Charlotte is turning three a fairy garden party there will be!

*** Thanks to Cortney Talbott again for most of the pictures!  

Yes cheesy rhyming was involved. I bit the bullet and threw my first "kid" party.  I was really excited for the decorating and planning, but a little nervous about the actual execution.  Overall I think it was a success.  I learned some things.  I was too caught up planning my sister's baby shower the month before (another post I still haven't done)  so I didn't do enough prep for the party ahead of time.  Luckily I was able to re-use a few things from the shower!

The Invitation

The whole reason I wanted to do a fairy party- aside from the fact that Charlotte loves to dress-up with fairy wings and pretend to be Cinderella's fairy godmother was this invitation set  from the TomKat studio.  I definitely could have done something cheaper- but not cuter.  I am in love with them.

The Costumes

Girl guests had wings and butterfly wands
Boys had gnome hats and star wands
After I ordered them from this great cheap place Halo Heaven (I really had to restrain myself not to buy every girl a tutu and halo too they were so cheap!)  I found some foam ones they could have decorated for a $1 from the Dollar Store- I will definitely check there first when I plan a little better for the next party.

I was pleased with how well the games/crafts/activities went.  I tried hard to make them age appropriate (aka very little turn taking or competition)- I remember bawling during a game of musical chairs at one of my birthday parties.

Fairy-Gnome Treasure hunt.  I told the kids fairies and gnomes love shiny things- so I'd hidden a bunch of rings and small glittery foam flower stickers outside on the porch.  Not really "hidden" I basically just tossed them around my porch!  I gave each kid a small sheer drawstring bag- the ones they use for wedding favors (the gnomes could also use their hats instead).  They loved this!

When they brought them back in I let them each choose a pipe cleaner and thread the rings and flowers on it to make a bracelet.  They did really well with this and only needed help to tie them on their wrists.  

Such a Charlotte face!  Don't mess with this fairy!

Eat pizza, salad and fruit (thanks Audrey and Kelli).  A little tricky getting them all dished up and they ate way less than I thought they would but it seemed to be food that most of them liked.

The peanut gallery on the floor.

Sing happy birthday twice- because the fan blew the candles out the first time.  My favorite part was that Charlotte sang to herself, "Happy birthday dear Charlotte...)

I did mini vanilla cupcakes the first family party and mini chocolate the second time.  The frosting turned out better the second time. 

Read Pinkalicious- with some actions from the kids to make it more fun.  A little hard to keep their attention and keep them sitting so everyone could see but they loved the story and so did I!

Fairy/Gnome says dancing.  I made a play list of Charlotte's favorite dancing songs (think Despicable Me, Tangled, Little Mermaid...) we did just a couple of turns having a kid say, "Fairy says to twirl, bippity boppity boo and waving the magic wand).  Then another kid would have us hop etc.  They needed lots of help with ideas and we could have done this one longer but after a few minutes I just let them get their groove on.

And boy did they!  This is exactly what I envisioned when I planned the party. Pure fairy dancing fun!

Put the dots on the butterfly.  Found the butterfly on the Family Fun website and I just printed it on two different colors of card stock so I wouldn't have to color it.  Then I bought color coding sticker dots and let each kid have a whole sheet of 12 (or even 2 sheets oh happy day!) and let them all go to town at once.  Way better than waiting in line and "winning" at this age stickers are the coolest!

HUGE fairy coloring pages courtesy of Auntie Marti.  I just put the crayons in mason jars to make them look like centerpieces and dumped them out when the time came.  If I didn't already have this hot pink table cloth on loan I probably would have done paper table cloth to let them color on that too.

Present Time!

Things I Learned:

DO...

• Plan more games than you think you'll need because I went through all of mine even though I thought they'd get bored sooner
• Plan it during the week in the middle of the day.  If you want more guests (dads excluded).  Every person we invited happened to be available on a Monday at lunchtime!
• Have a friend (or sister-in-law named Audrey) who doesn't have kids at the party come to help- it's the only reason my babies got lunch!  She also picked up the pizza, helped corral kids, cleaned up!  My own fairy sister-in-law!
• Keep the party short (1 hour or 1.5 is more than enough)- I planned for 2 hours thinking the kids would play and adults talk with any extra time.  But after an hour we'd done almost everything I had planned- and when the activities ended the crying began.  It was really only the last half hour but they were all done- the birthday girl most of all.
• Hand out the favor bags right before the present opening- we had no issues with kids crying about presents- they were all opening their own things- and we tried to keep the presents to a minimum anyway
• Ask someone else to take pictures- I was way too busy to get very many so I felt super  lucky that my friend Cortney brought her fancy smancy camera and clicked away for me!
• Keep the numbers small I've heard one kid per how old they are- I'm never very good at this- there are always more people I want to invite.  Our group was just about perfect- and some of the parents stayed which helped a ton.

Don't

• Plan on them eating a lot- cut the pieces in half- small servings- most of them are too distracted to eat that much

I don't know if we'll be doing a party on this scale every year but I know it was a success because Charlotte still plays birthday party almost every day and for a couple of weeks after the party she asked when she could have another party- maybe when you're 5 honey- it took me a week to un-decorate!

**More on the family party and decorations in another post- I know hard to believe there's more right?!

Castle Caddy and the 3-T

Have you ever heard that phrase, "A day late, a dollar short, but it's okay."  Well mine would go, "Almost a month late, and a little crooked, but hey it still works right?"  I planned to make these for Charlotte's 3rd birthday. Then I got started too late and chances to work on it were few and far between. It felt like it took forever even though it wasn't a very difficult project. It uses very little fabric so other than the PDF pattern for $7 it's very cheap- especially if you just use scraps of what you already have.

First the Castle Caddy-
From this-

 To this-

 To this

I hand stitched the windows and bricks with embroidery thread and machine stitched the rest.

 A sleeping bag for her princess- we need to buy some more so Cinderella can have a friend- I like that her dress makes it so she can stand up.

As soon as I saw this on a craft blog I knew I had to make it- I was thrilled when she got the pattern up on etsy.  I saw one that was made from black felt with lava looking fabric for a manly castle.  She also has a very cool car caddy with a circle track complete with 3-D tunnel/bridge- and a place for their hotwheels!  I'll definitely have to make one for Olly!  Perfect for the car, plane (ha ha! Who knows when  any of my kids will ever get on a plane!), dr visit, church...

I think little sister likes it too- we might have to make another one someday.

Moving on to project #2- the 3-T Supposedly for her birthday but she's 3 all year so it's okay right?  This one is super quick.

The materials-

• Plain pink shirt ( I already had)
• Fusible web (also had) to iron the fabric to the shirt- cut out in the same shape
• Printed a butterfly from Word clipart the size I wanted and a number 3 in the outline format to use less ink in the font you want (about 200 size)- use as a pattern for cutting fabric and fusible web- can either iron the fusible web to the fabric before or after cutting the shapes out
• Left over pieces of fabric
• Zig zag around the whole raw edge the color of the fabric.
• Wish you'd finished it in time for the parties!

I have a disease- as soon as I finished these two projects I got the next ones in line out of my craft closet!