Fairy Garden Party

If planning a little girl's birthday doesn't get you crafting, I don't know what will. My sweet Isla turned 6 this month and we celebrated in the backyard with friends, lots of sweet treats, a piñata and a fairy garden craft. 

 I made the little fairy bunting banner by cutting out little triangles from burlap cardstock. Then I hot glued the back of each triangle to string and then glued the string around the ends of 2 skewers. 

I found the little chalkboard in the clearance bin at Michaels for less than $3. The girls and I painted the frame pink. 

Poor letter I. It's not the flashiest initial and it's often confused with the lower case L, but covering a cardboard cutout I-shape with little tissue paper rosettes helps it look special. 

I don't often refer to craft projects as easy, because even the simplest DIY projects can get pretty complicated. Especially if you're a perfectionist and aim to have everything look just right. The paper chain, however, really is hard to mess up. My 7-year-old helped me make a super long chaing to hang outstide on the shrubs. 

In the backyard, I set up a few fairy gardens. Last year we only had 1 little miniature garden. This year we have 4, thanks to me ordering the wrong scale accessories for the birthday party craft. That mistake left me with an abundance of little fairy furniture that I decided to keep. I'm really not sure who gets more excited about fairy gardens... me or the kids. 

I love how my husband hung the cupcake piñata with transparent fishing wire. It kind of reminds me of a surrealist painting. 

Some of those "mistake" fairy accessories decorated the outdoor table. 

I grabbed the wooden mushroom from my son's room.

I'm learning every year how to better adapt the menu for our young party guests. These white chocolate-covered marshmallows were a huge hit. 

To make these, I just melted a bar of white chocolate in a glass dish over boiling water, added some red food coloring and dipped jumbo-sized marshmallows in. Then I sprinked some sugar crystals on top and let them cool for a few minutes before serving. 

The first week of July is always the most colorful in my garden. 

Can you spot the garden jewels in the background? Their sparkles help catch fairies, of course. 

I got that idea from an episode of The Jennie Garth Project. You just hot glue some gems onto some fishing wire and hang. 

And there's Judy, a fixture at all our backyard events. 

I'm just going to show off now. There's my herb garden growing vigorously. 

And my day lilies and daisies. 

One thing that made my life so much easier this time was to just buy the cake at the bakery! It came all packaged up so our dog couldn't get to it. 

There's the happy birthday girl. 

 And here's the beach scene fairy garden all the girls made. 

I bought a few packs of anuals (look for plants that grow no more than 3 or 4 inches tall) and ended up buying umbrellas, buckets and sand from Michaels. The little fences came from Cosumercrafts.com. I had some moss left over from a previous project which we used around the base of the plants. 

One note: if you make a little mini garden with sand, it's best to place a piece of wax paper or plastic over the potting soil before you layer the sand. It will help keep the sand from getting mixed up with the soil. 

 A fairy garden isn't complete without fairy dust! That's just some glitter funneled into pretty little glass bottles. 

 Miniature garden shovels were perfect for scooping out the sand. 

And that was our fairy garden party!