Alorah {Alice} in Wonderland Party

Well the party was a success! :) The girls had a lot of fun despite the rainy weather that trumped my outdoor party plans. The party had a lot of firsts for me, making a "topsy turvey" cake (I have never made a cake before! Well not one that was any kind of specialty anyway!) We made a couple of cup cake/display stands, we made the Queen's Croquet game from Alice in Wonderland... It was fun though :) and the girls told me that it was the best birthday party they had ever been to! (THAT makes you feel pretty good!) ;)

I did not plan on making the cake myself, but the person I was going to have make it, moved. :( So I was stuck, making a topsy turvy cake, with no experience! Agh!

Here is the cake, stacked & dirty iced

{Did I mention this is the first cake I have done?!} I decorated it next using sugar sheets (which I am not a fan of I can say now), more icing, and spray coloring... It ended up looking like this:

I wasn't overly excited about how the cake turned out, but my daughter loved it, so I'll take it! Ha!

Alorah is such a sweetheart! <3 

After cake and ice cream, we played the croquet game, which I feel, was one of the best parts about the day! The kids really liked it too! :) 

Alorah poses with one of her friends before the game

GAME ON!! :)

Even little sister played! I love it!

Some of the other details from the day included:

The party table

Centerpieces

Each girl's place setting included their very own teacup, blow out, mushroom box, and a mad hatter hat!

Party Favor Thank You's for each of the guests

I bought a lot of my goodies from Oriental Trading Company & I've been really happy doing business with them so far! :) To see what great stuff they have go ahead & click HERE... {But don't blame me if you find yourself browsing their site for an "extended" period of time... ;) 

Have a great week!! 

Wonderland Croquet Game

I have been finalizing everything for my daughters party this Saturday. I am mostly excited ablout the Queen's croquet game that I (with a little help from the hubby!!) MADE!! My daughter's birthday theme last year was flamingos (She LOVES them for some reason, probably because they are PINK!) I always try to have party decorations pull double duty for me if I can, whether it is recycled through both of my kids, or a bulk purchase (plates, napkins, party bags-in the same colors).And while both of my kids have very different themes each party/year they always (so far!!) Have matched up in some way!

Isn't she just the cutest?! ;)

So since her theme was flamingos last year, I thought, why not re-use those tacky yard flamingos as part of a game? So THAT was the start of how the croquet game was born!! I had my husband drill a hole in the belly of the flamingos, and we gorilla glued a 5/8" dowel in to each one and spray painted the handles pink to match the flamingos. These are our new croquet mallets (just like in Alice in Wonderland!!) Next I needed the rest of the parts so I sent my hubby to the hardware store to buy a length of wire (enough for each "team" to have 5 arches), and he was nice enough to cut them for me, too! :) I bent them in to arches big enough to fit a ball through with out getting stuck and enough to be shoved in to the ground to stay in place during play. 

I bought a red poster board from the dollar tree and cut several hearts from it to stick on the top of the wire arches (Because I think the queen of hearts would have them on there!). 

For the balls I wanted them to be as true to the hedgehog from as I could. I thought of a few ideas that I wasn't really crazy about. Balls covered in furry material (too bumpy for rolling in the yard), regular balls (Not themed enough)... Then a couple weeks ago I was down in California and decided to make a stop in to Pier 1. Not only was I lucky enough to catch a super sweet sale going on, but I found these multi-colored "monkey head" balls in the kid bins! (And they can totally pass as hedgehogs!!) Yay!


(Here's the link:)
http://www.pier1.com/SearchResults/tabid/37/txtSearch/monkey+ball/Search/monkey+ball/List/0/Default.aspx

I am pretty excited to see the girls play the game at the party, I think it will be a "hit!" (ha ha sorry! I just had to!) :) I will post again after the party with lots of pictures of the big event :)

Wonderland Crazy

Well I have never had a blog before, so this is my first post! :) But I've been thinking lately that it might be kind of fun to have my own little blog and share ideas with other people. I've gotten a lot of cute ideas from other people before, and what better way to share ideas and get some inspirations than by communicating with other people too? :)


So for the past few weeks, (OK, OK it has been WAY longer than a few weeks that I've been planning, but I have been actually working on this for a few weeks now), I have been trying to pull together this Alice in Wonderland party for my oldest daughter's birthday. I feel like I have set the "fun" mood by the invitations that I sent out to the girls in her class {Alice in Wonderland inspired flower invitations}... 

The Flower Colors

My Version of the Alice in Wonderland Flowers :)

Trying to get them ready for their "debut" :) ha ha

I originally wanted to make the door from the movie, and send out an invite with skeleton keys for all the kids, to "open" the door with at the party. I want to make my door from foam core, and stick one of those little kid bedroom doorbells behind the "lock" so when the kids "unlock" the door, the bell would ring and we could open the gate to the birthday par-tea :) 


Unfortunately all of my skeleton keys kept breaking because I had the wrong mold :( So I wandered around the craft store until I came up with this ingenious plan to buy some daisy stems and just glue some eyes on them. Cheap and easy? Absolutely! ;) I just added some tags on them and wrote "Read Me" on one side with a marker and printed the party info on the other. I think I still want to make the door though, just for fun ;) 


Now I am in the middle of working on the "Mad Hatter" hats for each of the party guests... {Remember I told you that I have been thinking about this party for quite some time now?} Well while I was at the dollar store back in February, they started coming out with all of the St. Patrick's Day stuff... 

I picked up some of these little leprechaun party hats and stashed them away for just this occasion ;) 

I stuck a little 10/6 tag on it,  

wrapped a piece of ribbon around it to cover up the shamrock band, 

and glued a pom pom on to it to cover the ribbon ends.... Although I think a feather would have looked better I didn't have them on hand...

Anyway, I guess we will see how the kiddos like them come party day!!