I’m finally here, blogging about Poppy’s 3rd Birthday party.  It’s been a crazy week following the party.  Aunty Han Han and Chris (our Prince William look-a-like) were here for the weekend, (that’s a story in itself) and also spent Monday (Poppy’s Birthday) with us.  Then on Wednesday Poppy suddenly got ill and spent the afternoon sleeping on the coach and spent the evening throwing up in a her bed 🙁 Thankfully she is totally back to her energetic self and tonight Drew and my parents have taken her camping for the first time.

So where do I start?  Right at the very beginning?  About 2 months ago I started thinking about Poppy’s Birthday.  I had been inspired by my recent interest in Pinterest (ha!) and started to discover so many things that I wanted to make for Poppy’s party.  The theme was a given.  Poppy had been into princesses for a while and singing and dancing had been her most current past times so that was easy.

I decided the first thing to do was make the invitations.  So I started looking for things I could use.  I found some card and envelopes and stumbled across some mini pegs.  SO cute!  I gradually had a picture in my head of how I wanted them to look and just made it up as I went along.

(At this point I had already started thinking about making rag-dolls for each guest as somewhat of a party favor, so I was on the look out for material to use for them too).

I can’t take full credit for the separate elements of the invitations because I did trace them.  I found the shoes, the tiara and the twirly design on Google images and traced them straight from my laptop on to the card.  The dress was traced from a photo taken of some little dresses.  I did however change them slightly, then colored and filled them all in a bit.  My Mum had some sequins that I used to add some sparkle.  I was really pleased with how the invitations turned out in the end.

It took alot of time but totally worth it!

My next project were the dolls because they were going to take the most amount of time.  I found material at a local thrift store and got to sewing.  My Mum provided the stuffing from a very big but very obliging teddy bear.  I used an old jumper of Drew’s that I had shrunk in the wash, for some of the doll’s hair but had to buy some felt too.  The ribbon for the skirts I found at a thrift store but the beads for the jewellery I had to buy.  It was all about finding bits and pieces here and there.  The whole project was so fun and enjoyable. It had to be really because I ended up having to make 11 dolls!  So I needed to enjoy it otherwise I would have quit very early on.

This is the semi before shot.

And here are the after shots!

One thing I know about Poppy is that she loves novelty.  She loves change and doing new things.  She loves going to new places and gets bored after doing or going to the same place time after time.

So my aim was to totally transform our apartment to make it look as much like somewhere different (hopefully a fairytale land) as possible.

I hung paper flowers in the hallway, used Henry’s noise machine and had frog fairy lights to some how create an enchanted forest.

I painted a tree, iron gate and sign post to greet Poppy and the guests as they arrived.

Then there was the living room where I pinned the curtains to the ceiling and used a mosquito net as a canopy over the dinner table.  I really wanted to try my hand at making pom poms because they always look so pretty in photos, so I made a few to go over the dinner table.

You can’t see very well but in the background you can see that I covered the windows of the cabinets in Disney princess wrapping paper to hide all the junk in the cabinets (not our junk, by the way, this place was ‘furnished’ a little too well for our liking).

Now as much as I wanted this party to be a tasteful princess party, I knew Poppy and the guests were expecting princesses so we had to have a few things princessy.

Before I show you all the little details, I want to show you the cake!!!  Now I was probably fooling myself when I thought I could do everything on my own.  It just wasn’t possible the morning of the party.  I shall tell you more about my sister and her boyfriend showing up later, but to show you the cake I have to tell you that it was ALL my sister’s handy work.  She is very artistic and creative herself and I just praise the Lord that she was there to help me when I needed her the most!  The cake was absolutely beautiful and better than I had imagined in my mind!  Thank you Aunty Han Han!!

Maybe this is a good time to talk about how my sister kept a huge secret from me for months and changed the subject when I asked if she was coming to Poppy’s party.  Or, how Drew kept completely silent about Hannah’s plans for that weekend too.

Because at 12.30 am on Friday night while I was hanging pom poms in my pajamas and Drew was feeling ill on the couch, there was a knock at the door.  I suddenly looked at Drew and he said it was probably the 16 year old girl from 2 apartments below that we have become very good friends with.  I totally went along with it and with pom pom in hand I opened the door.  I was flabbergasted to say the least and I think my face said it all.  I could not believe my eyes and shed a few tears as we hugged at the door.  What amazed me even more was that Chris, Hannah’s boyfriend, came too.  That he would want to be surrounded by all things pink and princessy for a whole weekend was just amazing to me.  Little did I know that he would go above and beyond….. trying to make a good impression?????  Hey you go right ahead Chris!!!

Chris got stuck in on Saturday morning, blowing up balloons, cutting out cheese in the shape of stars, putting together fruit kebabs.  He was more help than Drew, teehee, but Drew was feeling ill that morning so we’ll let him off.  The whole time Hannah and Chris were helping I was just thanking the Lord for sending them my way!  I honestly couldn’t have gotten everything together without them.

Then when I thought the surprises were over and they had shown me the extent of their talents, they whip out their fancy dress costumes and blow me away one more time!  It’s William and Kate!!!!!

So now for the little details.

Games/activities
Who’s that Princess? – Find the princess and write down her name.
Pin The Tail on the Horse.
Colouring in Princess pictures and decorating a frame to stick the picture on.
Dancing of course with a little go of musical statues.
Story telling by myself.
Playing outside – knocking green bottles of the walls with bean bags.

This would be good a time as any to mention that I dressed up as a princess too.  I found this dress at a thrift store for 3.50 euros.  It was fun.

I guess the last thing to talk about is the food.  I wish I could post my Pinterest board on here to show you the things I duplicated.  If you are on Pinterest you could go on and see the things that inspired the food choices.  Unfortunately I didn’t get close up photos of the popcorn cones which my Mum helped make or a good photo of the cherry tomato and Mozzarella cheese kebabs.  We also made fruit kebabs, strawberry smoothies, chocolate covered pretzel sticks, heart shaped jam sandwiches.  With various crisps and snacks.

After the blowing out of candles and singing Happy Birthday we had cake and ice cream (Poppy’s fav thing).

Finally I would like to thank my friend Heather who is in my French class here in France.  She came along and helped out tremendously – thank you Heather, you are a dear friend.

I will end my post with a group photo and say what a wonderful time I had preparing the party and being there too.  Birthday parties in Africa will probably be a whole different story so I wanted this one to be one to remember for Poppy.  Happy 3rd Birthday my little princess – I love you more than words could describe.