It was a "Fairy" good time!

We celebrated Isabella's 5th birthday this weekend with a wonderfully fun Fairy Garden Tea Party. We kept it pretty small, but even with small in mind, we still had 12 girls fairies at our house. I am extremely happy with the outcome and the budget. Overall, the party cost less than $150 with everything included: food, decorations, favors, and even our presents for Isabella!

The decorations included fresh cut roses and sunflowers (snagged these mid-week at Fry's for $2 a dozen!), handmade lilly pads and flowers cut from colored paper, balloons, tulle (a girl's decorative best friend and a mom's best friend at only $1/yd at Joanne's!), and lots and lots of tea sets.

Each fairy guest received a magic wand ($1 each at Michael's) and a dusting of pixie dust upon entrance to our fairy forest ($3 for a vial of glitter at Michael's) and each guest was officially transformed from friend to fairy with a fairy crow, made simply from cut up ivy garland ($4 each at Michael's) and curling ribbon ($1/roll of 300 feet at the Dollar store. I used about 20 strands of ribbon for each crown, which was about 4 rolls of curling ribbon to make 12 crowns).

We started the party with a fun activity. Each girl decorated a set of wings ($3.50 for a set of 6 at Michael's, $8 for a huge container of self-adhesive foam shapes and $6 for a set of 6 colors of puffy paints).

The girls then played another while we let our wings dry. We played a fairy dancing game. The girls danced around the lilly pads and I sprinkled fairy pixie dust on them. I used my magic wand to put all the fairies to "sleep". Each girl had to remain as still and silent as possible. If the girls moved, smiled, or giggled, I touched them on the back and they had to "sit on a log". This was an unbelievably quiet moment in the midst of a very fun (but loud) party. I was surprised at how well the girls played along. It went so well we played twice!

After this game, we enjoyed tea and cupcakes. The girls loved the sugar cubes almost as much as the over-acting I did while I served the fairies. I am so happy I went simple with the cupcakes instead of an over-the-top cake. It made for an easy-to-serve option and my birthday girl was so happy to be able to help sprikle the fairy sugar-sprinkles on each cupcake.

After the cupcakes and tea, Isabella opened her presents and then we took a group picture. I am a bit disappointed that we are missing 3 girls from the picture due to them being whisked away by their parents before we were really done with the festivities. I plan on using the group picture for thank you cards

We ended the party with a few games of Musical Lilly Pads. I used Celtic Music to set the tone for the party. We also played a round of reverse Musical Lilly Pads, where all the girls had to try to fit on the Lilly pad that the birthday girl ended up on. I kept taking away one lillyt pad (the biggest one) making it harder and harder for them to all fit on one lilly pad. It was a lot of fun to watch!

Birthday girl Isabella and her new tutu and mask from me. I snagged this at a garage sale for $5 a few months ago.

All in all, it was a huge success and I'm already imagining Isabella's 6th birthday party. Oh wait, I have two boy's parties to plan first! Stay tuned for Patrick's Mickey Mouse 1st birthday and a yet-to-be-decided 3rd birthday party theme for JJ.