An Alice In Wonderland Birthday Party

The Peanut turned 7 this year, and we decided on an Alice in Wonderland theme for her birthday party.

I had a lot of fun working up the decorations and the food ideas, and thought folks might get a kick out of some of the pictures.

This is what you saw as you entered our house.  I found strands of brightly-colored paper butterflies hanging from fishing wire at our local party outlet store, and they looked lovely hanging from the pocket-doorway into our dining room.  (They were a pain and a half to untangle, though -- so be warned.)

I found a Mad Hatter hat online, and it was a lovely touch to the decor, along with the cupcake pinata (pull-string) which I also bought online.

The flower arrangements were just bits and pieces of silk flowers that I picked up at craft stores on sale over a 3-month period prior to the party.  I stuck them in big foam blocks, steadied by jam-packed plastic grocery bags inside large planters that I use for my herbs outside.

They really looked nice.  I tried to select all sorts of technicolor random flowers, the larger the better, to look like the Disney cartoon version gardens.

In our entryway, I hung a cheap Alice in Wonderland poster that I bought used for $3 in a poster frame I got for $2.  It looked lovely.

I decorated with more flowers and paper butterflies, and a stuffed Cheshire Cat and White Rabbit that I got from the Disney Store online on sale.

And lots and lots of flowers.

You can't quite see it from the first picture, but I had loads of fun with the tea table food and decorations, too.  I took every teapot and nice teacup out of our china cupboards, and piled them around the center of the table.

I also piled out all the colorful trays that I owned -- most of which were cheap and plastic, but had lovely floral or brightly-colored geometrics on them.

We had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, tea sandwiches with ham and cheese and turkey and cheese, and also some mini-croissants with chicken salad.

Plus there were mini-quiches, cheese and pepperoni and crackers, fruit and vanilla yogurt for dipping, chips and a few other goodies.

I tried to come up with food that grown-ups would like as well as stuff for the kids, since parents were coming along for the party.

As you can see, I tried to put flowers everywhere, even found some flower party picks at Oriental Trading.  Bought a huge supply for a tiny price -- and I figured they'll get parceled out over at least another birthday party in coming years as well as school party food.

The kids really seemed to love it.  One said that it was just like walking into Wonderland, coming through the door.  And I had a LOT of fun creatively coming up with everything.

I ordered the invitations for the party from CafePress.  They were adorable, and made for an invitation to a party that wasn't so girly -- inside it invited everyone to a Mad Tea Party, which one of the boys in her class told me was "the coolest idea ever" for a party.

Yay, mom.

They were a little pricey, but they set the theme for the party up front and after spending weeks trying to figure out how to either make them myself or find a nice yet cheaper alternative, I kept coming back to these as my favorite.

Outside the house, the whole yard was also decorated for the occasion.  I started with signs that I made from posterboard -- the thicker sort with foam in the center so that it has a little more heft.  I drew sign shapes to match up with the ones from the Tulgey Wood scenes in the Disney Alice film, and put various phrases on them from the movie along with identifying that this was where the party would be.  We even got a few pink flamingos to go along with the signs for a pop of color.  Here are some shots of the yard:

I cut the signs out with an exacto knife, and then outlined them as boldly as I could with a matching marker color.  I used Sharpie markers so there wouldn't be any ink running in case of rain that day -- but they kept gumming up or running out of ink on the surface of the posterboard.  I think it may have been a bad mix, but they ended up working out okay.

I stapled the posters onto large paint stirrers and/or wooden yardsticks that I got from Lowes and Home Depot.  I used our staple gun to attach them firmly top and bottom and they stayed lovely through the whole day.

I got really lucky in that I found a large coloring book of classic Alice images from the original John Tenniel illustrations.   They were in a pull-out, perforated format and they had one fully colored illustration, and then one outline one for your own coloring.

I pulled out the fully-colored ones that I wanted to use, and found border posterboard to mount them on for pictures around the house.  Here are a few examples, including the White Rabbit above on the welcome sign on our front door.

