Friday, May 31, 2013

Alice In Wonderland - Eat Me, Drink Me Signs

For sale on Etsy - the Eat Me and Drink Me signs used for my daughter's party.

Friday, May 10, 2013

A Very Mad Screen Porch

The porch was finished the day before the party started - and the furniture arrived later that afternoon. We were so excited to be able to use this space for the party. These pictures were just amazing!

Mad Hatter Tea Party Crafts

Here are some of the things I made for the party...

I made this wreath - it's an exact replica of the instructions found here. Everything was at the dollar store as promised in her blog:
Alice Wreath Instructions 

If you would like this wreath, and don't have the time to buy the supplies and make it, the one I made can be found here: Alice In Wonderland Wreath


Gift Bags: I made these from regular paper bags and cut our of the same scrapbooking paper I bought for other random craft projects for this party. I have lots of extra bags (mostly because I forgot to give out party bags to the first half of the guests that left)...and I'll be selling the remainder of the bags - as well as the fillers (less the candy) on Etsy.  There are 11 bags remaining. If you would like them for your party, they can be found here: Alice Tea Party Favor Bags


 I made 5 of those giant card things out of poster board and construction paper, painted a frame red, and made some "things on a stick" as photo props for a fun place for pictures. Only a few people used it, but those that did had cute pictures! These are some of my favorites we took prior to the party.


 I made some arrows for the stairs. I used spray aerosol glue. Don't EVER use aerosol glue. It worked like shit. These arrows fell apart in like an hour after hanging them up. I'm undecided if I will fix them and sell them on Etsy...probably not...


 We did a Mad Hatter Hat Shop rafting table where the kids could make their own paper pop up hats. We had markers, glue, feather, and other random pipe cleaners and fuzzy balls. This was a big hit. Only a few kids wore their hats (Elmer's School glue took forever to join) - but everyone made one.

Mad Hatter Unbirthday - Food!

To continue with my previous post (as an effort to keep the posting from being too picture intensive) - here is a highlight of the food and table decorations.

The flowers were all bought on sale at Michaels - some of the vases were also on sale for $2.50 and some I already had. The cupcake toppers are from the Michaels scrapbooking section and I taped toothpicks to the back of them. I bought the teacups and saucers from Goodwill. I'm undecided if I'll put them up on Etsy - with flat rate box shipping. I don't really need them....

The punch, which wasn't made yet in the pictures, was 1 part Sprite to 1 part frozen raspberry lemonade topped with frozen raspberries. If you've never had it - it's amazing!



















A Very Merry Unbirthday Tea Party

My daughter's birthday was back in April, but we left the country the Saturday after her birthday for vacation. Because of my husband's retail schedule, he had to wait several weeks after we got back to have a Saturday off. So, we threw an unbirthday party for her over a month late :)

Normally less is more - but with a Mad Hatter tea party, I really felt more was more. Here are some pics from the event. I'll post some more details in future blogs with eventual links to the items I'm selling on Etsy.

For the ceiling decorations, I reused the paper chains I made from the Sesame Street party last year. Then I hole punched 2 really old decks of cards I had form high school (like 14 years ago people!!) and I used basic twine to string them together. I also used regular old, high class crepe paper in 4 different colors - green, yellow, light pink and dark pink. I bought random balls and other paper stuff to drop from the ceiling. I used the same decoration theme across the family room, kitchen and onto our screened porch.













Friday, May 3, 2013

Elmo & Sesame Street - Short Lived Loves

Well, my neighbor wasn't kidding she told me the Elmo love phase my daughter was going through would be short lived. Her 2nd birthday was the perfect time for a Sesame Street party. Now that she is 3, she could care less what Cookie Monster is up to.

I had alot of fun with this party - crafting things really before Pinterest came into my life. The crafts were low key and relatively easy.

I had left over character gift bags which I listed and sold on Etsy.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/126735170/sesame-street-party-favor-bags-elmo

I have some additional Sesame Street paper-ware that I will be listing as well....eventually :)

The bags were purchased at Michael's and I hand drew the features for each of the characters on plain paper and used them as templates for transferring to construction paper. A little bit of glue and imagination and poof!! Burt, Elmo, Cookie Monster, Oscar, Grover, and Big Bird!




To make the paper chains, I just bought a thick book of scrapbooking paper (wait for a 40% off coupon!). I cut them into even strips and glued a chain, just like you were taught in kindergarten. I did keep these in the attic because they were so generically themed, and am actually using these for my daughter's third birthday.



I also bought some generic Sesame Street drop down accent thingies. I don't know what I did with them after the party, but if I find them, I'll put them on Etsy too :)



Birthday Girl!

I made this sign from (you guessed it!!!) construction paper and some letters I printed out from Word as a template. It was cute. Actually was hanging above that door until about a month ago. Somehow managed a full year in that spot!