The Giving Tree Birthday Party

For my daughter's first birthday party with our church family we used the book The Giving Tree as our theme. My husband and I both loved the book as children and since our church has done so much for us we wanted to say thank you. I had a lot of fun planning and making things for the party and I just wanted to share a few of the pics from the party.

Here is a picture of our spread for the party. I kept the food pretty simple. I used the colors red and green since the book's cover is red and green. I also used apples as part of the decorations.

Here is the drink station. I did some word art on Picasa and framed it. I also put out a pic of Reese from her newborn photo shoot by Starla Holl.

We did Red Velvet cupcakes and Yellow cake and chocolate icing cupcakes. I cut apples on my Cricut for the cupcake toppers.

Our snacks were all kid friendly. We had Goldfish crackers, Apple Jacks cereal, Apple Rings, Pretzels, Apple Sauce on the Go, and Reese's Pieces (in honor of my daughter Reese).

I stenciled some linen bags for the guests to fill up with candy and take home.

We laid out quilts for our guests. The shade of the big tree was a perfect setting for the party. Here my husband is reading The Giving Tree to all of our guests. In the back I also set up a table for the kids to color pages from the book. I also set up a table for the high chairs.

I repainted an old frame for the guests to use for photo opportunities. I made hats for the kids to wear in the pictures. I also had all the guests sign our copy of The Giving Tree so Reese can see all of the people who came to her first birthday.

And here is the birthday girl. Thats a pretty happy baby (and messy)!

Handmade Flower Shower Gifts

So I took a hiatus from blogging but I have still been crafting. Lately I have been working on some shower gifts and my little girl's birthday party. I will post about the birthday party hopefully next week but I want to show you how I used the same technique from my cloth flower headband post to spruce up a Shower gift.

I made a wreath with handmade flowers. I bought the twig wreath from the craft store. The bottom layer is made of white felt flowers and the top flowers are made from assorted cotton fabric with buttons in the center. I also painted an A and hot glued it to the wreath. All of the flowers are hot glued as well.

I also added some handmade flowers to a dish towel to spruce them up and tie them into the color scheme. The flowers were hand sewn into the kitchen towel.

I bought a plain white frame and hot glued three handmade flowers onto the corner. Inside I placed some word art I made on www.picnik.com. Unfortunately Picnik has now closed but a lot of their cool effects are on Google+.

I put everything into a basket I had at the house and added some matching napkins and potholders to complete the gift. To spruce up the basket I hot glued ribbon and handmade flowers to the front of the basket.

All in all I was very pleased with the gift and I hope that my friends will think of me when they see their one of a kind, handmade gifts.