6950

Spring Garden 3yr - Garden Sayings

August 2003

Tania in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Honorable Mention

Spring Garden Theme My daughter’s favourite colour is green, and she wanted a green party for her third birthday. This is quite limiting, so instead we settled on a Spring Garden theme, which could include loads of green.

Invitations were white card with a green overlay, with a bright pink flower on a consetina of paper, that made it spring out when pulled out of the envelope. Use craft scissors with a decorative edge to cut out the green overlay, and it looks so professional. Of course, the words were printed on with a computer.

I made birds, clouds, a sun, ladybugs, butterflies and bees from coloured cardboard and hung them from the ceiling with fishing line so they looked like they were floating in the sky. I had the petals from dismantled fake flowers all over the windows and brought all our potplants inside for the occasion. Coloured streamers decorated the walls, along with coloured balloons, blown up only half way so they were round in shape. Join them together in a bunch of five same coloured balloons. Add a flower centre of two more balloons, front and back so that the five original balloons act as petals, and the flowers are reversible.

On my computer, I printed out large words on different coloured paper (only the outline of the words) and cut them out and stuck them to the walls - the words were garden-related things such as How does your garden grow? And Love grows here and Stop and smell the roses. They looked really effective. The cake was a mudcake with green butter icing on top and green rolled icing around the side, with a spikey top to mimic grass. On top of the butter icing, I sprinkled chocolate sprinkles to mimic dirt, then laid out a variety of vegetables all made from rolled icing, and coloured with bright colouring. I also made a basket of strawberries from icing and a potplant of flowers, which I added to the top of the cake. You can buy little tiny chocolate rocks too, which I used to make a small path and edging to the vegie patch. For games, I had a pass-the-parcel with garden-related prizes, plastic spiders, bugs, flower stickers, etc. I made a strawberry pinata filled with similar goodies and sweets.

Food included chocolate crackles with gummy worms wriggling out of them, green jelly in patty pans with marshmallow flowers on top, a caterpillar made from cupcakes, fairy bread cut out with a flower cookie cutter, butterfly-shaped and flower-shaped cookies, iced, platters of fresh cut vegetables and dips, fresh herbs scones and muffins, and chocolate eggs in a nest, as well as the typical party pies and sausage rolls, and fruit skewers with drink umbrellas through them. Food was served in plastic pot planters and plastic bugs on sticks made them look like they were flying above the food. For favours, I had small pots filled with raffia, sunflower seeds and instructions, sweets and lollypops with paper petals on them, ladybug candles, plastic bugs, garden-like stickers and other bits and pieces. I made party hats from twisty balloons - simply a loop that goes on the head, with a stem on it and a flower on top of the stem.

For games, I had the pinata, plus pin the spider on the web - for the web, use black cardboard and create a web with glue covered in silver glitter. The spiders can be cut out of cardboard. Tossed ladybugs is a game where each player has a ladybug, either made of cardboard or red baby socks stuffed with beans. All the children hold a blanket around the edges and the ladybugs go in the middle. To music, the children heave the blanket up and down, with the ladybugs eventually flying out. Last bug in wins. Make sure each bug is labelled with a child’s name. This is quite a hilarious game. We also had pass the parcel and musical statues. A good idea for pass the parcel is to include a small toy or stickers or a pencil with each unwrapped layer. Means everyone wins. This was a wonderful day and everyone commented for weeks about how fabulous everything looked. Good fun!