Alice in Wonderland Garden Party

Few things bring me as much joy as throwing a garden party for kids.
Thankfully my daughter shares in that joy, and has asked me two years in a row to throw her an Alice in Wonderland party for her birthday. She's smart, she knows that if it's an Alice theme, I'll go way over board. (she's right, by the way)

There are endless ideas when it comes to decorating for an Alice party. Unfortunetly, a lot of the items you have to make yourself- like the Tulgey Woods signs above that my sister-in-law and I made last year out of foam board.
The Cards are the easiest to make, just using paints and some construction paper on white posterboard. A reminder for posterboard projects though: make sure you turn off your sprinklers if you'd like to keep them for another year (lesson learned the hard way- but we got two years out of these guys so I'm not complaining!). Lanterns are the next easiest decoration, but they can cost a fortune. I've bought 5 or 6 nice ones over the last few years, but the rest I've found at Dollar Tree or end of summer sales at party supply stores (usually with the tropical or fiesta themed party decorations). If you're ever in San Francisco in the Chinatown district, you can get some really nice ones there for a decent price as well. The Cheshire Cat up in our redwood tree is another one of my hand painting jobs on foam board. I would never attempt this much detail on foam board again- cutting it out was a PAIN.

Caterpillar was also made out of foam board. He hung out in our large camillia tree surrounded by more lanterns. The Bread and Butter Flies decorated the hops arbor this year. They are from my absolute favorite part of the movie, when Alice meets the flowers.

Almost as important as the decorations are the activities. When it comes to throwing a kid party, you need to have lots of options in this department because they like variety, and never seem to spend a lot of time in any one area. Activities for this party included bocce ball, the new colorful hopscotch, chalk, bubbles, butterfly nets and magnifying glasses.

Water play is also very popular with kids, and they had a lot of fun playing with this activity table. The bird bath temporarily became Barbie's pool for the day, and we had a few half filled watering cans placed through out the garden for the kids who wanted to try their luck with plant care.

There was also a potting station, including a bag of potting soil, a few packages of seeds, a six pack of petunias and cartoon character themed plant stakes. The kids were given the freedom to plant the seeds or plants in the containers and take them home, or plant them anywhere in the garden they wished. Next spring should be interesting for us as there were over two thousand seeds for them, and every single seed was used!

Another fun project for them to do is a ladybug release. We had three packages of ladybugs this year for them to release in the garden (4500 ladybugs total). We've done this the last few years and the kids all seem to enjoy it. In the spring I have my daughter release a bag to help with the aphids, but in the summer they help more with the whiteflies (which we have tons of right now).

The best part of the release for me is seeing some of the kids that were scared of them just a couple years ago, will now allow the ladybugs to crawl up their arms and land in their hair.

Put it all together, and this is a recipe for FUN.