A Crafty Birthday!

We like at-home birthday parties. They feel cozier, and they’re typically much more frugal! Kathryn is turning 11, an age where little-kid themes no longer cut it — but I never want to rush my kids to grow up and have a party that’s not age-appropriate. Ideally, of course, the party suits the interests and tastes of the birthday girl. So for Kathryn’s birthday this year, she decided she’d like to have a flower-themed crafty party.

The birthday girl helped ice the cupcakes. Although I would’ve liked to have some fantastic flower-looking icing on the cupcakes, my icing skills are not in top form, so we opted for simply using pink icing with sprinkles (I made a point NOT to read the ingredients on the icing can), and arranged our cupcakes in a flower pattern on our cake stand.

One bouquet of flowers was given to Kathryn by her daddy, and one was given to her by Brandon and his fiancee Diane. All we bought in the way of decorations were come cute paper plates and napkins in fall colors — with flowers, of course.

We started out with snacks, and decide to go ahead and sing the birthday song so everyone could dig into the birthday cupcakes. “Happy Birthday to Kathryn…”

Thanks to Pinterest, I have a gazillion or so nifty craft ideas. Kathryn and I wanted a craft that was flower-themed, and that would be a cute make-it-yourself sort of party favor. Our guests’ ages ranged from 8 to 11, so it needed to be fairly simple, but not too childish. We decided on felt flower headbands.

The only supplies we needed were:

• felt in several different colors
• assorted buttons (I keep a jar of them)
• plain headbands (I bought two packs at Target)
• hot glue
• needle and thread
• scissors

Thankfully, Lindsey and my friend Wendy both helped with the craft, because I just don’t have that many hands! The girls picked the headbands and felt colors they wanted, we cut out felt circles of various sizes, and when the girls had arranged them in the pattern they wanted, we helped them sew the felt circles together with a button on top. When the felt flowers were completed, I hot glued them to the cloth-covered headbands.

Making the headbands:

The girls all seemed to love their cute new headbands, and wore them for the rest of the party!

After a few lively (and entertaining!) rounds of charades, Kathryn opened her gifts. I always request no gifts, but apparently people just really like to give gifts — which is fine, but I dislike the have-to-buy-something feeling. And I want it to be about the friends, not the gifts. But her friends gave thoughtful, not overly-expensive gifts, like a gift card to Kathryn’s favorite frozen yogurt place, or this cute crafty gift from another friend:

I’m so proud of the young lady my littlest girl is growing into. It’s hard sometimes, watching my baby grow up, but I wouldn’t trade this for anything.