Jemmas 2nd Birthday A Fairy Picnic

Jemma Bella turned two at the end of May. She is in love with fairies so we threw her a fairy picnic!

Welcome to the fairy party!
We hung flowers and flowing ribbons from every doorway in the house! The stair railing and the fireplace had flowers and ribbons and all of the picture frames in the house had been changed to fairy pictures by Cicely Mary Barker. As guests walked into the house they saw that our play room had been turned into a "Fairy Dressing Room"

Homemade Tutus and wings in every color were placed around the room for our guests to dress in. Since the boys didn't want to wear tutus we made them capes, after all every fairy knight needs a cape.
We made our guests wands from sticks and branches found on our nature walks. We hot glued flowers and ribbons for the girls, and acorns and pine cones on them for the boys. We then made crowns and necklaces of fairy dust (mini jars full of glitter found in the jewelry section of the craft store).
We had make up, glitter, hair chalk, and tattoos for each of our guests to decorate themselves!

Richard, who is an amazing artist, painted the faces of all the little ones! He painted lots of flowers, bugs and even and ugly troll!

The fairy dressing room full of wands, wings, tutus, glitter and more! Everything a fairy needs to get ready for a party!

Wings for all the guests
Daddy face painting the guests

Auntie Steph doing fairy makeup
Of course I had to use pennants again, these outlined our party area (they are from Jemmas room and are made from pink, purple, and blue vintage fairy and flower fabric). I found a mosquito netting canopy for just $8 on the Internet, we hung ribbons and flowers from its center and strung it over the girls table with fishing line.

Our special fairy table was really cool! All of our guests commented on how rustic and fairy like it looked. Guests even took their log seats home with them, they liked them so much! Our table was made from old fencing that we sanded and stained and then screwed together. It was set on top of some lots from my parents house.

My awesome father trucked 8 huge logs over from his house and chainsawed them into a variety of shapes. He even made some mini seats and tables for the girls dolls and for the garden fairies! We added toadstool cushions to the tops of the plain stumps to make them more comfy!
The fairy table for the birthday girl and her fairy friends


The table is made from old fence and logs! Little toadstool cushions sit on top of some logs


 
The fairy birthday girl eating at her little table
We had lots of fun activities to keep our fairies busy. We found mini bird houses at the craft store and had the kids decorate them to be fairy houses. Over the spring we collected bark, acorns, pine cones, pine needles, flowers, and all kinds of lost things for the kids to decorate their houses with.
Fairy Houses for everyone!


Guests painted and decorated their own fairy houses


Making stepping stones

We found some stepping stone kits at the store and had each of our guests make one for their gardens at home. The girls went threw the house collecting lost things (buttons, coins, bells, doll shoes, etc) for everyone to put on their stones. Since the kits were designed for kids they dried before everyone went home!


The flower Pinata! Complete with 1000 tissue roses and full of Tinkerbell toys and candy!

 
Oh my pinata! I saw a picture of a beautiful flower covered pinata on pinterest and just had to have it. I had never made a pinata before so I wasn't sure how long it would take. The pinata base wasn't a problem, we covered a giant balloon with shreaded newspaper and a paste made with water and flour. The problem was the flowers. Do you know how many little tissue flowers it takes to cover a giant ball? 1000+!!!! Every night for two weeks I would make flowers, finally I took a whole day and made flowers. I then hot glued them all to the ball. I added ribbons to the bottom and filled it with candy and tinker bell trinkets that I found at the party store.
 
Now for the most important part of any party...the food!!! We hung another canopy over the dinner table in the kitchen, hang from it were flowers and ribbons. On our table we made a runner from moss found at the creek, then we placed logs and wood rounds throughout. Sticking out of the logs were little signs naming the food and fairies. We then scattered flowers and jewels around it all.
 
We had salads (green, fruit, pasta, and chicken), pizza, mini sandwiches, potato wedges, fruit, deviled eggs, and much more. We made sure that all of the food was little and something that a fairy would like! For fun we sprinkled edible flowers from the herb garden on everything! We drank lemonade, fairy fiz (punch), and troll tea, and cooled them all with ice cubes that we froze with violets and rose petals in them.
The food table. Food was set on a bed of moss, surrounded by logs, flowers, and fairies.



What is a party without treats. We had all kinds of cookies, cupcakes, and candy for our fairies to enjoy.
Fairies love sweets right?

