Fairy Garden Party

Last week I had the pleasure of having a house full of fairies.  It was wonderful and magical and memorable and so much fun.  I invited several of my friends and their adorable children to help, attend and enjoy this fun filled day.  The results were priceless. 

I've always wanted to have a fairy party.  So when my daughter asked me for a fairy party years ago I wanted to say yes but the timing was never really right.  I knew that to do a party the way I wanted it would take countless hours of working and crafting and baking.  Thankfully now I have lots of crafty, creative and very talented friends who where happy to help me create this wonderful experience for our little ones.  I don't know what I liked better.  The fun filled crafting afternoons with friends while we prepped for this party, or the day itself when everything came together.  It was so fun. 

The party took place in my backyard.  With lots of tulle, ribbon, butterflies and fairies.  

The Treats

My friends made most of the food and my friend Beth kindly donated her lovely silver serving dishes for the day.  It all turned out beautifully and tasted wonderful. 

I made a lavendar Ombre cake, blueberry cupcakes with white chocolate buttercream and strawberry cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.  I wanted to keep all of the deserts berry themed and kind of go with out color scheme.  My blueberry cupcakes were a bit scary.  They looked more black than blue, but they tasted pretty good.  Now I know to use blueberries sparingly. 

This was my first attempt at an Ombre cake so I was pretty happy with how it turned out.  I think I just need to work on my coloring inside the cake, but it was a lot of fun.  I will definitely do this one again.  

I (my husband) actually dragged some of my furniture outside to give us enough serving space and seating for the party.  You can also see one of my new obsessions over by the mushrooms, felted flowers.  I just started working with felted wool and really enjoy it.  

We had cucumber sandwiches of course. They got a little dried out from the harsh sun that day. 

My friend Beth brought vegetable crudites with a warm blue cheese vinaigrette dip...

yummy blackberry lime bars... 

and these adorable little coconut marshmallow pops. The Blackberry Lime bar recipe came from a cute blog called Improv Kitchen.  They were delicious. 

The chocolate filled raspberries were made by my sweet friend Connie.  The recipe came from a cute blog called Saucy Sprinkles.  These are really just chocolate chips placed inside the raspberries but the day was a hot one and the chocolate inside magically melted and made these so wonderful. 

I worked on these little confections for a week. I have wanted to make French Macarons for a long time now and was determined to have them at this party.  Since we live 30 minutes from France I probably could have driven there and picked some up.  But this is a skill I desperately want to master.  They are nutty and light and decadent all at the same time.  Mine are not beautiful but they were my best out of four attempts.  

My friend Laura brought these cute little rosette sugar cookies.  She also did the cookies for our Thing one and Thing two party and these turned out beautifully. 

The Decorations

There were fairies everywhere...

Fairies and butterflies topped the cupcakes which were wrapped with my flower petal cupcake wrappers.  

They were on the table...

My friend Karolyn made these adorable wire cages for our fairy friends and I placed a paper fairy inside.  We saw the idea on Pinterest, but Karolyn ran with it made it all her own.  

On the drinks...

In the trees...

More of Karolyn's cute little cages.  I promise no fairies were harmed in the making of this party.

There were gifts waiting for the fairies...

At each place setting we had a flower crown, a flower wand, wings, a fairy skirt and fairy dust.  My friend Connie made the crowns, wands, wings and fairy dust with faith, trust and a lot of hard work.  

The crowns were made of fake flowers that Connie wrapped together with floral wire and attached a hair comb to so they would stay in the girls hair.  The wands were willow branches with flowers, butterflies, ribbon and raffia attached.  The fairy dust was powdered sugar with colored sugar crystals mixed in, so it was edible.  Once the fairies figured this out the fairy dust disappeared very quickly.  

The fairy wings were all hand made by Connie, out of wire and tights.  Children's tights worked the best and then she painted them and embellished with glitter and ribbon.  Then she attached one of my felt flowers to the back.  I was just glad those flowers got some use.  

