Butterfly Fairy Birthday Party

My last two posts have been about things I made in preparation for my daughter’s 5th birthday party. First I made Fairy Crowns, and then I made Butterfly Fairy Wings for each invited guest. 

Usually with these posts, I start off with a photo of the invitations, but I don’t seem to have taken any! That’s a bit of a bummer, but I can tell you that I used several products from the ‘Sophia’ line by Recollections*, sold at Michaels. Lucky for me, I got these products at clearance prices, but they did also go on sale several times when they first came out, making them quite affordable.

These were the invitations in their original state, and they’re really quite lovely as-is, but I embellished them further with some butterfly cut-outs and stick-on gems.

I also purchased these two paper pads (above), and a Martha Stewart Crafts butterfly punch*. Normally I buy scrapbooking papers in my party colours, but I was quite happy to find these smaller pads in exactly the shades I had wanted to use for the party! I didn’t use the gold or coral tones though.

For the party decorations, I already had a few paper lanterns in the right colours from my daughter J’s Geisha birthday party. I ordered the rest from my usual source: Luna Bazaar*. (The Canadian dollar was stronger then). I swear that orange one looked peach in real life!

As you can see in the photo above, I punched out many, many butterflies from my Sophia papers, and affixed them to the lanterns with glue dots. (Handy little things! I’d never used them before!) The Sophia line also had the larger butterfly die cuts that I purchased, as well as the paper doilies that I made into the ball decorations, using a tutorial I found on Pinterest.

Chalkboard signs had just started to be all the rage, so I bought one from Michaels* and drew this little welcome sign for the party guests.

Because of the Fairy theme, I really wanted to have this party outside, in our 3-acre backyard. I prepared a relatively level area; hanging the lanterns, setting up a table and chairs, laying out a nice pink tablecloth, setting up all the fairy crowns and wings. . .

The guests were arriving, the girls were excitedly choosing which colour of wings they wanted and putting them on, I was juuuuust finishing bringing all of the food out, and. . .

It started to rain.

It became clear pretty quickly that the leaves of the trees were not going to provide adequate shelter, and that this was not just a passing sprinkle. I ran into the house, got all of our umbrellas, and handed them out to everyone. A few of the other Moms helped me get all of the food back into the house.

I was sooooooo disappointed!! My hopes and dreams of a perfect fairy party in the woods were dashed, I hadn’t bothered to clean my house, and to make matters worse, this was the day it wasn’t supposed to rain! I had already shifted the party date from its original day because the weather forecast had predicted rain that day, and that day had ended up being perfectly sunny!

The rain shower was brief but fierce, and there was just no way we could resume the party outside, with everything completely soaked. I did my best not to let my disappointment show, and we had the party indoors.

Thankfully, these butterfly sugar cookies I had made were not damaged by the rain. I had to photograph them quickly, too, because the girls were dying to eat them!

You can NOT, by the way, have a Fairy party without moss accessories. I was thrilled to find these moss-covered foam blocks at Michaels, and scored them at 50% off. Two made for perfect cookie stands, and I also made a cake stand.

Here’s the birthday girl, enjoying her special cookie.

After cookies had been eaten, it was craft time! I always like to plan at least one crafty activity for my kids’ birthday parties, but this party had left me stumped for weeks as to what we were going to to. Finally, inspiration struck while I waited in the check-out line at Michaels!

The butterfly shapes on that magazine caught my eye, and when I looked inside the magazine, I saw that templates were provided! Obviously embroidery is too time-consuming and advanced for five-year-olds, but it was easy to adapt it to a painting activity.

Michaels was also selling burlap-wrapped boards at clearance prices, so I grabbed a bunch, made stencils with the templates in the magazine, and gessoed the shapes onto the burlap panels. I provided cheap paintbrushes, and acrylic craft paints in the party colours, and each girl got to paint her own butterfly. I also had some stick-on flowers and gems to embellish the paintings.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The girls seemed to really enjoy this craft!

Time for cake and presents! Sadly, the rain had damaged the cute little royal icing butterflies I had painstakingly made for the cake and cupcakes. So just pretend that everything in this photo is perfect!

The kids, of course, didn’t care, and the cupcakes were gone as fast as the cookies.

I think this was the first time I made a glittered birthday candle (thanks again, Pinterest!), and little A just LOVED it! Turquoise is her favourite colour, after all.

No boyfriends!

Everyone went home after that, and I went outside to survey the wreckage. . .

(Just try to imagine the food table as it would have been: with two groups of cookies, a lovely beverage dispenser with pink juice, cute paper cups and napkins, a lovely bouquet of faux hydrangeas in the party colours, and smaller faux florals throughout). Sigh.

I was actually pretty surprised at how well the paper lanterns held up! The paper doily ball decorations were pretty sad, and the beautiful birthday banner I had hand painted was ruined, but I learned my lesson. NEVER plan an outdoor party without a plan B in case of rain.

At least I could get two food photos in natural light, with a nice woodsy background.

And since she looked so darn cute in her party outfit, I had to take some photos of the birthday girl! My camera battery died (figures), so these are just iPhone pics, but I’m glad I’ve got ’em!

(We got double use out of this whole ensemble, because she wore the same thing for Halloween. I wouldn’t have made her such elaborate wings otherwise!)

Happy 5th Birthday, my sweet girl!

 

* I receive no compensation of any kind for recommending certain brands or products