[Crafty Monday] Birthday Party Fun

January 11, 2010 · Filed under birthdays & parties, kids · Tagged butterflies, butterfly cake, fairies, forest animal birthday party, Fuzzy Town animals, gnomes, Holztiger animals, kids birthday cakes, kids birthday parties, kids party activities, kids party games, sugar cookie recipe

This photo of Elena holding her birthday cake is my favorite photo from the birthday party on Saturday:

I hope you don’t mind, but I have a boatload of photos to share.

Favors

I bought large muslin bags (these are 6″ x 9″) and stamped each bag with this fairy stamp from Paper Source:

Then I filled them with these treats (Moleskine kraft cahier notebook, set of mini markers, bookmark, stickers and a bird whistle = about $5 total for each favor, including the bag):

These bags were a great choice. We did some other crafts during the party (a door hanger and fairy wands), and when the girls finished, I put their creations right into their bags. Same with the kids who won prizes.

Decorations

More wall decorations (see Friday’s post). Here’s one more wall, this time with forest animals I cut out of a set of Martha Stewart scrap book papers (and the trees are from A Print A Day‘s Tiniest Garden digital kit):

I gathered all of the girls forest animal toys and stuffed animals, and put them around the room as decorations. Here’s a little forest scene using the girls’ Holztiger wooden animals & tree:

And we decorated the room with a lot of  Fuzzy Town forest animals:

Activities

The girls decorated their little Moleskine kraft cahiers with rubber stamps, stickers and markers. (I got this idea from the Hello Craft booth at Crafty Bastards):

And then they got each other’s autographs, which I thought was too cute for words.

Games

Do you know the cotton ball game? I was googling party games and came across it – it is the most hilarious kids’ party game I’ve ever seen, and it’s so simple to set up and play. The winner is the person who, blindfolded, gets the most cotton balls from one bucket to another, using a spoon. The cotton balls are so light, you don’t know if you have any on your spoon or not (usually not – that’s when the you can’t stop giggling as you’re watching people carry an empty spoon from one bucket to the other).

We laughed ourselves silly playing this game.

This is another favorite photo of the day (notice she doesn’t have any cotton balls on her spoon):

Cake and Cookies

I happened across this photo of a butterfly cake the other day, and I thought, “Hey! I can make Elena’s cake look like that!” So I made my own version, which was so easy, and boy, I just really love how it turned out:

The blue dots are candy pearls, which I found at a local baking specialty store. I bought them not knowing what I would use them for. The butterflies, which come on thin wires (perfect for bending and inserting into a cake!), came from Michael’s. I took the wires off of the small butterflies and simply pressed them into the side of the cake.

The cake was four layers of chocolate and vanilla (from a mix), and the frosting was vanilla (from scratch). It was so good.

Here are all the girls with Elena and her cake:

And finally, here are a few of the magical forest cookies I made, which is the first time I’ve decorated with royal icing. Considering I threw most of the tips and rules of royal icing out the window when I started to decorate them in a hurry at 10pm the night before the party,  I think they turned out pretty well. Plus, they were delicious.

(I used this cookie recipe).

Right before the party was over, they had a group hug:

I love these photos. We had a very fun day.