For my youngest daughter, Brooklyn's, 1st birthday I decided to go with an Alice in Wonderland theme. There were so many fun ideas that I went hog wild planning! I bought a few things (mostly off of my favorite site, Etsy), but I also did a lot of DIY projects to save money. First things first, I had to decide on an invitation. After seeing that going the usual route of buying pre-printed invites was very expensive, I bought an Etsy jpg that I was able to customize for only $10. PartyInvitesAndMore was awesome and allowed me to make several edits before finally sending me the final product. After I received it in my email inbox I had them printed at a local shop for just a few bucks! Next was the decor. This was where I really had fun! There were so many ideas that my only regret is I couldn't use them all!
From left to right: I wanted to add an Alice feel to the plain old cupcakes so I bought a pack of playing cards at the dollar store (washed the ones I was going to use) and cut them into triangles for a topping! To add a whimsical feel to the drink table, I bought these fun red and white striped straws off of Etsy from angieheartsjared, 25 straws for $18. For the glasses, I just took Starbucks Frappuccino bottles and used goo gone to remove the labels. It took me only minutes and was much cheaper than buying those cute milk glasses online, and I just HAD to have the adorable Alice signs that send you in all different directions! Again, I went to Etsy and found a set of 5 signs that I could customize for only $18.50! I was able to pick which fun sayings I wanted as well as the colors. Kute Kardz was wonderful and they shipped them to me super fast, they were even cuter than I expected! I pinned them to a tree in my front yard and it was the first thing our guests saw!
From left to right: This adorable chesire cat cut out was an Etsy find from Snows Cottage. It was only $3.75 and was amazing quality! I pinned it to a tree in our backyard and all the kids loved it! In addition, I also bought the white rabbit and put him inside my house near the door. I made a big black hole out of construction paper and glued him in front of it to make it look like he was going down the tunnel. I'm bummed I don't have a photo of it but you can imagine! Next is a picture of my goofy husband in a huge Mad Hatters top hat. I purchased this from Amazon, slightly expensive at $25 but the quality was better than I'd seen anywhere else and I figured he could use it for Halloween right!? The large playing cards in the tree were a really easy project, I just bought a large deck from Amazon for $17 (cheapest I could find for that size), punched holes in the top and tied them to the branches with fishing wire. Over the course of the few months before Brooklyn's birthday, I started collecting oversized teacups and pitchers whenever I'd see one. The white one above was from Marshalls and was only a few dollars. I bought a ton of fake flowers from the dollar store (so many that I actually walked out of there spending a lot!). I bought a packet ofgoogly stick-on eyes and added a pair to every flower to resemble the talking flowers in the garden scene. It was time consuming but turned out really cute! The middle photo is of me and my baby girl! Her Alice dress was a splurge handmade by Lover Dovers Clothing on Etsy $55. It was expensive but it turned out just gorgeous! My tea cup hat was made by Miwary on Etsy and I was able to customize the pattern. The soda pop sign was a fun project! I bought two round wooden dowels from home depot and two eye hooks - I attached the eye hooks to the top of the dowels so I'd be able to string through my DIY banner. Depending on the height you want, there are different sizes of both dowels and eye hooks available. For my sign I just made the letters in good old Microsoft Word and cut them into triangles, I folded down the very top of each letter and glued it onto the ribbon, leaving a little extra ribbon to fall down the sides.
Ahh the Dessert Table! Quite possibly the best part of any party no? Since desserts play such a large role in Alice in Wonderland I wanted to make sure Brooklyn's party included a ton! First, a quote in a funky frame was needed. I found this frame at Marshalls for super cheap and printed a quote from the movie on polka dot paper in a cool font. "If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, wouldn't be and what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?" I found a really cool picture of Alice's legs upside down in a blue tutu that I decided to try myself! For this, I drew the shape of two legs on sturdy whte cardboard, making sure I followed the curve of where her shoes would be drawn. I colored in blue stripes with a thick pen and her shoes in black. Then I glued the two together so they'd look crossed. I purchased a blue pom from Pom Tree on Etsy ($4) and glued her legs to the top so it would look like she was upside down falling into the hole! I bought A LOT of candy and filled different sized tea cups, tea pots, and glass vases. The polka dot table cloth was from Amazon and was only $5. I had so much fun planning this party and our guests had so many compliments on the whimsical feel! Additional touches I included were overly large flowers in my garden, sandwiches cut into playing card suits, and all different sizes and colors of hanging lanterns! I hope you enjoyed looking at this fun party and I hope it gave you some ideas!