A Merry Affair

My baby brother Andrew, his wife Kim, and their perfect baby boy Jeremy are stationed in Baumholder, Germany. Baby Jeremy was born in Germany (you may remember our international baby shower), and has celebrated all of his milestones overseas (he is only nine months and has been walking, running, dancing, and talking for months!!). My brother and his family planned their first trip home to the states and I offered to throw Jeremy an early first birthday party so that he wouldn't have to miss out on the huge family celebration. My brother and his wife Kim decided they want to have a Super Hero Party, so a week into their stay (they visited the US for a month, two weeks in New York and two weeks here in California) all of our crazy relatives and friends showed up to party, and meet the handsome baby boy!!

We are lovers of chalk and chalkboard signs (thank you hubby for making me a ton for Mothers Day, I am sure we will use them forever!!), so we decorated the front walk and porch with our favorite Super Words!

A Super Hero must wear a disguise, right?!? We had two sided satin capes and felt lightening bolt masks made for each of our guests! As guests walked in they were greeted by our table full of goodies.

There was a great deal on streamers (only 50 cents!) So we figured we would decorate the house in our favorite super colors! We picked red, black, blue, yellow, orange, and green and hung streamers from the ceiling. Baby Jeremy loved to stare up at the pretty colors!

Every Super hero needs a city to save, right? My daughter helped me build this awesome little city out of cardboard boxes, paint and construction paper. We use the city as the backdrop for our food table. We had a Super Dog buffet (we offered guests ten different kinds of hot dogs, plus our usual salads)

Our city even had a mini Super Jeremy flying above it!

I think that my favorite thing were the Jolt Sodas that I found at BevMo. They matched the lightening bolt masks, and they tasted delicious!

We had table set up outside with different colored table clothes. As center pieces I used balloon anchors and attached supper words on each of the sparkly wires sticking out.
And of course the kids all had a blast!!

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.