It has only taken me a month, but here is the breakdown of the little projects we worked on for the girls' party. Most of them are pretty self-explanitory, but feel free to ask specifics if you have any questions! :)
1. Invites - the invitations were designed in Microsoft Word (about the only computer program I know how to use!) and printed on card stock. The Angelina ballerina at the top of the invite was an image found online and I sewed little scraps of tulle to the cardstock to look like a tutu. Matching pink envelopes found at Hobby Lobby.
2. Mouse ears - I covered two packs of headbands from the dollar store with thin, white ribbon and then made the ears from pink and white felt. Used leftover ribbon from ribbon wands (see #4) to make bows to hotglue between the ears.
Four yards of tulle was enough to make three tutus. Tulle goes on sale for 77 cents a yard at Hobby Lobby about every month or so.
4. Ribbon wands - All you need are some wooden sticks from the craft store and several rolls of satin ribbon from Wal-mart. Wrap one end of the ribbon around the stick and secure with a dot of hot glue.
5. Penant banner & tea set - For the banner, we cut the flags from scrap fabric and sewed them into the fold of bias tape. super fast and easy! I made two banners; one for the food table and one for the tea party table. To hang them over the tables, we used a 1.5" pvc pipe from Lowes ($1.28) and wrapped it with crepe paper. They are really long (8' I think?) so we only had to buy two and Will cut them down into four poles.
The mix-matched tea cups and plates were found at thrift stores. I had the most luck at LICS and the Restore, both in selection and price. Most cups and plates were around 25 - 50 cents a piece. The white mini tea pots were found on clearance at TJ Maxx.
6. Maypole - We used 4 rolls of crepe paper, 5 balloons, and an 8' steel pipe (my dad had) to make the maypole. Will dug a hole in the ground while I was wrapping the pole with crepe paper. Then we taped 12 long strands of crepe paper to the top of the pole and decorated the top with balloons. After Will buried about 2' of the pole, we taped the loose ends of the streamers to little wooden sticks and stuck them in the ground. It made a really pretty tent-like structure. Total cost was less than $5 because we already had the pole on hand.
7. Cupcake toppers - the little ballerinas toppers on the cupcakes were made with left over supplies from the party. All you need is a piece of scrapbooking paper, some crepe paper, toothpicks, and some ribbon.
And there you have it! A fairly easy and economical birthday party that was a lot of fun to pull together! :)
