19th Jul 2020

Tips for Planning a Woodland Fairies & Elves Toddler Birthday Party

The Sparks family recently celebrated Tilly's third birthday and we honestly cannot believe how quickly the time has flown by since she entered our lives! Because she started preschool back in October, she now has a circle of friends and having already been invited to a few of their parties, we thought it was the perfect time to celebrate with one for her. It wasn't difficult for us to choose a theme because Tilly is currently obsessed with fairies. Tinkerbell and Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom are here absolute favourites so a Woodland Fairies and Elves theme was a great choice and gave us plenty of ideas for creating costumes, decor, entertainment, and food.

That being said, it did take a lot of planning with time spent working to create all of the details and we certainly learned a few things along the way. So, we thought it would be a good idea in this blog to tell you about the things that were done to prepare for the celebrations.

The Venue : Having the party at our home probably would have been our first choice but we had recently just moved house and so to keep things simple we decided to hire a local venue, a converted barn. The hiring costs were reasonable and there was plenty of space for all 12 children who came, along with their parents.

Entertainment : Tilly’s been attending a local baby ballet class for over a year so we were delighted to be able to hire her teacher Caroline, who is the C.E.O and founder of Jittabugs to provide the party entertainment. This was especially great as it meant Tilly was already familiar with her. We actually didn’t tell Tilly that Caroline was coming to the party so when she arrived (dressed in full fairy regalia of course), it was a complete surprise. She even brought along a couple of fairy helpers, two of her older students and they too were dressed up. Caroline took care of all games, providing themed music and bringing along props for all of the children to use in the games and dances. All we needed to do was provide the prizes for the winners, so this took such a weight off our minds.

Décor : The décor was focused on natural textures and woodland nature, like flowers plants and wood, to make it feel like the party was being held where all the fairies and elves live. Some of the items were created at home, in fact, Grampy John cut the log slices for the table. A close friend runs an event styling company called Pearl Events and we hired her beautiful flower wall, which made a great backdrop and was especially wonderful for photos. Lastly, we ordered a number of things from Ginger Ray, who have a beautiful collection of décor and accessories for parties and events. This is where we were able to find the vines to decorate the table, as well as paper plates, confetti stars and balloons.

Party Bags : Instead of using disposable plastic bags for the treats we decided to create personalised Woodland Wreath bags for each child, as found on the Sparks and Daughters website. Each bag was big and strong enough to be used again and again in the future, making it a gift in itself. We kept the contents simple, adding a pack of woodland stickers, cake and little fairy dust bottles (which were made on the kitchen table, from glitter and little corked bottles bought on eBay!).

Food : Preparing the food was probably the most time-consuming aspect of all the preparation. It was important to select a good balance of sweet and savoury items, with a focus on healthy choices wherever possible. Here is a list of the different choices the guests had:

Ladybird strawberries

Hedgehogs (meringue and chocolate with sprinkles)

Fruit plant pots (strawberries and blueberries in 'compostable' card pots from Flying Tiger)

Toadstools (raspberries filled with jam and a small marshmallow)

Fairy Wands (made with Mikado pretzel sticks, white chocolate stars and sprayed with gold dust decoration)

Sandwiches, each cut with a butterfly cookie cutter

Bowls of Twiglets and chocolate fingers (for woodland twigs and sticks)

Chocolate cornflake cake ‘Nests’.

Drinks were served from dispensers and labelled ‘Fairy Potion’ (summer fruits), ‘Dew Drops’ (water) and ‘Pond Water’ (apple squash).

Cake : Nanna Sparks was such an enormous help as she took on the whole job of making the cake in the shape of Gaston, the pet ladybird from Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom. The cake was created with 2 separate chocolate sponges, one square for the base and a round one for Gaston himself. Wooden dowels were inserted into the base to prevent any chance of Gaston from sinking. She used pre-coloured royal icing to decorate the larger areas (green, red, black) and mixed colours into white icing to create all of the different sized flowers. Green triangles were cut to create the grass and all of the decorative pieces were attached around the base of the cake with confectioners glue. Gaston's feelers were created with a wooden dowel, dyed with black food colouring and topped with a small black ball of icing.

Costumes : Tilly's outfit was created with a pre-loved Monsoon dress, decorated with green organza strips that were attached at the waistband to the skirt. Leaves were positioned on top and the joins were disguised with some lace. Her fairy wings were decorated with felt flowers and feathers purchased from eBay. More felt flowers were glued on to snap hair clips.

Mumma Sparks – The dress came from H and M and was combined with the same wings as Tilly in an adult size. The addition of a daisy chain head-dress completed the look.

Jesse – Tilly's cousin Jesse wore a special Ben Elf, hat handmade by Nanna Sparks (she made one for Grampy John too!), with blue top and trousers to match.

Overall, despite the work it took to prepare everything, the party was most definitely a success. Would we change anything next time? Perhaps we wouldn't have quite so many food options. Our biggest tip would definitely be to accept help from friends and family where it is offered, Nanna Sparks was such a great help to us! All the parents who brought their children really liked the entertainment provided by Caroline from Jittabugs and it was really good value, we would definitely use something similar again.

We haven't started thinking about what kind of birthday party to have next year yet, but we do know the bar has now been set and this was confirmed to us by one of our little guests Rupert, who said: “I like it here, they do good food”.