Your Birthday is a Wonderland!

I am still recovering from Saturday morning's 5th birthday party for Kate. The forecast for the weekend had looked terrific until about 48 hours before the actual party when it suddenly shifted to a much crummier prediction. Still, I tried to remain optimistic that the we would be able to turn our backyard into a wonderland for the party. I remained optimistic (or "in denial" is probably more realistic) right up until waking up Saturday morning and seeing rain. It then became a mad dash to set up indoors. Kate's preschool teacher was generous enough to loan me a little table and ton of little chairs, so we were able to set up a long table in our dining area and I hung the Chinese lanterns above and it looked quite festive (I think!). Throughout the week, Kate and I had worked on making tissue paper flowers that were supposed to conjure up the Garden of Talking Flowers in Alice and Wonderland. She loved working on them and it was a great way to incorporate her into party planning. As you can see from the picture above, I had made her a dress so that she could be Alice and she was really pleased in her costume that was complete with a circle skirt and crinoline underneath so that she could get some twirling action going!
We had Sally the Great from Giggleworks, a company that she owns with her husband, come to do a magic show and balloon art and she was terrific! She had them all laughing within the first minute of her show--I was terribly impressed by how much energy she brought to the show and the magic tricks were fabulous. Her ballon art was also incredible and all of the kids absolutely loved it! Here is Kate with her Alice in Wonderland balloon...

and Henry with a T-Rex balloon and Jack with Spiderman on his shoulders...and Claire with a dolphin! There were so many incredible balloons and the kids were mesmerized watching her create them.
Now, I'm off to work on my recovery by eating a leftover cupcake! (Psst: The toppers were part of the fabulous packet that I mentioned in an earlier post from PaperAndCake.)