Fairy Party #2

As promised, here is part 2 of our $100 fairy party!  This is my daughter Zoe's 4th birthday, and I had so much fun planning it!  Happy birthday to my sweet little Zo-bug!

Banner & Flower Balloons:

At each of my children's birthday parties, I make them a name banner to match the theme of the party.  Then it can be hung and displayed on their wall after the party!  In the above picture, you can see Zoe's name banner and flowers made from balloons and streamers.  Tip for making balloon flowers: Use thumbtacks to pin each individual balloon.  I tried several methods, and this proved to be the most effective and held the balloons the best.

Balloon Flowers!

Total Cost for Banner:
$3.82

Total Cost for Party Supplies, including balloons:
$15.94


Cake & Ice Cream:

This cake was super easy to make.  I really wanted to try fondant for the first time, so I started browsing Pinterest for some quick and easy fondant recipes.  I was surprised to find this quick recipe using just marshmallows and powdered sugar!  For the actual cake, I just used 2 boxes of Party Chip Rainbow cake mix, and 2 tubs of strawberry whipped frosting.  I baked them in a 9" square pan, and I used red food coloring to hombre color the 4 layers of the cake (white, light pink, medium pink, dark pink).



I was super excited with how this cake turned out.  I only wished I had smoothed the frosting on the top of the cake before placing the fondant on top (my exact thinking was "psh, the fondant will make it look smooth"; yeah, not the case).



Total Cost for Cake & Ice Cream:
$9.49


Paint a Fairy House Station:


I set up a Fairy House Decorating Station in the backyard.  The kids LOVED this!  I bought little wood bird houses for $1 each from Michael's ($10 total).  I also bought an 8 pack of wood pirates ($5 total).  I had some acrylic paints already, but I bought a few more ($3), and another pack of paintbrushes ($2.85).  I used a wood board from my backyard to paint the sign.  I used a tablecloth to cover and protect my table ($1) and put aprons out for the kids to protect their clothing.

Total Cost for Fairy House Decorating:
$21.85


Dress Up Station:


The Dress Up station was also a lot of fun.  This is where I put the Peter Pan hats, fairy wands, and fairy hair clips that I wrote about in post #1 (to see those tutorials, go here).

  
 

I also made fairy glitter, and provided a basket with lipsticks, lipgloss, and stamp rings.

Total Cost for ALL Dress Ups:
$19.64
(this includes the hats, clips, and wands I previously quoted in post #1)


Fairy Dust:

If you are interested in making your own fairy dust, here are the instructions:

1.  In a bowl, mix together 1/2 cup Aloe Vera gel and 1 tsp liquid Glycerin.

2. Portion out your gel into little containers.  (I used this kind, but if you were to do them as party favors, you could do this individual kind)

3.  In each container, add some fabric glitter (you can use any glitter, but a fabric glitter won't hurt so much if it gets in the eyes).

4. That's it!  Apply to face or body and enjoy!

 (This fairy dust glitter, including the container seen above, cost $2.90 to make)

FOOD:

I am without any good food pictures this time, but really, it was nothing fancy.  It was a 3:00 party, so I just did light snack-y foods.  Here's what we had:

*Mini sandwiches (sweet rolls, turkey, cheese)

*Pretzel sticks

*Sun Chips

*Chips & Spicy Black Bean Dip & a 5 layer bean dip

*Sliced apples and peaches

*Sliced carrots

*Pink Lemonade

*7-up

*Pixie Stix

I think that was it.  Super simple and low key.  

Total Cost for Food (excluding cake):

$23.25

Find the Fairies:

I found this really cute 8 pack of fairy charms from a seller on Etsy.  Shipped, they cost me $5.70.  I really wanted two sets so all the kiddos could take one home, but she only had one set.  SO, what I did was string each charms with a neutral colored string, and hide them all over my yard.  Since there were only 8 and we had more than 8 children here, we just kept hiding them until they got bored.  We hung them from trees, fence posts, etc.

Total cost for Fairy Charms:
$5.70


In the end, this Fairy Party cost me $99.69!!!  

I actually thought I had gone over budget by about $10, but I'm happy to see that I was actually just under my $100 target!  I feel like out of all the parties I have done, my money went the furthest at this one in terms of what I was able to make for the kids and the fun things activities we had available to them.


*We also had a "walk the plank" in which I placed a railroad tie over a blue tablecloth, but I didn't have time to finish it with shark fins sticking up, and the kids really weren't interested in doing it.  There was just a lot of other stuff going on outside that they played with instead.