In our living room, I set up a snacking area and other decorations in a Queen of Hearts theme.  For this, I found a lot of "poker night" party supplies on sale and they worked great.

One of my favorite things about this party was planning in some whimsy into the mix.

I must have watched the Disney Alice in Wonderland movie a half dozen times, trying to pull out some visual references to use for artistic ideas for decorations.  I also surfed the web a lot and found some amazing party photos that other folks had done.  (See here, here, here, here, here, here and here for more ideas.)

And I would take those ideas and use what I could find here in the sticks or online for a reasonable cost -- and tried to turn it into something really fun.  I think I succeeded best where I got a little snarky.

For example, I didn't want to have to deal with kids asking me where the bathroom was during the whole party,  so I made this sign for our downstairs restroom using bordered posterboard a magic marker, and some aluminum foil for the "mirror:"

I also had a lot of fun with food and beverages.  I got Kool-Aid drinks that looked like bottles and put a "Drink Me" tag on each.  I used some very inexpensive yard-sale tags with a string that I found in the office supply section at the store, and wrote on them with a calligraphy marker.  They turned out really well.

I had just as much fun making the above cakes, too.  And it was as easy as can be, once I figured out the logistics of how to do this.

They are just Little Debbie snack cakes, believe it or not.

I looked into getting petits fours, but they were prohibitively expensive because I would have had to order them online and then have them overnighted to our house.  (Not living in the big city can have its downside sometimes.)   I picked up the heart-shaped ones on Valentine's Day on sale -- they were light pink with some white drizzle frosting.  The square ones are white with white drizzle.

Then I found some frosting pens in the baking aisle at the grocery store and hand-wrote "Eat Me" on them myself.  The kids LOVED them.  And it took me about an hour of time the night before to make them.

I also hand-painted some white roses with glittery red fabric paint, and stuck them, along with some plain white and plain red ones in the topiaries on our front porch.  It was a nod to the "painting the roses red" scene with the Queen of Hearts.

I also found some Alice in Wonderland cupcake toppers that I got pre-printed with a happy birthday note for The Peanut.  I had the cupcakes frosted in bright, neon colors with colored sprinkles, and popped them into cupcake holders.  It was gorgeous and cheery.  Plus, I found a plastic Alice in Wonderland playset on our trip to Disneyworld over Christmas, and saved it to top the birthday cake.  So cute!

My favorite, by far, though?  I found a little field mouse fingerpuppet and popped him into a little teapot on the table to be the dormouse.  So cute!

UPDATE: Forgot to say that I got plastic top hats, lots of different stickers and feathers and other things to add to them -- and the kids got to make their own "Mad Hat" while they watched the Disney Alice in Wonderland movie.

And I drew a Cheshire Cat with no smile on him, and made lots of little smiles for the kids to play "Pin the Grin" on the cat.

I had the worst trouble trying to think of games, but the kids seemed to really enjoy themselves.

I had little gift bags for the kids with heart candies, a pack of cards, drink me bottles, and some other Alice-related goodies. It was way too fun in the planning.

UPDATE #2: I got a request by e-mail asking where I got the cute butterfly, bug and flower mobile -- I ordered it online and it really was adorable. And also where I got the lovely butterflies on my china hutch -- also ordered those online. I plan to reuse both in The Peanut's room; we redecorated it for her last year with a butterfly theme, and I'm going to hang all of them from the ceiling on tiny hooks for her as extra decoration.

UPDATE #3:  Little Debbie is once again selling the heart-shaped light pink cakes that I used last year -- saw them at our local grocery store this week in January of 2011.  Also, the Alice in Wonderland playset that we bought at the park on vacation, and then used for the cake topper?  They are selling it on the Disney Store website in case anyone wants to top their cake the same way.  It was absolutely adorable, and The Peanut still picks the toys up and plays with them on occasion and talks about her party.

UPDATE #4:  on 4/7/11, found some cute Alice in Wonderland coloring books and other potential party favors at our local Target for $1 each.  More here.