fairy ball

this past friday we hosted our first official fairy ball, in honor of bee's 4th birthday. the fairies converged on friday evening and spent 2 hours frolicking, eating, creating and playing.
we started planning about a month ago. i've mentioned before that bee has this idea about what fairies are. it's sort of a cross between a fairy, a ballerina and a princess. that is good because it gave me plenty to work with.

the first thing we did was to create these cute flowers with toilet paper tubes. i used these instructions. bee did most of the work and it was really pretty fun. these served as the centerpieces.

we set up three craft activities around the party. 

first, crown making. it was super simple. i bought some classroom bulletin board borders and cut them to crown size. i punched holes on each end tied a ribbon on to fasten the crown on. then we just gathered up a bunch of stuff to glue on to decorate.
second, we had wand making. this was my favorite and the kid's favorite too. 

we were going to use sticks, which would have been fine but D thought of using these dogwood shoots that we had to trim off our dogwood tree anyway. they were just the right width and nice and sturdy.

we attached about 10 inches of craft wire to the ends and just put a pan of beads on the blanket. the kids strung the beads on and then the parents secured the open end to be in the shape of a circle (or heart or butterfly or star). you can see some in action in the first picture of the post.

the third activity was about as simple as it gets. a basket full of fairy house supplies. this was the least popular at the party but i think that just had to do with the high energy of our fairies. 
we set up a tent as a sort of fairy ballroom. the kids all ate under the tent, surrounded by christmas lights, flowers and tulle.
i made these flowers following these instructions. it was so easy and so satisfying.
bee designed the menu for the fairies. fairy eggs and fairy pancakes. if you don't know, that is eggs and pancakes with sprinkles on top. i'll let you in on a little secret....if you want to make fairy food, put sprinkles on otherwise ordinary food. this is also a good way to get your kid to eat stuff you want them to eat.

bee made little gift bags for her buddies. the main thing in them was these super cool treasure balls.

we made a batch of salt clay. then bee hid these fancy rocks inside a ball of clay. we then rolled the balls in glitter and baked the balls for about an hour or so.
bee bagged them up and we put a sticker on them with instructions. the idea is to smash them open to find your treasure. we tried one and they work awesome. 
for dessert we had cupcakes, or cup-a-cakes as bee still calls them. i used my favorite recipe, amy sedaris'. this makes me feel cooler every time i use it. it's a good, simple recipe.

we topped them with these jelly candies from trader joe's so they would be more fun.
it was so worth all the effort for this party. it was just right for bee and i know she loved every minute of it. this is one part of parenting that makes me feel so happy to be a mom.