Easy Things to do for a Fun Fairy Party

As I mentioned in my previous post, we recently had a fairy-themed party for my now six-year-old daughter. While we bought a few Tinkerbell items that were pre-made, we also had a great time making our own decorations and games. These are a few of my favorites:

Decorations

Balloon flowers

We made these cute balloon flowers for the yard and garden.

To make them, we used four balloons for the petals, one for the center, clear packing tape, and a wooden yard stake (available at hardware stores).

It took a few failed attempts before I realized that the secret to making these work was to under inflate the balloons. I made the red ones slightly larger than the yellow, and I only filled the red ones half-way. That gave  me the extra room I needed to tape the ends together as a flower.

Another very important note: you'll want to cover the end of the stake with tape so that any splinters won't pop your flowers!

Here they are, ready for the garden!

Welcome to Pixie Hollow Sign

We have a long, wooded driveway, so we made a welcome sign for the party-goers to welcome them to our version of Pixie Hollow. This was just an old shipping box, and I covered a large logo with white spray paint, then painted the letters and flowers with bright colors. If you look closely, you'll notice a tree face. We have several of these in our driveway, and they're always a big hit with kids and adults alike.

Other Decorations

We also picked up a few strands of floral garland and colorful, large silk flowers at a craft store. We placed those around tables and a lawn tent that we used as a craft station for the girls.

Activities

Luckily, we had perfect weather for our party, so we did everything outside. We could have done all of these indoors, but they wouldn't have been as fun.

Decorate Your Own Fairy Wings

I found these great cardboard wings online. We set up a decorating station for the girls to bedazzle their own wings for the party. We let everyone do this first, so they were occupied as everyone arrived. 

We put out stickers, markers, and stick on jewels, and the wings all turned out lovely.

Treasure Hunt

Everyone's favorite activity seemed to be our backyard treasure hunt. We picked up a little gift for each girl from the dollar store, wrapped them, and hid each in a different spot in our yard. We then drew up a fairy-themed treasure map that I copied so we'd have one for each girl. 

I then drew a path to each "station" on the map, where an activity would need to be performed (stuff like walking around the turtle sandbox four times, swinging seven times, crawling through the tunnel, standing on your left leg and counting to fourteen, etc.). It gave everyone a chance to move around and do a few fun things, plus at the end they each had a treasure to open and take home.

Cupcakes

My daughter is a huge marshmallow lover, and we chose to make these simple flower cupcakes for her and her guests.

They were so simple to decorate, she did them all herself! I added plain frosting and cut each pink strawberry marshmallow into three pieces. She placed an M&M in the center, then five marshmallow pieces around it for the petals. 

Favors

As favors, we made these simple Fairy Flowers for everyone to take home and grow. We used small flower pots, potting soil, Viola seeds (I've heard that fairies love Violas), green glitter, Ziploc bags, labels and decorations.

To assemble them, I first mixed the potting soil and green glitter in a bowl, then spooned some into each Ziploc baggie. I sprinkled a few seeds into each baggie, then sealed it and rolled it up, and placed it into a pot. I printed the labels with printable business cards, but you could write your labels by hand or use plain paper. 

I picked up the little felt flowers in the dollar bin at the craft store, and clipped the label to the baggie. So cute!

We had an incredibly fun fairy party, and I hope you do, too!

An Inexpensive, Easy Gift for a 60th Birthday

We'll soon attend a 60th birthday party, and everyone has been asked to bring 60 things as a gift. This could work for any birthday, but for some reason, 60 seems to be the popular number to do this sort of thing. Sure, we could take a jar of 60 jellybeans, a bag of 60 buttons, 60 postage stamps, or any number of other things. But what's the fun in that? I chose instead to make a custom, framed print of 60 words that describe the birthday girl.

Luckily, I was able to pick up a brand new float frame from our local thrift shop. I have great luck with frames there and got this one for only $7. The best part of the gift is that if she doesn't like the print, she can just replace it with photos and it's still a nice birthday present.

To make your own, here's what you'll need:

-Poster board
-Markers or pencils (I used three complimentary colors and alternated them)
-Straight edge
-Razor or scissors for cutting a straight edge

First, you'll want to decide on the size of your print. I Chose to keep the print's edges a couple of inches from the frame because I used a float frame. If you have a mat, you may want to fit it to that, or you could fill the whole frame. It's really up to you and the size of your frame.

Once you decide on the size, measure and mark your poster board accordingly. I left the poster board width as is, so I only needed to measure up each side.

I then used the straight edge to draw a line to connect my marks.

I used my razor knife to cut across the line. You could also use scissors, just ensure that you're cutting right on the line.

Once my paper was ready, I searched for an easy-to-draw font that would look good in the print. This page has a wonderful font that I found easy to use and I liked the way it looked on my page.

I came up with a list of 60 words. Thesaurus.com is an excellent resource for this, but you don't want to forget others like Mom, Daughter, Grandma, etc., as well as the person's name, when you're making your list. I kept the font list and the word list open on my screen while I worked.

I found it helpful to lightly write each word in pencil before I wrote it in marker. Since my marker colors weren't all dark, it worked best when I erased most of the pencil prior to using the marker. If you're using dark colors, you may not need to worry about that, though.

I wrote 59 of the words around the page, then saved the center area for her name, written much larger. There you have it! I framed it, and now it's ready to give. I think it turned out great, and I enjoyed doing it.

I have to warn you, though - the fancy writing took more time than I'd originally expected. I spent about 8 - 9 hours total on it, but I spread it out over the course of a few days so that it wasn't too tedious.