Garden Gnomes and Fairies: Kalia's 1st Brithday

We celebrated Kalia's 1st birthday with a garden gnomes and fairies theme. 

Here she is on her beloved unicorn she got for Christmas this year.

 

Decor

I reused the fork and knife holders from Kali's baptism.I just hot glued the ruffled streamers I made out of plastic table clothes around a formula tin. Viola! (Tutorial on ruffled streamer here)

 

No need to take the Christmas tree down just yet --I just added a few woodland animals poking out.

Loved the idea of spay painting pine-cones -look how cute mine turned out!

These flowers were from Kalia's Baptism. And check out what they are in! Baby food jars covered with a balloon. Found the tutorial here.

A motion-sensor owl by the bathroom sink caught our guest off guard with it's moving eyes and hooting!

 I took some cute fairy loot bags my mom found at the dollar store, folded them over a ribbon and stapled them --it made two cute banners! Great idea if you're having trouble finding things in your theme.

Activities and Games

We set up a Tattoo Station. The cute $1 double-sided frames from Ikea were perfect for this, as I put the instructions on one side. The clip art I got from here and I used a wood-grain drawer liner for the background. 

 

Since we did a family party with mostly adults and a mixed of kid ages, we decided on getting a caricature artist. Research their work to get a good one and be sure to post the time they will be there -as everyone will want one!

The area for caricatures -we made sure there was plenty of room behind the artist so that guests could watch.

To keep all the pictures in great shape while our guests mingled and ate, we set out clothes pins so they could hang them up!

I just left our Christmas garland up on the staircase to make the gallery!

 

 

 This kept all the pictures in great shape but it also was fun for guests to look at and see if they could name everyone in the pictures.

 

 We did Put the Flower in Tinkerbell's hand! I was going to come up with some sort of homemade version but I ran out of time. Surprisingly this game was most popular with Logan and Jacob...who took like ten turns each until all the flower stickers were gone.

Gnome bowling was a huge hit! My tutorial is here.

 

 

The kids got the gnomes as trophies after and freaked out when they lifted the hats to find candy and a wind-up toy

And lots of cuddles and socializing for Kalia! And check out her cute ladybug costume I dressed her up in!

 

Food and Drink

I used the most of those gnome printouts!

Love this container! My grandmother made it...I think it's suppose to be a plant pot holder so something but I put a bowl inside and it was perfect for popcorn!

I just hot glued the gnomes on toothpicks and stuck them into my homemade cupcakes

Kalia ate that cupcake sooo fast!

The Favours

The s'more mix in the cute mushroom jars were a hit -and very easy and cheap to make. My tutorial is here.

Kalia loved all the tissue paper more than the presents!

Happy 1st Birthday, Kali! We love you!

S'more Mix in a Mushroom Jar

I made a simple s'more trail mix and packaged them up in  baby food jars for Kali's birthday-couldn't get any cuter or simpler then this!

 

My Woodland-Gnome Party board on Pinterest helped mash this one together -A pin of this Flicker photo 

 of painted jar lids to look like mushrooms, ideas of a s'more mix from this adorable camping party

and the play on words for the sign from these labels.

I started with washing a bunch of baby food jars I saved -don't worry about that hard to get off glue patch that will be left behind. Who has time to soak and scape that off? I just spray painted a couple coats of red paint on them. And don't worry about priming them or anything --if some of the labeling shows through, you can just cover it with dots! 

 

I used some acyrlic craft paint from the dollar store (if you use this directly on the lid it will peel off, on the spray paint base, it's fine). I just used a small paint bush to dab on the dots.

 And that pesky, near-impossible-to-remove glue spot --just cover it! I got this shelf liner from the dollar store. I just punched out a circle and wrote my message on it with a sharpie. So easy and as a bonus, they actually peel off quite easily you want to relabel and re-purpose the jar later.

 And the mix inside is really simple too!

2 boxed of Graham Cracker Cereal

1 big bag of mini-marshmallows

2 bags of chocolate chips ( I used one bag of chocolate and 1 bag of butterscotch chips)

Mix that up the night before in a huge bowl, scoop it into jars and seal tight. I did this the night before so that the marshmallows would be super fresh.

 And here they are looking super cute on the fireplace with the treat bags for the kids.

 I picked up this 99cent frame from Ikea, put in some of the drawer liner from the dollar store for the background, cut out this girl gnome from here, and added the s'more talking bubble with a sharpie.

Cute, cheap and very easy!

See the rest of Kalia's gnomes and fairies party here!