A Fairy Wonderland Birthday: Part 1, the Decorations

On Sunday ER celebrated her 4th birthday with the family and some close friends, this time with a Fairy Wonderland Party! I used the second printable party I won from Paper & Cake to make it memorable.
Guests were greeted with this sign. It's customizable and would also make a great place mat. If you replaced the "Welcome" with a little guest's name and erased the rest of the printing, the kids could draw on it. Each could create their own little fairy drawing, while waiting for food.

A blank full page line drawing of each fairy for the kids to use as a coloring page is the only thing I wish this party kit would've included, so the little kids could've had some kind of fairy themed activity to do. ER and one of her little guests were too little to make the pin wheels without a lot of adult supervision. There are full page color fairies, if I hadn't already put together the favors, I'd have used those with iron on paper to make t-shirts or to decorate a little bag. For our kitchen table we used the pinwheels, I created ahead of time, as our centerpiece and spread out a few of the fairy standees. Cupcake picks also make great table confetti, and mini drink coasters as ER figured out. You can customize several of the picks on the page before printing. ER's name was added to them, which she loved.Here is a close up of the fairy standees, I plan on using these as scrapbook embellishments when I do the layouts for ER's birthday. They were printed on acid free cardstock and are ready to go! The favor baskets, without the handles, were turned into little candy dishes that held pretty chocolate mints. I double printed the papers to made the favor baskets and pinwheels. So as not to waste anything, leftover scraps became paper napkin rings.The rest of the full patterned paper scraps were used to make food labels for our buffet, along with more cupcake picks. We had grilled burgers, chicken apple Gouda sausages, fruit salad, and baked beans. Plus my friend Margaret brought her fabulous bean dip for us to munch on ahead of time. I'll share that recipe soon!It was a pretty simple menu with old family favorites like my mom's pasta salad and new ones, like strawberry spinach salad with lemon poppy seed dressing. I'm still bugging her to give me so I can share it with all of you!ER requested party straws for her birthday so I turned the cupcake picks into straw decorations. They served the dual purposes of making the party fairy-licious AND more importantly, helping everyone keep track their cup. I put them out in a photo mug made with pictures of the birthday girl. We made those last Christmas as gifts and for once I even ordered one for myself. I love mine and high recommend you make one for yourself, pronto!The last thing I made for ER's birthday was this fairy banner. ER really liked the fairy illustrations and along with the happy birthday pennant banner were some with just the fairies. I used them with some favorite photos of ER playing dress up and in her dance recital costume to make a banner for our fireplace mantle.

Thank you again to Paper & Cake for offering such a great giveaway over at Kendra's blog My Insanity. I was so fortunate to have won! The printable parties, like Fairy Wonderland, are truly wonderful with many special touches and there are so many ways to use the components! You can see how I used the Fabulous Flowers Printable Party in my beach bucket party favors and birthday cupcakes posts.