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.)

Birthday Party Planning is Underway

When K and I went to Disneyland in April, K's princess obsession was interrupted (a little) by discovering Alice in Wonderland. It helped that she loved riding on the teacups! When we got home, she announced that she wanted her birthday to be a mad tea party inspired by Aice in Wonderland, and this sounded like a fun idea to me so we started brainstorming. I found this darling birthday pack on Etsy from PaperAndCake and our planning took off. We used the invitations from the pack and I plan to use the cutouts on the cake and on goodie bags.

We also decided to try our luck on a backyard party. Given Seattle's weather this spring, this is seeming like a bold plan but we will hope for the best. We got an Alice in Wonderland book and K has been studying it carefully every day for details. She noticed the Chinese lanterns on the tea party page in the book and remembered the lanterns from the Teacups ride at Disneyland and wanted to get some for the party. I did a little online research and ordered some from Luna Bazaar, figuring that we can hang them in K's room after the party. She also wanted to use real teacups but I chickened out a little on the vision of smashed china all our back patio. One of our neighbors has some teacup and teapot garden art so that inspired me to look into glueing stacks of teacups together. After seeing this on Etsy, K and I took off to some local thriftstores in search of mismatching teacups to use as garden art. So now we have a bunch of teacups, Chinese lanterns, and a cute un-birthday partypack. Normally I wouldn't really get so into all of the decorating for a kid's birthday party, but K is really into it and it's keeping her engaged--plus, she has some great ideas! Next up, costumes...