I love planning parties!! I love doing as many of the details as I can on my own. I love the craftiness, the personalization and the originality that comes with DIYing. For Kenna's second birthday, I realized that she could care less about the theme- so I picked fairies.With a winter birthday, we had to do an indoor party, and at 4 months pregnant, I was NOT hosting at my hosue. TheHickory Museum of Art offers party packages, and one of them is fairy themed. Sold. At first my thought was to do a woodland themed party- garden fairies, and earthy things like mushrooms, river rocks, and moss would be great decor.
But when I went shopping for the first time, I somehow got swept away by all things neon green and pink. hmmm. My earthy party turned into a hot pink fairy party in one day!! That was fine, though. I embraced it and got to work making some simple crafts.
Cupcakes from Walmart. I made the flowers out of candy melts using this tutorial. **LINK, where are you??** Super-easy. (No, I do not bake. I do, however, covet the delicious icing that Walmart uses on their cakes, and buy from the bakery as often as my diet will allow.)
The weekend of the party was a little insane. We had just taken in a 10 week old foster child, my 18 year old sister had moved in 7 days earlier, and my parents had just driven up from Florida the day before. Oh, and I was pregnant. Needless to say, I was a little frantic getting set up- the art museum only allows 30 minutes for party set-up- so someone else had the camera. This makes me sad since everything was so pretty, and the pictures came out soo badly. :( No offense, anonymous relative.)
The Birthday Girl! (sporting her fairy costume, and matching light-up fairy high heels. Oh my!)She's wearing one of the art projects included at the art party- they made Fairy Crowns, Fairy wings, and fairy wands. It was fun, and each craft waseasily modified for all ages, which was good since we had a couple 6 and 7 year olds mixed in with our 2 year olds. 
DIY treat bags- I simply used brown paper bags and printed off each child's name (in a woodland fairy font). Then I used my mega-scrapbooking skills to embellish the nameplates. The clips on the bags are wooden clothespins with fairy decals I made- another super-easy craft. (The fairy clipart was repeated on the invitaitons and some of the other decorations.) 
Seriously wish we had gotten better pictures- this looked amazing in person. Weeks before the party, I visited the space, and realized that the "party" was staged in a cavernous room that doubled as storage. It was icky taupe colored and the ceilings were 25 feet high. Can I say ugly without hurting anyone's feelings?? It didn't feel particularly "artsy", and I was freaking out that a little table for 10 kids was going to get swallowed up in that space. My solution was this: I stole some giant sticks (some might call them limbs...) from a neighbor's yard and hot-glued some pink and green silk flowers to them. Then I hung some of those round fairy disks I made (along with some that simply had a "2" or a "K" on them). I stuck the sticks in large glass vases with river rocks. It looked really natural and pretty. They were really tall, so it added height to the tables and drew the eyes upward a little. I put two on the main table and one on the gift table.
I also spruced up the table by making some pretty Napkins, fan-folded and secured with silk flowers glued to ribbon. The pink flufy pompom was so easy to make with tissue paper and floral wire! 
We also tied balloons to each chair, and a cluster for the birthday girl. (can you see the hideous furniture in the corners? Not very party-like...) 
Did I mention that this space was HUGE? We took advantage of the ceiling height and strung a bunch of huge, homemade pompom chains (so easy to make!!) around the entire room. It was so festive and brought color to the otherwise dreary art room walls. I think I (and by "I" , I mean my reluctant sister) made about 25 of these. I am pretty sure the art lady wanted me to leave them at the end of the party, since they made the room feel so much cozier and kid-like! Other details about the party- I'll try to find pictures:
treat bags:
*fairy playdough
*fairy bracelets
*fairy erasers
*fairy tattoos
*fairy dust (pixie sticks)
Food at the party:
cupcakes
rice crispy star wands with pink sparkles
more details to come... my brain is fried!