Cookies, cakes, candy, oh my!

Fairy wand cake pops!

Jemmas mini birthday cake (she decorated it herself)


My favorite faries Julie and Jemma!
My favorite troll, Jayden!
Daddy and his birthday fairy princess
Beautiful cousin Bri!
 It was a wonderful party! Our 2 year old had a blast and all of her little friends had so much fun!!



Lemonade anyone

Where I grew up there weren't sidewalks, in fact most homes were found at the end of a mile long driveway, so having a lemonade stand was never a possibility. I really wanted my girls to get to experience this, but with a little more pizazz so we made them a custom lemonade stand!
My parents had an island on wheels in their old kitchen, the luckies just remodeled it so they gave us this awesome piece. We took this table and painted it pink. We cut pieces of plywood to fit in each of the openings and painted them with black chalkboard paint and screwed them in. Years ago my parents gave me this beautiful table that had fancy legs and other cute details. One day I stupidly left it out in the rain and the table, which was pretty old, fell apart. I could never bring myself to throw away these beautifully cut legs and pieces so I kept them. They were the perfect addition to our table! Julies only request was that we add a little open/closed sign.
We worked for a few nights and here it is:





Saturday will be the grand opening of J & J's Lemonade Stand! We ordered some adorable pink and black straws and matching bags (for the cookies). Julie has been working on pouring drinks and making change, and Daddy has been planning what artwork he will put on the chalkboards. We will update you with pics from the big event this weekend!

An indoor Easter Picnic


We planned and Easter Picnic at one of our local parks. We invited over 40 of our friends and family, planned tons of games and delicious food. It rained! It poured! The park was flooding, so we had to change our Easter Picnic from the park to our house.

So of course I asked myself, 1. how are we going to fit over 40 people into our house?!?! and 2. how can I make our house look like the cute picnic that we had planned.

I found some really cute picnic decorations on Oriental Trading, there were paper lanterns, pinwheels for our cupcakes, even a pennant cake topper, everyone knows how much I LOVE pennants. They were all light pinks, yellows, and blues which were perfect for Easter, and since they were on Oriental Trading they were a great price! You can find them here Oriental Trading Vintage Picnic Decor

Earlier I had made a million pennants for Jemmas fairy party, I was planning on using these to block off the kids egg hunting site at the park. Since we were inside I decided to hang them on the ceiling with the paper lanterns I had ordered.

We had tons of food to eat so I needed lots of tables, white lace seemed very picnic to me so we set the tables with white lace table clothes, mason jars painted white and tied with the scraps from our pennants, and tons of fresh flowers! I collect egg cups so each table had a few sparkly eggs set in my vintage cups!

I wanted to give each of our guests a little gifts so the girls and I filled 8oz mason jars with Easter M&M's (they were pink, yellow, and blue-I love it when everything matches!), we topped them with little square scraps from our pennants and tied them with a little bow!

As a fun little addition my hubby decorated the walkway to our house with adorable Easter drawings!
Like I mentioned we had tons of food! Everyone brought their favorite picnic treat and we made pressed sandwiches. My newest obsession is bakers twine, I ordered a pastel sampler pack along with some Glassine bags from a great local store Twine and Tape. We made six different delicious pressed sandwiches wrapped them up in the bags, added a label and tied them up-they were so cute!

We had rain the morning of Easter but the afternoon was dry so we got to have a great egg hunt! We visited, ate, and enjoyed the company of wonderful friends and family!
Our oldes baby girl Julie hunting for eggs

The cousins

Each centerpiec had a little garden stake that said, "stop and smell the flowers" each lady got to take a boquet and stake home.






My hubbys easter swirls on the front walk

Baby girl number two, she looked so cute!



Its a Puppy Shower!!


Our good friend Rachael is a vet tech and she LOVES puppies. When it came time to plan her baby shower all she wanted were dogs, so we planned a Puppy Party!!!

We made our own invitations, baby Cahill was so cute in the belly!
We added little paw print confetti to each of the invitations

Cahill's paw print banner

Notes to the baby

We had tons of food but these puppy print cupcakes were my favorite!

If you haven't noticed yet I love pennants, these are made with different puppy fabrics, they are now hanging in Cahills room



Every table had a centerpiece with a silly title like, 'water bowl' 'puppy treats' 'puppy toys' we filled dollar store vases with doggy bones to hold the signs up. After the party the bones went to work with Rachael for the dogs!