Visions of Sugarplums!

Yesterday I had the inaugural 'Visions of Sugarplums' girls craft day at my house.

Nine perfectly behaved little crafters came along.

They were all 5 - 7 years old with one 9 year old there to help.

I couldn't resist a little festive decorating for the occasion.

Any excuse to pretty things up!

Of course the day started with a cupcake!

Our first craft was decorating little gingerbread houses.

You know how much little ladies love icing!

The weather was beautiful (for a change!) so the icing dried quickly and we were able to assemble the houses easily.

It was a very serious business!

The girls also iced Christmas cookies for their daddies.

Here is Liberty's finished house.

The decorations came with the house kit. 

Gingerbread house city!

Patiently waiting for lunch.

Here's one of the reasons I haven't been blogging this month.

I've been baking and selling these cookies, they've been very popular!

My friend Pauline came to help me (thankfully!), we were so busy we forgot to take photos of all the crafting.

The girls made bath salts for their mothers, crepe paper roses and beautiful gift tags.

The tag making was the most popular activity, they kept asking if they could make more!

They also made ballet dress Christmas decorations.

And folded paper decorations.

They all had such a good time.

It was a very busy day, but we all had such fun!

And they're all wanting to do it again!

Now I have three days to get this place ready for Christmas...

Merry Christmas to you all!

Mercedes

A Ballerina Tea Party!

Recently a friend asked me to help her plan a 'ballerina tea party' for her daughter's fifth birthday.

It was a great thrill to be asked and a lot of fun to plan!

These are the invitations I made.

I thought you might like to see some pictures of the party...

Here is the sweet little birthday girl, Lillyana, with my Liberty.

The party was in a big hall.

I've never had a hall to decorate before.

That's my helpful hubby up the ladder - I couldn't have done it without him!

 I was going to make the frilly hanging pompoms but we were able to borrow them from a friend.

This frame usually hangs on the wall in my lounge, I made some pretty birthday bunting to go in it.

The papers and letters are from 'Grace Taylor Designs'.

My beautiful Cinderella dress!

A party ballerina came along to play games with the 20 girls who were there.

Wall decorations.

Gift boxes.

Inside the gift boxes were little china trinket boxes and inside those there was a pearl necklace with a silver ballerina charm.

A table set with vintage china for 20 little ballerinas!

And tables set for the mothers of the ballerinas.
We had a small glitch with the pink chairs we were going to use, the black ones would have had bows around them if we had known we were going to use them.

Vintage ballerina placemats.

Most of the food was pink and white!

Strawberry teacup jellies.

I made those ballerina dress cookies -  still can't believe I made them!

There's a fabulous tutorial here.
I didn't have a cookie cutter, they all had to be cut out by hand, time consuming but well worth the effort!

I made this tutu skirt for Liberty to wear to her book day parade at school the week before the party.

(more about that in another post.)

A cupcake tower for the birthday girl!

 The art table.

Frills everywhere!

I love frills!!

 I made ballet bags for all the guests to take home.

 Yes! I made those cute ballet slipper cookies too!

And just beacause I felt I needed to finish things off, I made these thank you cards.

I'm very happy to tell you that the party was a great success!

And I really enjoyed being a party planner!

Mercedes