Theme: Garden Fairy Tea Party: Alexa's 5th birthday. For my daughter Alexa's 5th bday, we found invitations and party ware with cute bugs. We invited 7 of her friends for a garden fairy tea party in Nana's Garden,for Lexibug's birthday. Her grandparents had built a beautiful garden with raised flower beds, paved paths, a pond with goldfish and frogs, and a waterfall all surrounded by a white picket fence. They had a wrought iron canopy in the middle and we set up two childrens tables underneath. I decorated them with yellow table cloths from the dollar store, the bug theme plates and child sized teacups from birthday express. We made flower arrangements with cut flowers from the garden as center pieces. We had plastic stemmed ice cream bowls from bday express that we filled with miniature marshmallows and M&M's, and I found really cute small picture frames with glitter flowers at the dollar store, I removed the insert and replaced with a name card that I made for each child. At the end of the party we took a picture of each guest with the birthday girl and mailed the picture in the thankyou as a keepsake. We began the day, with the teaparty. We served peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches cut into hearts, flowers and suns from cookie cutters. We scooped watermelon and honeydew with a melon baller and made a fruit salad with blueberries. We also served chips and pretzels. We put punch in the teapots instead of tea. The kids LOVED the food. While the kids ate we played a CD that had stories of garden fairies. After everyone ate we played the flower drop game. Each child stood on the back of a chair and dropped the head of a purple cone flower cut from the garden into a vase. They had 4 trys and won a Bug Kit found at the dollar store. Then we had a flower pot toss. We arranged 5 flower pots in a triangle and gave the kids a bean bag to toss. They had 3 trys and won a porcelain flower painting kit found at the dollar store. Then we played pin the wings on the fairie, a coworker of mine is a very talented artist and she painted a poster of a garden fairy out of one of lexi's books and cut and painted wings. The kids played the traditional game using this poster and won bubble wands which they were immediately allowed to play with and enjoyed for 15mts. Then everyone got a chance to dig for fairies gold.(gold mardi gras beads buried in the sand box) Once everyone had their gold it was time to do a good deed for the garden. We made bird feeders by rolling pine cones in peanut butter followed by bird seed. After doing their good deed they earned their fairiy wings! (also found at the dollar store) Everyone was given a pair that also came with matching beads and had their hair sprayed with gold glitter hairspray. Then they had a freeze dance in the garden to a Strawberry Shortcake CD. We had cake and ice cream next. My daughter was very impressed with the cakes we had seen at a couple of weddings and wanted one like that. I talked to our local baker and he decorated a 6 inch and 9 inch cake with silk butterflys I had found at the dollar store and pink icing roses and stacked the two cakes like a wedding cake. The cake cost 15.00 and was a huge hit with my daughter and her friends. Afterward we opened presents and each child was allowed to hand her gift to my daughter. As each guest left they were give favor bags with candy and took home their prizes and bird feeders. It was a very pretty party and my daughter will remember it for many years to come.