10.13.2011

EK's woodland fairy party

I have been obsessed with having a woodland fairy party since I saw this picture this summer:


This was a party done by Kate Landers Events (check out her website here). While, I did not have the same budget as the party shown above (I'm just assuming!), I did use it as my inspiration. I ordered the same invitations from Paper & Pigtails.

It came as a PDF file for $12.50, so I just customized it and then sent it to the Kinko's to have it printed on thick cardstock. Then, I bought chocolate brown 5x7 cards from Paper Source ($4.25 for a pack of 25) and glued the invitation (which I cut down a little, so there was a tiny chocolate border all around) on top. Then I put them in red 5x7 envelopes (also Paper Source, $4.25 for a pack of 10). So these ah-mazing invitations that looked like they cost a fortune, were only a little over $1.50 each.

The decorations were super easy to do (especially this time of year and because the "woodland" theme is so big now). I made a fabric pennant banner and a happy birthday banner out of some cute fabrics I picked up at JoAnn Fabrics. I used double-sided fusible web in between two pieces of fabric to create double-sided stiff fabric that I could cut shapes out of (i.e. triangles for the pennant banner and letters for the happy birthday one). For the pennant, I just used fabric glue to glue the triangles to the back of the ribbon.


For the happy birthday one, I just fabric-glued all the letters together and used some packing tape to adhere it to the mantle and then just tied some raffia on the ends.

For the food table, I bought a cheap green table cloth from the Target. I put a small wood crate upside-down in the middle of the table and covered it with a fake moss runner from Michael's. The moss-covered planter and the moss rocks were from JoAnn Fabrics. The woodland creatures and nest were all ornaments I found at Michael's. The mason jars were filled with water, a floating candle, and tied with raffia. The night before the party, my little sister got the idea to tie the red and white baker's twine around the cardboard E. How cute is it?!

Most of the platters, I already had, but I did buy 2 wood rounds to use as well. Here's a couple other shots of the table:





The menu for the party was:
Chicken salad (with almonds and dried cranberries) on croissants
Roll-up sandwiches
Chocolate chip (some white, some semi-sweet) stuffed raspberries
Pretzel sticks (...because they look like twigs)
Cups of white-cheddar popcorn
Pumpkin raisin muffins
Balsamic and blue cheese mushrooms


I made sparkling pomegranate lemonade for the kids (part lemonade, part sparkling pomegranate juice) and fall punch for the grown-ups.






Lots of raffia and burlap made everything look cohesive.







When the guests arrived, I had fairy skirts and wings for the girls and gnome hats for the boys.







The fairy skirts I ordered from the casual princess on etsy. My mom found the large pink fairy wings at the dollar store and the smaller ones in the dollar section at Target.

The gnome hats I made myself out of felt and fabric glue.






For activities, I had a craft table set up where the kids could make their own fairy wands and decorate wood picture frames. I had a bunch of woodland stickers, markers and ribbon.







Emerson really wanted to play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, but since that didn't really go with the theme, we made our own game:







My favorite part (and I'm sure Emerson's!) was the dessert table. We ordered the toadstool cupcakes from a local bakery (Kirsten's cakery). They were adorable (and delicious!)







Emerson helped me make the donut hole acorns, pink chocolate-covered strawberries, s'more pops, and chocolate-dipped pretzel rods the day before.






The donut hole acorns were just glazed donut holes, dipped in melted chocolate, dipped in chocolate sprinkles, and then half a pretzel stick stuck in top. SO amazing!







Here are the s'more pops. Just a jumbo marshmallow on a lollipop stick, dipped in melted chocolate, and then dipped in crushed-up graham crackers.







The pretzel rods and strawberries were both dipped in that colored melting candy from Michaels. Super easy!













The donut hole tree was just a styrofoam tree from Michaels, donut holes from the Dunkin' Donuts down the street, and a whole bunch of toothpicks!








Here's the whole table:



Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun, especially the birthday girl. She told me it was her favorite party she'd ever been to! I sent the kids home with little goodie bags (I learned my lesson from Ava's party!). The big kids got little notebooks and big chunky woodland pencils and woodland creature masks (for the boys) and barrettes (for the girls). The babies got little hedgehog finger puppets.



























It was A LOT of work, but on the plus side, now my house is already decorated for fall!

10.10.2011

Happiest birthday, Emerson Kate!

Five years ago today, my sweet baby Emerson was born. She is the kindest little person. She is an old soul. She is smart and funny. You never know what's going to come out of her mouth, and I love that!

This milestone has been very emotional for me. Three days after Emerson was born she was diagnosed with Tetralogy of Fallot. It is a heart defect in which, in Emerson's case, part of her heart had a hole and the other part had a large obstruction.

We met with doctors from Children's Hospital and they told us she would need open heart surgery to correct the defect. The surgeon told us that there was a 1-2% chance of serious complications during the surgery. He also said that, without the surgery, there was a 100% chance she wouldn't live to see her 5th birthday.

We obviously elected for the surgery. She was 8 weeks old. It was, without a doubt, the most excruciating thing I have ever gone through.



But here I am today, celebrating 5 years with this amazing little person who continues to inspire me every day.


10.04.2011

Happy little trees

I'm in full-on woodland fairy party mode this week. One of my "craft projects" for the party besides the fabric pennant banner and the felt gnome hats (I've mentioned before that I'm insane, right?) are these little paper trees that I have convinced myself we need at the party:








I didn't have one of those little machines that can cut out those cute little petal shapes, so I ended up just cutting out rectangles from craft paper in various colors/patterns/textures that I got from Michael's. I did use her method of using a pencil to curl the little pieces before I hot-glued them on.

Here's a progress picture:









And here is the final product:








It looks less Christmas-y in person. There's a lot of light pink in there! If I were going to make one for Christmas, I think using a bunch of metallic papers would look cool!

Anyway, more party details to come!

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