Paige's Library Party!

Here they are! Photos from Paige's library-themed (or book themed?)party we had last weekend! It turned out pretty good, I was really delighted. I mentioned before that I actually felt prepared for this party for once--amazing! However, I wasn't counting on the 20mph winds we had that day. Yikes! It really wouldn't have been so bad if all my decorations weren't made of paper. All the cute little book pages hanging sweetly from the giant lilac bushes turned into crazy looking paper twisted and stuck between the branches. So we moved the food and some of the decor inside. Not the end of the world!

We had the party at a friend's house from church. She's a sweet and generous grandma type who loves kids. Which is good, because I think we had 16 there. Also, she has a giant trampoline, and I discovered that if you have one of those, you don't need party games. Awesome! The kids played on it the. entire. time. They didn't even want to stop to see Paige open her presents! So they were happily entertained and the adults got to visit pleasantly. It was great!

Now for the important part! Crafty details! Here's what I did:

We already talked about the invitations, plain card stock covered with vintage paperback books. With enveloped lined from the same book.

The color scheme was a little random because everything was vintage, but I did focus on blue, cherry red, sea foam green and light pink.

For favor bags, I sewed two pages together and trimmed the top with scalloped scissors. I filled them with a few cute stickers, a paper doll(a different toy for boys), "reading glasses", gummy worms and their own book about themselves.

For the little bags of "book worms", I added little glasses to the "o"s and made the "s" a worm. They turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself!

The personalized coloring books were made from Crayola's Story Studio website.

We also had bubbles for everyone, which I covered with-what else?-book pages.

For decorations, I cut a giant "5" out of some pink foam board (Walmart) and colored green and blue polka dots on it.

Then I made a "Happy Birthday Paige" banner, which I didn't get a good photo of. The papers were stapled together two at a time to look like open books and then I hand cut the letters and glued them on. Then it was beat to death by the wind. :o)

Stacks of Paige's books from home, wrapped with pink polka dot ribbon and a balloon tied on top were set on the balcony railing.

With a sea foam and cherry red scalloped banner along the deck. I cut out large green circles, then cut them in half and stapled them to red bulletin board trim.

Book page accordion flowers. (My tutorial for these here.)

And old fashioned paper chains from book pages as well!

 Behind the food table was a wall of vintage children's book pages and balloons with the letters"READ" on them. I confess that this area looked a lot better in my head, but oh well. Still cute. Just a little busy for my taste.

P.S. Did you catch Paige's mismatched shoe look in that photo? I let her pick her outfit that day. She's so eccentric. :o)

The foods were all story-themed. 

We also had "Olivia's Pigs in a Blanket" and "Big Dog Little Dog Hot Dogs" and "Pinkalicious' Pink Lemonade" and "Elephant and Piggie's Ice Cream"!

I just made a simple cake from scratch (ok, from a box...but that is "from scratch" for me) and decorated it as an open book.

And a friend made a gluten-dairy-sugar free cake for Paige. Isn't it adorable? It was tasty, too!

After that we opened presents! Mostly Paige got books (yay!) but she did get a few other sweet things as well. I have to say that my favorite was probably this gorgeous Asian doll a friend got for her from the Ashton Drake Galleries. She's adorable!

And now we come to my favorite photo from that day: one of Paige's presents was wrapped in a Clorox toilet cleaner box and when she opened it she was so confused! She said "For chores??"

The look says it all.

Haha.

Then Paige got to hand out" presents" to her guests! She really enjoyed that.

The rest of the time was spent playing and being crazy and cute! It was a lot of fun.

It was really a fantastic day. 

...And then there was clean up! 

:o/

 Luckily I had some great helpers. (Thanks, guys!)

Hope that inspires you if you're looking for party ideas! I had almost everything on hand, so it was pretty economical. I think the food was most of the cost! 

Oh, and I did get Paige a special book for the party, but I'll post about that later. :O)

Have a great day, guys!!

Love,

Disney