Serenity's Birthday Journaling Serenity's birthday was so much fun! The theme underwent several subtle shifts over the year. At first it was going to be Nature Girl. When she plays outside, she calls herself Nature Girl, and she loves to save the earth. Then, we read the Secret Garden, so we were going to focus on gardening and making a little secret garden in the side yard that we'd reach with a keys. Then, she discovered Rainbow Magic Fairies. She adores these books. We checked nearly a hundred of them out from the library. In each story the girls help their fairy friends recover magical objects from Jack Frost the mischievous goblin. Each fairy has a different job, and Serenity especially love the fairies that work with nature or cuddly creatures. So we kept the gardening theme, but we decided to make Fairy Gardens!
We began the party with a little Fairy Face painting to get everyone into the spirit =) I think this was Serenity's favorite part! I also made butterfly and leaf headbands. Then, everyone went outside to make fairy gardens. We wanted to make them really inviting so the fairies would want to come live in the garden. Each child decorated a fairy house (a birdhouse I primed so the markers would show, and I covered to roofs in moss.) Then they planted an assortment of plants like miniature ivy, celosia, and groundcovers. There were also purple rocks for paths, little circles of wood they could make into trails or furniture for the fairies, twigs and bark.
After everyone had a chance to make a garden and have their face painted, we gathered everyone together. I told them the fairies loved the gardens and really wanted to come live in them, but that Jack Frost had captured the fairies and taken them to his ice palace! The fairies needed us to rescue them! The ice palace was a pinata and everyone enthusiastically saved the fairies. Each child got at least one fairy for their garden. =) There was a backup pinata that was filled with the fairy's magic (pixy stix) that we saved until later so anyone that came later would have a chance. I did really well at first not giving out too many sweets as favors, but I always get nervous that the pinata will break too quickly, so even though I just put fairy figures in the first I ended up with pixy sticks in the backup pinata. Oh well. ;)
After that, I told them that the fairies were so grateful, they gave Serenity the key to fairyland. I was really excited about this part! The key matched an impression in circle of clay, and when Serenity placed her key in the impression, she unlocked fairyland! I blocked our side yard off with a rainbow of fabric (reused from her third rainbow birthday =) When they followed the path into fairyland, they discovered wings for everyone, and hidden along the path were bags of magic stones to add a little more magic to their gardens. I made giant flowers out of tissue paper and used a bunch of silks to make it look magical. Plus, my trees are dying and the side garden is mostly weeds, so adding flowers helped a lot. Oh, and lots of butterfly garden stakes, which the kids ended up adding to their fairy gardens.
Under the peach trees, which is Serenity's favorite place to hang out in our yard, we made RainSpell Island, where the girls first met the fairies. I hung ribbons from the trees and more giant flowers for a magical photo opportunity.
We also have a sunflower house that was a nice spot to hang out while waiting on a turn to whack the pinatas.
We have fishing at every birthday party, and Serenity thought we should decorate the dock with flowers so it looked like a fairy pond.
The birthday girl chose donuts and fruit for her birthday treats. I got out my whole fairy collection to decorate with =)
She also came up with several other fairy games, like fairy freeze tag and hide and seek fairies. I assume they played those as I sort of lost track after awhile, but I noticed several little fairies under the food table at one point. Maia went under there too and kept saying "cheese" since I kept poking the camera under to take her picture. Too cute.
I made fairy dust necklaces for everyone... that I forgot to pass out. Never hide anything before a party, otherwise you'll get stuck with it =)
