The Giving Tree
A wonderful celebration for three special little Gs. Everyone enjoyed the perfect weather, the great company and most importantly, the gift of giving.
All party goers were asked to bring donations for children at a local facility in lieu of giving gifts to the birthday children. I was so touched by the number of toys and amount of clothing donated.
This truly was a day to celebrate!
The kids tables were kept simple. Martinelli's apple cider (in plastic apple jars) and apple snacks! A little paper festooning around the table, a few balloons and done!
Awesome cake pops by Tickle Me Sweet!
These also served as party favors for the adults!
Free tree stump, a little moss, carve anything you want = awesome party detail. The best part about this is that it is being reused in the kids backyard now!
Bundles of pencils tied with yarn and The Giving Tree valentines were given to the children to give to their friends. The idea was that the children would also enjoy the gift of giving!
On the other side of this room was a table (I didn't get a picture!) were party goers left their donations. Above the table was the word give. "Give Thanks"
Each child received a custom shirt that read "Give" as a party favor. The letter "I" was an image of the tree from The Giving Tree. The shirt was put over a red balloon and into a shred-filled cello bag. A green ribbon and leaf-shaped tag topped them off.
In order to create the feeling of an apple tree, apple shaped pinatas and paper were hung from outdoor wooden rafters.
Each high-top table had a cake platter full of home-made carmel apples. These also served as party favors!
A leaf-shaped felt banner hung in the yard adorning the birthday kids' names.
We made trees out of balloons on stakes! They were a hit.
This party was really one of my favorites. Simple details. Repetitive use of bold colors makes for inexpensive, impressive children's parties!
A Sweet, Valentine Themed
Baby Shower....
The place-setting had double-doilies and each had a different quote about "love." Each guest was welcomed to their seat with a mug with their initial filled with a cello bag of hot chocolate and marshmallows. Cozy!
Other favors included tiny mason jars filled with candy and adorned with a fabric and ribbon. We also did custom-made BINGO cards and used the conversation hearts as markers.
The centerpieces included red and white roses! Who could have a Valentines bash without them?!
The goodie bags for the game-winners turned out adorable! These darling felt bags certainly helped!
The little girl-to-be already has a fabulous wardrobe!
We put a vintage headboard behind the gift table and hug wooden hearts in the window...
Opps! We didn't get a close-up shot of the desert table before everyone chowed down the bite-sized goodies!
A Color-Packed Party For Three.
Ok, so although we are huge on party "themes," generally, we try way too hard to think outside of the princess-disney box. Sometimes, that leaves us in a rut...In the case of this party, we just went with a color theme and the initial of the children involved (which happened to be the same for all three children). It turned out AMAZING!
Having a book exchange is an idea I love for parties. Each child brings a new book to the party and then gets to pick a different one before they leave! You could do this in lieu of party favors to party-on-a-dime or even in addition to favors for a little extra fun!
I wish we would have gotten a shot of the table full of books! (We're really bad about that! Promise to get better!)
Party favors were tees from American Apparel with each child's initial on them. We put an inflated balloon inside the shirt, the shirt inside a cello bag filled with color-coordinating shreds and some DumDums! Awesome!
We added photos of the children in frames that we painted to match the color theme. We bought inexpensive wooden craft frames from Michaels and added paper festooning! In fact, we added paper festooning to everything!
We had a custom all white pinata made and added the G with - well, festooning of course!
We made party hats for each of the children and got fun drinks holders with crazy straws. As the centerpieces of the children's tables, we used wooden boards, again from Michaels and put the children's names on them. The tables were covered with white paper table clothes and we had buckets of washable markers and crayons on the table.
For the backdrop, we used white paper garland. We made a frame out of PVC and then hung it from the outdoor rafters. It looked stunning and made a huge statement for very little money and time!
You can't leave out the high chairs! Please decorate them! You will have so many pictures of the things! We also made shirts for each of the kids to wear with their initials so they didn't get their party clothes all messy!!
A Wonderful Woodland Shower!
Awesome brownie goodies complete with spice-drop and fondant mushrooms! Too cute...
Ha! Friendly little gnome...
Ok, the centerpieces for this party are still my all-time favorites. We purchased mossy hanging planter inserts from Home Depot, inverted them, hot-glued some moss on them, then glued a garden gnome as a topper and voila! insanely fantastic centerpieces that looked like a million bucks!
We used picnic looking benches and to dress them up, we made table runners out of a giant gingham. We polished them up with some fun red trim and the overall look was totally cute and totally put-together.
Seriously, how awesome are these?!
A few hand-made banners to designate different areas of the shower.
We made the toadstools by the gift table out of logs, foam and fabric. Easy, breezy.
The setting was just awesome. A park at a private residence!
