I think children’s birthdays are magical.  A simple theme can be developed into something truly special that you and your child will never forget.  For my daughter’s 4th birthday, we decided to make it all about butterflies.  And what little girl doesn’t love butterflies?

So, let’s start with the decor.  I actually have lots of butterfly ornaments that I use on my Christmas tree, so I pulled those out to start.  The colors were pink, creamy white, light green, and pale blue.  Pink, white, and green balloons and faux flowers made the dining room feminine and airy.  For this party, I shoved my dining room table against the wall to serve as a buffet for the food and to provide more room for guests to mill around.

I used colored chalk on a chalkboard easel that I got for $3 at a yard sale.  Those flower thingees laying on the table are a pair of table runners with applied flowers and fabric petals – they kinda have a lily pad effect, but it works.

I found a picture out of a vintage children’s book and scanned it to create a custom butterfly invitation.   The invite read “Flutter On By to the Barnett Butterfly Garden for Kelta’s Birthday Party” with details and rsvp information.  Feel free to download the one I created which can be customized for your own butterfly birthday party.

We served “Butterfly Nectar” to the guests.  In other words, Juicy-Juice.  It’s all in the presentation – I found these foam craft flowers in bulk at Michaels, punched a hole in the middle of them, and stuck a short straw through.

This cake was soooo easy.  Really!  I made a large round cake, cut it in half, flipped the halves over, and carved out the “wings” on the outsides of the two halves.  A twinkie and colored Twizzlers created the body and antennae.  The details on the wings included some flat candy sprinkles and clear sugar sprinkles.  JoAnn’s has lots of colored candies that you don’t find most places that really simplify my cake decorating.

Other food included these frozen strawberry salad cups (recipe at end of post), sausage pinwheels, and butterfly-shaped cookies.

For my delicious shortbread recipe that I used for the butterfly cookies, look here.

In another room, I set up a table for crafting.  I borrowed and bought enough butterfly wings for all the girls to have their own pair and scattered them around the table.

Now, older girls might be able to do these themselves – but I premade little tissue paper flowers for them to glue to headbands to create their butterfly “hats.”  I simply cut out uniform squares of tissue paper, stacked 5 pieces, and accordion-folded the paper.   I secured the middle of the folder papers with a twist tie, then began separating the tissues to form the petals of the flowers.

I helped the girls twist pipe cleaners around pencils to make antennae while they cut out pre-printed butterflies and glued them to ends of the pipe cleaners.

With butterfly wings and floral crowns, the girls look all aflutter!

Everyone colored beautiful butterflies that I downloaded from here.

The girls also made a lovely stained glass butterfly with wax paper and crushed crayons.  The instructions from Enchanted Learning are here.   Afterwards, the girls went outside to take a swing at the candy-filled butterfly pinata.

Goody baskets were filled with a butterfly puppet, butterfly tic-tac-toe games, a mini windchime, butterfly bookmarks, and a butterfly sucker.  The baskets and contents were mostly from Dollar Tree, except for the tic-tac-toe games from the Target dollar aisle and suckers from Oriental Trader.

Hope you liked this party proposal!  Click on the pics below for more details from the butterfly party.

Recipe for Frozen Strawberry Salad Cups:

diced pint of strawberries

1/2 small can of condensed milk

pineapple tidbits

2 cups cool whip

2 chopped bananas

Mix berries and milk.  Fold in pineapple, bananas, and cool whip.  Freeze in aluminum baking cups on a tray at least overnight.  You can make these weeks in advance if you like.

.

I found these never-opened paper plates and napkins in an attic of a friend of my mother’s.  I kept them for 8 years until I was inspired to use them for my younger daughter’s third birthday.  I also had a few small books of JWA art and poetry that I had picked up over the years.  Her illustrations of little children have always touched me and aroused that nostalgia within me for anything from my own childhood.  

