We’re gearing up for J’s birthday party tomorrow afternoon. Now, we’ve never invited the entire class to a party, and we’re almost always just at home. Where we go overboard is with the cake and the crafts.
This year, J said that she wanted a fairy party and the first thing out of M’s mouth was, “You can’t have a fairy party because you already did that.” Nobody’s going to tell my little girl that she can’t choose her own birthday theme. Especially not my other little girl. So fairies it will be, but I’d already used up some pretty good fairy ideas. It’s rather a blur, but I do remember that we had a fairy hunt, where I hid a bunch of beautiful fairies around the yard that I’d color-copied from The Complete Book of Flower Fairies by Cicely Mary Barker. After the hunt, I’d left glitter around the yard and the girls were young enough that they thought that it was Hard Evidence that Real Fairies Had Actually Been There Just Moments Ago. So cute!
This time is a challenge–something new, but still fairy. We’ve decided that we’ll skip goody bags and let each guest create their own fairy garden. The inspiration was the adorable Enchanted Fairy Garden that J already owns. And if you clicked on that link and it looked vaguely familiar, it’s because I showed you a picture of it when I managed to topple it during my Suspected Home Invasion Freak-out. In fact, that was neither the first nor the last time we managed to spill soil into J’s carpet, so the gardens that we create tomorrow will be faux gardens (you’re welcome, parents-of-guests!).
Anyhow, we were so busy planning the gardens that when W asked if there would be a fairy to put in the garden, I had a mini-meltdown. Of course each garden needed a fairy! But what’s simple enough for six-year-olds and teeny? Well, thanks to splendid Google, I found lots of directions, including these from Family Fun and a bunch of others.
I thought that I’d have all day to plan, but I ended up running to the pediatrician’s office because J’s BFF has strep and J woke up feeling just a smidgen off (she was fine, but if she hadn’t been, I was fully intending to pump her with the first dose of antibiotic asap in order to make the 24-hour contagious period cutoff right before the start of the party). Later I bought some supplies, mostly at Michael’s. Originally I thought that I might go cheap-o with the tissue paper, but I won’t. I’ll end up using it for wrapping stuff. And even the fake flowers were unnecessary thanks to the splendid canister you see there, which is filled with a variety of disassembled paper flower pieces for scrapbookers–love them! And the wooden beads were a variety pack, which is a bit of a bummer because some are the wrong size, but the colors are excellent for a nice little multicultural smorgasbord of fairies.
Supplies
The only other things we needed were permanent markers and some embroidery floss, which I had around the house. We each made a cute little sample fairy.
Our Fairies
Personally, I liked them better bare-headed, but the girls were strongly in favor of hats. I drew faces, cut smaller pieces of pipe cleaner, & embroidery “hair”, but besides that, the girls did it all themselves. A vary satisfying craft.
Of course, it was so satisfying that I ended up puttering around with the various craft supplies and procrastinating about other clearly important party preparations, like baking a cake and making sure that there’s space to walk in the playroom. So I’m signing off to make buttercream frosting.
Enjoy the weekend, everyone, and if you read as soon as I post, I’ve added updated with a few extra events on the weekend post, so you might want to check it again.