My friend Beth and I made the fairy skirts out of tons and tons of tulle and ribbon.  I found a great tutorial for making no sew tulle skirts at Teach Mama.  She recommended getting help to make the skirts and she was right.  It took Beth and I about 5 hours to make all 9 skirts.  Well Beth did most of the work but I did loop a few pieces of tulle.  We used about 3 yards of ribbon for each waist, and 35 to 40 pieces of tulle for each skirt.  The tulle pieces were 6 inches wide and 36 inches (3ft) long.  Fabric is hard to find here in Germany so getting that much tulle was a challenge in itself.  But the outcome was totally worth it.  

  

The Fairies

My friend Elizabeth with the teeniest fairy of all and the sweetest.  

Connie also created a full size fairy house with lots of organza curtains draped over our swing set. A master piece really considering she used hair ties, butterfly clips and string to hold it all together.  I swear Connie is like a crafty McGyver.  I wish we could have left it there for the entire summer.  

All of our little fairies, wands held high, ready to fly.  

The Crafts

The fairy doors were completely Karolyn's idea.  I'm so glad she came up with it.  We looked into buying actual wooden doll house doors to decorate, but they would have cost too much for the amount of doors we needed.  Sooo we used some small wooden slats that Karolyn found at the craft store and we mod podged pretty card stock onto them. The windows were made from more card stock and the door handles were beads.  

We gathered together a bunch of odds and ends to decorate with and had plenty of craft glue, glue dots and hot glue on hand.  The fairy Mom's helped with the glue guns but the fairy girls did most everything else themselves. You'd be surprised what you can do with glue dots. 

The girls took this very seriously and came up with so many unique and beautiful ways of decorating their doors.  

A more colorful fairy door you will never see.

Karolyn also made some homemade bubble wands and created a little bubble station for the kids.  This was a huge hit.  We had about 18 children and only 8 of them were girls so bubbles was something everyone could enjoy. The idea for these came from a cute blog called Kleas.  They worked perfectly.   I'm really upset that I didn't get any good pictures of the kids blowing bubbles but oh well.  You'll have to take my word for it.  

Karolyn also made these adorable little hats for the boys.  She has two boys of her own so she really helped me make the party fun for them too.  The cute peter pan hat idea came from a blog called Make it and Love it. They had a step by step tutorial for the hats as well as an entire Peter Pan costume all out of felt.  Cute, cute, cute.  

Our very last craft was a button bracelet.  I saw these on Pinterest of course, but there was no tutorial and I'm not even sure where the picture came from.  These were very easy to make.  Just two pieces of twine and one or two buttons.  I just threaded one piece of twine through each side and then looped it and tied them together. The picture pretty much sums it up.  

So that concludes our day of fun and merriment.  I hope your summer is filled with lots magic and a little bit of fairy dust.  

~Sunny~

Visit my Etsy shop for the Fairy Garden party Printables seen in this party.

Credits

A big thanks goes to...

my hubby Tony for all of his hard work in the kitchen, setting up and tearing down, and his amazing pulled pork sandwiches that never made it to the table. 

Photography: Sunny Duran and Laura Scott

Food: Beth Hayes, Connie Gingerich, Karolyn O'Cull, and Kathy Bridges.  

Cake and cupcakes:  Sunny Duran

Cookies: Laura Scott

Fairy wands, crowns, dust and wings:  Connie Gingerich

Fairy skirts: Beth Hayes and Sunny Duran, but mostly Beth Hayes.

Fairy Doors: Karolyn O'Cull

Fairy Cages: Karolyn O'Cull

Fairy printables: Sunny Duran

Peter Pan Hats: Karyolyn O'Cull

Decorations and styling: Sunny Duran, Connie Gingerich, Karolyn O'Cull and Laura Scott

Reference Blogs:  Improv Kitchen , Saucy Sprinkles, Teach Mama, Kleas, and Make it and Love it.