So, what was I going to call this party?  A Joan Walsh Anglund party?  My daughter would never understand.  So I looked for a common theme in JWA artwork and decided upon Rainbows.  That way I could use primary colors that would work with the plates and napkins.  I decided to hop on ebay and see what I could find of Joan Walsch Anglund’s.  I found 2 unopened Hallmark cardstock centerpieces put out in the late 70′s that featured little children sliding on rainbows.   It came with little cardstock clouds and stars that I could scatter all over the table. 

I found a beautiful unused JWA coloring book that I snatched up for a few dollars.  Oh, and a DARLING  cookie cutter of one of her classic little girls!  Amazon has many of her books, new and used.  And finally, I found a JWA decorative birthday plate and coffee mug .  All my JWA “props” cost a total of $40.  The other props I used were just things that color-coordinated (yellow, orange, red, green, blue, purple) or looked rainbow-ish.  I color-copied artwork onto label paper and made stickers that I adhered to multi-colored party hats from Dollar Tree.

These are the only invitations I’ve ever had for my childrens’ parties that I did not make myself.  But I found these Joan Walsh Anglund invitations on her website and felt like I owed it to her to order them from her! 

The food for this party was fun!  The rainbow cake was easy – just a round cake, skittles to create the rainbow, and mini-marshmellows for the clouds. 

Here are the sweet cookies I made from the JWA cookie cutter I found on ebay!

My Fabulous Butter Cookie Recipe 

1 cup melted/softenedbutter, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup brown sugar, 4 eggs, 3 tbsp vanilla +1 tsp water (or food coloring), 6 cups self-rising flour

Cream together butter and sugar.  Add eggs one at a time.  Alternately add 2 cups flour, 1 tbsp vanilla, mix, repeat.  Add 1 tsp water.  Chill in refrigerator 3+ hours.  Rollout 1/4 inch.  Cut and bake 335 degrees for 10 minutes on parchment paper.  Use royal icing mix – add more water for glaze.

I used red plastic forks from Dollar Tree, and found colored plastic mugs with built-in straws on clearance at Kroger’s for $1 each.   I made a jello rainbow in a glass trifle bowl – that took awhile to let each color gel before adding the next.  Cubed cheddar cheese looked special on a raised cake plate and rainbow-colored toothpicks.

I made a fruit tray using a rainbow of fruits set in a cream cheese, sour cream, sugar mixture - blueberries, peaches, oranges, green grapes, and strawberries.  I layed the cream and fruit in a rectangular tray with a lip so that it wouldn’t ooze out.

I ordered huge multi-colored swirly suckers from Oriental Trading and grouped them for a colorful centerpiece on the table.  Multi-colored balloons completed the rainbow tablescape. 

As the party was for a 3-year-old, the activities were kept simple.  I made lots of copies of coloring pages from the JWA coloring book for the children to color.  We did a simple rainbow craft that you may download.  Print a page for each child and have them attach colored pompoms with glue. 

Below is thumbnail of the rainbow craft.  Rainbow Download

We also made froot loop necklaces – what could be simpler?  Notice how Kelta wore a Gymboree shirt with embroidery in rainbow colors.

All our guests took home a goody basket.  I found these plastic multi-colored baskets at Dollar Tree and filled them with shredded colored paper from Michaels, striped hot air balloon bookmarks,  beaded jewelry kits, and colorful sticker letters (the last two were from Dollar Tree).  I attached cardstock gift tags of JWA artwork with red ribbon.  

The children also got to take home a large swirly sucker (from Oriental Trading Company) and one of the plastic mugs they drank from earlier.

Now, this is absolutely the coolest thing about this party – when I ordered the party invitations off the JWA website, I left a message about the party I was planning for the site manager.  Soon after, we received a special package in the mail.  Mrs. Anglund sent us a precious pencil drawing personalized for Kelta’s birthday with a sweet note wishing her well.  We framed the artwork and treasure it!!!

Below are the gift tags, 2 sticker sheet images, and several coloring pages that you are welcome to download!  Click on the link below for all.  Enjoy!

Joan Walsh Anglund – Download