So my Carly turned 5.
5!!!!
I can hardly believe it.
A month or so before her birthday, I asked her if she'd like a party (of course she did), and what kind of party she'd like. She came back a few days later and informed me that she wanted an Alice party, because Alice in Wonderland is currently her favorite bedtime story.
For her party, my parents were able to come out and visit. It was so nice to have them out to help. We invited a bunch of Carly's friends and neighbors, and just about all of them came. It was a lovely party. Carly dressed up as Alice, of course. I wore the Queen of Hearts crown, my mom was one of the Tweedles, Wes was the other, and my dad was the Mad Hatter. Marshall even got into it and was the King of Hearts.
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| Wes, with Blaze. |
The day of the party, it started raining, which made the umbrella vultures look quite fitting.
But it also meant that we couldn't play croquet on the lawn anymore, so these flamingo mallets had to come inside. Quite sad after all the time and energy spent to paint them, and to make wickets out of 15 inch playing cards.
The other bad thing about the rain: the over crowding. Since we could no longer use the yard, we were all shoved in to my kitchen. It was tight, but I was assured no one minded.
We even had to break out the picnic table for extra seating, we had so many kids attend.
For drinks, we had pink lemonade. Most of the kids really enjoyed pouring theirs from tea pots.
For lunch we served sandwiches and wraps, and watermelon. Of course, we had "eat me" food picks. And the watermelon was served balled from a watermelon tea pot.
For dessert, we had cupcakes. Each cupcake had a white rose that had been painted half red.
For decorations, we hung placemat sized playing cards by the buffet, and garlands of playing cards from the sealing mixed in with paper lanterns and the like.
I also made some of the other birds from Alice in Wonderland. The little hammer bird, 2 of the horn birds, and 6 of the pencil birds. They were spread out on the tables and serving areas, but I didn't get any good pictures of them at the party. Darn. So you get to see them from the pictures I took while crafting.
I also framed a quote from Alice: "There'd be new birds; Lot of friendly "how-do-you-do" birds; Everyone would have a dozen blue birds; In that world of my own."
For party favors, I filled glass jars with pink lemonade mix, and put a "drink me" label on them, with mixing prep instructions.
For games, we had a pinata. Funny story. Carly and I worked on a pinata Cheshire Cat for days. But ultimately the balloon we were using as our paper mache form collapsed, and the big round purple cat ended up looking like a wrinkled raisin. So we used a store bought flower and added a face to make it look like one of the bully flowers from the movie.
But Carly was very specific about wanting her Cheshire Cat at the party, so my mom made this awesome cheshire cat out of cardboard and we used it for a game of "pin the tail."
When it came time to blow out the candles, she had to think real hard about her wish.
Wes approved of the cupcakes.
Calvin partied too.
Our big present to Carly (well, all the kids) this year was a playground. Marshall spent the better part of 3 days turning this:
...into this:
Thank goodness my dad came and helped. When we opened gifts, we opened the curtains to the backyard at the end, and Carly was super excited to see her playground. We managed to build it and keep it secret from her the whole time. Definitely a good surprise.
My parents' gift to the kids this year was this awesome teeter totter. They are both in love with it.
It was a fun party for a special girl!!
