20913

Bird Party 9yr

January 2010

Tracey in Smithville, Ohio, USA

Special Mention

For my daughter's 9th birthday, she picked the very unique theme of a bird party.  It was a lot of fun coming up with the ideas for it and it turned out to be the best themed party yet!  Invitations:   My daughter loves Bluebirds, so I found some cute clipart of them for her invitation.  The wording was, A little birdie's dropping by to say, we'd love you to celebrate with us for the day!  Fly on over to our nest on (date,time and location), and Give us a tweet at (phone number).  Decorations:   We decorated 3 rooms with a different theme - a garden, a pine tree forest, and a tropical room.     The garden was decorated with potted trees that we made by hot gluing silk leaves to branches from our back yard.  We potted them using styrofoam and plaster of paris.  I was very pleased with how well these turned out!  Next, I made several topiaries with artificial ivy and small purple flowers.  I borrowed potted plants from friends and family, and then printed out the cutest birdhouses from a template.  The assembled birdhouses were then staked and set in all of the plants.  Doorways were decorated in ivy garland and silk flowers.  A picked fence, made from poster board  was hung on our main wall with the trees on either side.  Flying birds that we printed and cut out were also hung on this wall.  We found many clearance bird ornaments after Christmas and attached them to the trees, topiaries and plants.  I originally wanted to create a giant birdhouse using a refrigerator box, but was unable to obtain one, so I created a different one using felt.  I sewed together felt the size of our doorway to look like the front of a birdhouse with a large round door to fly through.  With felt cut out letters, I wrote Jill's Nest above the doorway.  We hung this in the doorway with a spring rod, and the girl's loved going through the hole this makes an excellent prop for photos too!     For the pine tree forest, we decorated with several artificial Christmas trees.  With her birthday being in January, we found several miniature trees on clearance.  Lots of pine garland was hung along our ceiling beams, and from that we hung a bunch of flying birds purchased from Pat Catans.  More of the birdhouses that we printed were also hung from the garland.   Flying birds that we printed and cut out were also hung in this room on the walls.    The tropical room was decorated in hanging palm trees found at our local party store, and scene setters for the walls that had palm trees and parrots.  More potted plants with silk flowers and staked birdhouses were added all over the room.  With the leftover felt from the hanging birdhouse, I sewed several birds from a pattern at spoolsewing.com.  We hung these birds from our ceiling.  A large birdbath that I cut from poster board was hung on one wall, and I painted a small amount of blue water in it.  Birds that we printed and cut out were placed around the edge of the bath.  Activities:   Shortly after the guests arrived, I passed out scratch off cards that I had prepared.  Each card had a different bird on it and I also made matching tags for the girls to wear so they would remember what bird they were for the party.  We had a Bluebird, Cardinal, Robin, Goldfinch, Blue Jay, Humming Bird, Chickadee and a Barn Swallow.     I purchased birdhouses from Pat Catans for the girls to decorate using acrylic paint.  This kept them busy and quiet for almost 30 minutes!  While they were busy painting, we hid easter eggs full of candy in the other rooms.  Each bird was assigned a specific color for the eggs they needed to find  that way everyone got to find 3 eggs.  Games:   For the first game, we used the felt birdhouse that was hanging in the doorway.  I purchased styrofoam bird gliders that we assembled and had each guest try to fly their bird through the door of the birdhouse.  Everyone had 5 turns and the one who was the most successful won a prize.   Our next game was Feed Your Baby Birds!  For this game, I made tubes from cardstock and hot glued 3 of them into a Styrofoam bowl.  The bowl was supposed to be the nest, and the tubes were the baby birds.  Each guest had there own nest, and 3 gummy worms that they had to carry from 1 table, across the room to feed their baby birds using only their mouths.  We split the girls up into 2 teams and ran it like a relay race.  The first team to finish would win only if they had gotten the most worms in their babies!    The final game involved the large birdbath hung on our wall in the tropical room.  Each guest had a cut out of their own bird, and we played Pin the bird on the birdbath.  Party Snacks:   We made birdbath decorations by hot gluing the bottoms of styrofoam bowls and cups together.  Then I filled the birdbaths with blue jello jigglers.  We set out bowls of sunflower seeds, strawberries, black and red raspberries and popcorn.  Cake:   I made white cupcakes and frosted them with either vanilla, strawberry of lemon frosting.  Then I piped on chocolate frosting to look like a nest and placed 2 jellybeans in it for eggs.  Finally, I made tiny birds by gluing pom-poms together with wiggly eyes and beaks from yellow craft foam.  Small tufts of feathers were glued to the top of their heads, and for tails.  Their feet were made from pipe cleaners and also used as picks for the cupcakes.  We brought these out on a cupcake stand and they looked incredible!  Favors:   The gift bags had matching tags on them for each guest's bird, so they could drop off their goodies they got as the party went on.  The girls kept the bird gliders and painted birdhouses.  They each got one of the felt birds, candy from the egg hunt and gummy worms.  I purchased bird whistles and bird pens from OTC also.

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