My little Nina is seven! To celebrate, we sprouted an enchanted forest in our kitchen and welcomed a flurry of little pixie friends. I wanted the invitations to look like little tree branches, so I pasted the party info onto cut and flattened lunch sacks, rolled them up, secured them with baker's twine, and topped them off with a cardstock leaf.
Nina loved prepping the pixie houses (whipping cream cartons), and we gathered little twigs and acorns for gluing onto them at the party. The owl treat bags came from Target's dollar spot...they were meant for Valentines, but they were perfect for our party. We filled them with little strawberry candies, freshly picked from a nearby magical forest, of course. I ran the little notebooks through my sewing machine to embellish them with torn lunch sacks and snippets of fabric. I was so happy with how they turned out! And here is where I learned how to create the toadstool pencils.
The fairy feast was a success with items on the menu such as Snowy Forest Branches (pretzel rods dipped in white chocolate), Forest Friends (sugar cookies using IKEA cutters, I ran out of time to frost them!), Fairy Berries, Gnome Walking Sticks (veggies & dip), Dwarf Gems (sparkly gumdrops), Magical Fairy Nectar (lemonade), and of course, Enchanted Toadstools (cupcakes). I wanted the cups to look like toadstools, but I couldn't find any polka dotted ones anywhere! So I took matters into my own hands and painted white spots onto red paper cups. The mobile over the table was created with cardstock leaves hot-glued to small branches.
My "Pin the Accessories on the Garden Gnome" game was a hit and overall, I'd say all the little pixies flew home happy.
More ideas for another time: Wooden bird houses from the craft store (instead of whipping cream cartons) for the pixie houses,and cut felt twigs, acorns and leaves to glue on to them. The real twigs and acorns kept sliding off our little pixie houses. Invitations could be made with a birch print scrapbook paper, or white paper with tree bark designs simply drawn on. And how adorable are these straws?