture of the invite on here but they were e-mail invites (I got going on this kind of late...happens when it's the third child!) and I couldn't figure out how to turn my Word document into an image file.

Anyway! Let's move on to decorations, shall we?

This was the setup for the food table. I just used a green sheet which I spray-painted with some glitter paint (you can't really see it in this photo) and then I bought fake flowers from the dollar store and popped the blossoms off the stems (the kids had a blast helping me with that part) and sprinkled them about the table in a whimsical fashion!

On the menu were these lovely little nests filled with dijon chicken salad...

Some delicious toadstools...

A garden bounty platter (aka, veggie tray)...

And of course some fairy fruit salad!

Here are a few of the cupcakes on display- I didn't want to overwhelm the table by putting them all out, but they were so pretty I had to display a few of them! I purchased just the iced cupcakes from Wal-Mart (their whipped icing is SOOOO GOOOOD!) and then I purchased the tiny sugar flowers and butterflies from a baking supply store. I also bought edible glitter which I sprinkled over several cupcakes.

You might have also noticed in the 'tablescape' that there was a little stand of minature cupcakes off to the side- this stand was actually a votive candle holder, but the mini cupcakes fit into it perfectly! I made Little Boo's smasher cake separately, and I had plenty of batter left over (her cake was just 6" around) so I thought the little bitty cupcakes would be kind of fun and cute. :-)

We played two little games at the party; for the first, we had Little Boo sit in her high chair in the living room. All the guests gathered around her in a semi-circle, and everyone got a sheet of paper and a pen. When I said, "go," everyone had 10 seconds to draw a picture of her. After 10 seconds, they had to pass their paper to the person on their left. I then started the time again and the next person had to continue the drawing. We repeated it several times until the portraits were complete! There was quite a lot of laughter and groans, especially when people got a picture and they couldn't even tell what it was!! I gave the younger kids pieces of paper and put out crayons so they could just draw their own pictures without having to participate in the paper-passing. Little Boo loved being the center of attention!

The second game began with me reading a tiny scroll, supposedly left for us by the fairies. In it the fairies explained that they found out it was Little Boo's birthday (Serendipity Squirrel saw us getting ready through the kitchen window) and so they had snuck into the house and left fairy wishing stones for all the guests to help us celebrate. I had gone to a local store that specializes in gems and unique rocks and raided their $0.25 bin for cool-looking rocks, and the kids helped me hide them all over the living room (above Little Boo's reach!). We had little gold and silver favor bags with tags with each guest's name on it for them to put their fairy wishing stones in. The reverse side of the tag read,

It's time to celebrate the birthday of a precious little girl!

You are a special person in her "fairy" little world.

We are so happy to share this magical time with you;

This wishing stone will bring you luck and help your dreams come true!

And yes, I did think that poem up myself! :-)

A few other little party touches:

- We printed up some wallet-sized prints of Little Boo's fairy photos for our guests to take home with them (we had mostly family come).

- Plates and napkins were a simple solid pale yellow from the dollar store.

- I used green leaf lettuce as 'bedding' for the nests and the veggie tray, which was a simple touch that really made them look nice.

- We had notecards and pens and a basket with a sign asking guests to please write a note for Little Boo for her to open and read on her 16th birthday.

- A few of the decorations, the notes, the portraits from the game, and prints of photos I took at the party will all go into a time capsule for Little Boo to open when she turns 16.

Just so you know, I found many of the recipes I used by simply going to a recipe site and typing in search terms of things having to do with my woodland fairy theme, like "fairy", "nests", "flowers", etc. This would work with any theme you choose- just envision it in your mind and start typing in words that describe what you're going for!

Hopefully I will be back soon with more beautiful thrifty ideas for you! School starts this week, so it'll just be Little Boo and me at home. I'm going to try to make naptime productive!