Fairy Party

I went all out for my daughter's 3rd birthday when we decided to have a fairy party. There were just so many creative possibilities for decorations I could make and games and activities we could do.

I didn't have a specific colour scheme as I do with most of my parties because I wanted it to be a fairy woodland with just riots of colours and lots of different textures and layers.

Naturally as a scrapbooker, I had to make the invitations myself. I wanted to make them fun and fairy like without using the Disney Tinkerbell fairies (although I did incorporate some Tinkerbell fairies in the decorations because I knew this is what the kids would readily recognize, and my daughter really likes Tinkerbell).



Then I got creative with things that I had in my recycling bin. Empty soup containers, empty drinkable yogourt containers, plastic applesauce containers etc. to make various decorations like toadstools, and fallen logs.

I used hot glue to keep the tops and bottoms together, paper mached them and then painted them with acrylic paint.

 The results I think were pretty great considering that it cost nothing and the kids were able to help in the creation of these fun and whimsical decorations. It was a great project to do together!

The log I made from an empty Pringles container.  I rolled some cardboard into a small tube and taped it on for the branch. Paper mached, painted and hotglued some dried moss and a small bird that I bought at the dollar store.  It's hard to tell in this picture but on the log standing upright I also made a small hole in the log and a branch for the bird to perch on.

I made two banners for this party. Once that said Welcome to Fairyland which stretched across the room and one that said Tink's workshop near the table where we would do a lot of the games and activities.

Other things I made included fairy wands which were made of foam stars glued to wooden chopsticks which I painted with glitter glue and hot glued irridescent curling ribbon to.

During the party the girls decorated their fairy wands with glitter, sequins and stickers. 

I  filled the room with hanging paper butterflies and tissue paper poms.

I also found these great wooden miniature birdhouses at my local dollar store unpainted. So I painted them fun colours, covered them in glitter glue to make them sparkle, hot glued a few flowers and butterflies to them and hung them all over the main floor of my house as echanted "fairy houses."

I always like to start a party with an activity that is easy for people to join into at any time (because inevitably not everyone arrives at the same time) and that's easy for a child to "catch up" on later if they show up to the party a little late. And, this also means that small children who get bored quickly aren't sitting around waiting for everyone to arrive before the party can start.

Each child was transformed into a fairy as soon as they arrived. They were given fairy wings, tutus, fairy wands and a crown (these were also what I put in their lootbags at the end) . I also enlisted the help of my oldest daughter, niece and a friend to be the older fairies to help out with activities. I think they had as much fun as the party guests did and they were a big help! 

One of the games that kids of this age love to play is musical chairs so I modified that slightly to fit our fairy party and the fairies played musical lily pads. I cut lily pad shapes out of flattened cereal boxes and did some free hand drawings of water lilies on them to make them pretty. Painted with acrylic paints and weighed them down while they dried so they wouldn't curl and voila! Muscial lily pads! The pond I just cut from a plastic blue disposable table cloth.

Another activity we played was fishing for fairy wishes in the pond. I sandwiched a paperclip in between two flower shapes cut from scrapbook paper and printed a number on each. I then bought a cheap toy fishing rod with magnet on the the end so each child could "fish" for a fairy wish.  The number that they fished out of the pond won them a small prize.

They loved this one! They had to be easy games that 2 and 3 year olds would be able to play. 

Other activities included a find the fairy scavenger hunt, catching bubbles with nets (I had a bubble blower going and while the music played they had to catch as many bubbles with their nets as possible. When the music stopped they had to freeze), and making fairy dough. I pre-made playdough in fun colours and each child was given a couple of colours which they sprinkled with fairy dust (glitter) and then they put this in their lootbags to take home.

The piece de resistance for this party though was definitely the tree. And once again, while I take full credit for the idea, my mind only seems to think in one dimension when creating objects from cardboard whereas my talented out-of-box thinker of a husband made something far more outstanding out of cardboard and blew me away. It was awesome!!

 It's hard to believe that this came out of cardboard and tempra paint. My man is pretty amazing with this stuff!  It really made the living room fun!

I kept the food fairly simple with sandwiches, some cut up fruit and veggies and a few fun things for dessert. 

My mother in law made her butterfly cupcakes, and I placed fairy picks in the cupcakes I made. 

And once I saw the toadstools I just had to try them. They were so cute and turned out really well!

They're made up of raspberries and mini marshmallows. I also coloured some sweetened shredded coconut green for the grass! FUN!