Fairy Party

It's challenging to decorate with such a flowery theme in December because there's just not much available in the stores (unless you are looking for red and green.) I found this light up gerbera daisy garland at Amazon.com. I found the figurine in the centerpiece at the dollar store, the tea pot is one I have in my collection and the tea cups I purchased about 4 years ago at Birthdayexpress.com, but I haven't seen them lately.

The canopy is from our bed, so I just thumb-tacked it up to the ceiling and it was the perfect size. The table is a small table we use up in the playroom covered with a purple tablecloth and a couple yards of sparkly star organza fabric.

Sprinkling pixie dust on her friends as they arrived.

Our first activity was to make fairy wreaths. I wrapped the flowers around pipe cleaners using floral tape. 

Fairy nests (phylo dough "nests" filled with M&Ms)

Tinkerbell's cake. My idea was to use sparklers for candles, but the ones that I had on hand were not working at all, luckily I had these other long candles on hand.

The girls had fun decorating their own cupcakes.

I found plastic stemmed desert bowls at Party City and just hot-glued some artificial rose petals to the edge to make it look more like a flower.

Here is the way I set up the photo corner. I had fun taking pictures of all the girls. After the party I used the Photoshop brushed (Obsideon Dawn) to give them a sprinkling of pixie dust.

Drinking all the last bits of tea.

Fairies drinking tea.

All kinds of fairy-sized goodies.

Top tier is chocolate covered strawberries, then flower shaped lemon tea sandwiches. On the bottom, I made triangle shaped chicken tea sandwiches.

I found these glow stick fairy wands at the dollar store. They were fun to use while watching the new Tinkerbell movie.

John Deere Tractor Party

Back in August, my son celebrated his third birthday with a tractor party. He loves everything with wheels, especially tractors!

 

Our neighbors let us borrow their tractors...

...and the kids loved climbing around on them!

The John Deere pedal car was a big hit!

So were the boxed lunches packed up in John Deere gable boxes. I ordered them from this online store. I also purchased some astro-turf from Home Depot to use as a table cloth...cause it looks like grass!

Inside their lunch boxes was a sandwich, juice, applesauce, sesame sticks, and John Deere fruit snacks.

I made the cake, but in hind site I would have made the base a little wider to accommodate the toy tractor a little better. We also had "haystacks" made from chow mein noodles, almond butter and melted butterscotch chips. Just mix it all together and drop by large scoops onto some waxed or parchment paper and let set.

.

Along with the cake, we served little piggy sherbet scoops. I used a big scoop for the body, a little scoop (from the melon baller) for the nose, mini chocolate chips for the nostrils and regular chocolate chips for the eyes. The ears are made from pink Jelly Bellies.

 For goody bags, I found the John Deere coloring books at the dollar store, the fruit snacks were from the grocery store and the John Deere logo lollipop and the popcorn were from the Green Fun Store (website listed in the link above).

I packaged them all up in John Deer retail bags that cost just pennies a piece from the same website.

Totally Awesome 80's Party

Last Thursday was my 35th birthday and I planned an 80's themed party to celebrate. Like Happy Birthday to me, fer sure!

After spending a few hours digging through all the clothes at Goodwill, I came up with these outfits. I went for the mall chic look while my husband sported the Miami Vice look.

My daughter (on the right) thought her outfit looked weird...sadly, this is just the kind of stuff I wore in middle school. I even found Jellies (shoes) at Target on clearance for $1.99. I loved my Jellies back in the 80's, but man they sure did make our feet stink!

I even made one of these to go with her outfit...most of you who were little girls in the 80s had barettes like this.

Dan and Scott fake laughing.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!

Friends from high school looking totally tubular!

Like, gag me with a spoon!

The shirt still fits...sort of!

Back in the 80's I remember going to the mall and people asking us to take the Pepsi challenge to see which soda we like better: Coke or Pepsi...so we had our own blind taste test...some people could tell right away, others thought they knew, but were way off.

We served Breakfast Club Sandwiches, cool ranch Doritos and grape and strawberry crush to wash it down. It was hard to find "80's" themed food, but as I was working on coming up with some ideas I realized that this was the time when we really started to see all the processed foods and major junk food start to show up in the stores...lots of prepackaged stuff that I don't normally buy.


Of course there were sweets too!


You can't have an 80's party without the most rad video game star! These pac-man cookies were fun to make.


Mid way through the party, my husband came out dressed as Richard Simmons...people were laughing so hard, it took about 10 minutes for everyone to regain their composure.


Here they are participating in the 80's relay where you have to run from the other side of the yard to the chair, pick up the Thigh Master and do 10 reps and run back.


It was a Thigh Master disaster and my husband stayed in character the whole time!


I turned our dining room into an 80's museum. Here are the few things left from my childhood.


On the wall was a huge 80's collage poster we had printed out. Tons of 80's memories here!


If you click on this picture, you can see it much better, or drag it to your desktop and open it. I found it by Googling 80's collage...I love Google!


In the museum was a vintage 80's apple computer that was up and running some original 80's old school games...the kids and adults liked playing them.


Like this is totally a blast from the past...back in the day, this cell phone was all the rage.


For my cake, my friend baked me a "16 Candles" cake. It was a lot of fun to stroll down memory lane, but the best part was seeing what our friends came dressed up like...totally rad dude, to the max!

Groovy Baby...70's party pages

So first of all, these photos are almost 5 years old...so that's how on top of my scrapbooking I am! I'm glad I waited to do these pages though...how perfect is the Mellow line of paper from Basic Grey?

Okay...I'm a huge Brady Bunch fan, so I had to include them on the invite!

This is the invite I created for said 70's event!

...Now check out my outfit! Far out man!!! My husband totally freaked out my niece with his afro. I think this year we are going to do a Totally 80's party for our 35th birthday.

Andrea's Bridal Luncheon 2005

Right before Andrea got married, I threw her a bridal luncheon. She was using hydrangeas in her wedding, so I picked some off our hydrangea bush and used them in the place settings.


This is a menu I made for each place setting. It also had pages with recipes and a little info on the history of tea. The little flip book is held together by a large jump ring with a tea pot charm.


I found these cute organdy purses at Bellenza and they were the perfect pretty party favor.

I even had enough flowers to make this wreath for the front door.

I found these blue icing flowers at the Decorette shop and "glued" them on to the sugar cubes with royal icing.

I made tea sandwiches, chocolate covered strawberries, scones and had fresh fruit.

The youngest guests at the luncheon had tea in these adorable miniature tea cups I found.