Anna Grace's Art Party

Today we celebrated Anna Grace's 4th birthday with an art party. We invited her friends with this card that I created asking everyone to help her "create a masterpiece." We cut holes in the cards and attached real paint brushes so that it would look like she was holding a giant paintbrush in her picture. I thought the invitations turned out really cute.

We decorated the patio and the rest of the backyard using pink, green, and yellow tissue paper pom poms and homemade pin wheels.

I used a piece of pink and white polka dot fabric on the food and present tables. Lots of ribbon and scrap booking paper were used to decorate. I made paper cones and Mike made pink and green colored popcorn to fill them. We also had fruit on a little sticks and spinach dip with flower-shaped bread. The kids cooled off with pink lemonade from a jug labeled with scrap booking paper and little water bottles covered with more of same the scrap booking paper.

We set up two white tents for shade so that the kids could work on their craft projects. We painted "bubble fish" and assembled Styrofoam spiders under one tent and made felt cupcakes and birds decorated with feathers under the other tent.

Alex had a table set up to with play dough and Cole had another table to help the kids slide beads onto pipe cleaners to make bracelets.

Of course, we also had the trampoline (or, "jumpoline" as one little girl called it)and play scape for the children to play on. Mike used a piece of ribbon to make a drying line for the art projects. We also had bags labeled with each child's name (I used more scrap booking paper to decorate them) so that we could keep up with everyone's projects.

Anna Grace's dress was made out of fabric that coordinated with the party colors. It was a pink polka dot pillow case dress with a cute little bird appliqued on the side of it and her name monogrammed across the bottom. I ordered it from very sweet lady off Etsy.

My mom and I (well mostly my mom) made the cake. It was made up of two round cakes and covered with a smooth buttercream icing. We made cookies to look like paint palettes to decorate the sides. We also used little candies and more polka dots to give more color. I made a little banner for the top with Anna Grace's name on it that was a smaller version of the banner hanging from the covered patio. Of course, both banners were created from the same scrap booking paper that I used on all of the other projects.

After the children had their fill of cake, it was time for presents.

All of the children took home their bags filled with their art projects. They were also given little bags with homemade crayons and little tubs filled with homemade play dough (of course labeled with more scrap booking paper, hee hee...)

Anna Grace's actual birthday is not until next weekend, but we celebrated early so that it would not interfere with Mother's Day plans. I think her little party was a hit. All of the kids enjoyed the projects, and they had a great time getting to play. The weather was hot, but we had plenty of cool drinks and several shady spots in the yard for the adults to relax. We are all tired tonight, but we had a great time celebrating Anna Grace's birthday.