1st Birthday Garden Party with Birds

I can't believe my baby is 1!!! Seriously, where did the time go?!?! We celebrated Sadie's birthday with a Birdie (because everything is birds for her-her room, her clothes...) garden party.
This was the 3rd party in our house in 2 weeks AND between parties phase 1 of our kitchen remodel which involved new tile floors, painting all the cabinets white, and converting the pantry to an office space. Hello!? Call me crazy!!!

The day was perfect!!! Since I kept calling it a garden party I expected it to rain and ruin any chance of setting up outside so I was so stoked when it was a gorgeous sunny day and all the plans I had of being outside worked.
Where to start?!?! I'll start with the order that I did the projects and prep work. Like I said I planned for this to be an outside garden party feel. We were borrowing my dad's white canopy to provide some shade so I knew I would a want to break up all the white and of course girlie it up. Flower garland totally screams garden party right?

Supplies all from our local Dollar Tree:
lots of fake flowers in party colors
grosgrain ribbon
Hot glue

Bad photo, just keeping it real!!!
To make:
Pull apart flowers so you're left with the fabric part, toss the stems and centers.
Lay out ribbon on a protected surface
Squirt hot glue on ribbon then press flower into glue.
For spacing I just guessed so that the petals would either touch or overlap some. I didn't worry too much about a pattern because I didn't want to take the time to count flowers and do the math. UGH!

To hang the flower garland backdrop I just looped the ribbon around the canopy support and secured with a safety pin that way I wasn't poking holes in the canopy fabric. The flower garland provided a beautiful backdrop for the table and then as you can see from the first photo we placed our birthday girl in front of it for cake time.
Now on to he fabric garland. Easy again just time consuming. If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen when I was working on this.

Still keeping it real! This was the beginning of kitchen remodel too, this house was so trashed!

Supplies:

4 fabrics in party colors, 1/4 yards each
twine
scissors

To make:
Cut fabric into 1/2 inch strips.
Loop or knot fabric around the twine in chosen pattern. From the photo on the left I placed the middle of a fabric strip under the twine bringing the two ends around the twine and through the fabrics middle and pulled.
Continue until you've reached your desired length. I had plenty of fabric to make the garland that was on the front of both the food table and the Sadie's high chair tray with strips leftover (I'll show you where else I used a few strips soon.)
For paper decorations I headed to Etsy and found a party package in the right colors and of course had birds! Yay!!! Thank you Studio DeLamour for the beautiful printables. Just a tip if you ever use party printables: Print almost everything on full sheet sticker/adhesive backed paper. You can do that if you print from home or at a copy center (what I did.)

You can see some of the party printables here in the set up of the food table. The menu was Salad with grilled chicken and fruit salad. Since it was a garden party I wanted to keep it light. The jars with the salads in them were a great find a few years ago at The Christmas Tree Store, they came with the chalkboard label.

 

There are various salad toppings in Ball jars and a selection of dressings in squeeze bottles with labels from the party printables.

It wouldn't be a party here if I didn't serve Sweet Tea!!! Pink lemonade sounds very refreshing for a garden party. See the straw flags-printed on sticky paper so they went on in a breeze!

 

How cute are these Birdie watermelon pops?!?! They are super easy too!!! I used a cookie cutter on slices of watermelon then inserted craft sticks. Cute!

 

Now here's were I used the left over fabric strips. I just folded a strip in half and glued it to the back of the cupcake toppers from the printables when I glued them to the sticks. Do you see more matching printables? on the kisses!

You know about my love of Marshmallow pops so it should be no surprise to see them on the sweets table. I used straw flags on the marshmallow pop stick to add a little pop, HA! I wish I had a better pic of the birds nest cookies but when I realized this was the best I had the cookies were all gone. These are similar to haystack cookies.

Birds Nest Cookies:

Ingredients-

Chow mien noodles

White chocolate/almond bark

egg shaped candy (hoarded from Easter)

1. Melt Almond bark in large bowl in microwave following package directions.

2. stir in chow mien noodles

3 drop by spoonful onto cookie sheet or wax paper and shape into nests by pressing spoon into the middle slightly.

4. add egg

Whoa this is a super long post. Oh well, it was for a super sweet 1st birthday!!! One more thing before I go...This last photo is now a birthday tradition. We did this for Nolan's 1st birthday and I loved the photo that I have done it every year for him and now we will every year we celebrate Sadie's birthday.

Thanks for stopping by At Home with Sweet T!

-Tracy