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Melissa N from My Party Passion is my go-to gal for beautiful parties on a budget. She knows how to stretch a dollar better than anyone. Well, she's done it again with the Woodland Fairy Party she threw for her daughter over the weekend,  and she is here to tell you all about it.

Over the weekend our youngest daughter turned 3!

She loves to watch her older sister's DVD of Tinkerbell and asked me, back in February, if she could have a fairy party. Of course I can do that, I said. HOWEVER, our "Samantha" aka Sammie, is not a girly girl....so I needed to change it just a little, and went with a Woodland Fairy Party theme.

Right away I knew that I would be using elements from our yard/woods to help create the perfect setting for the party. If you are familiar with my parties, budget is very important to me, but so is quality. I challenge and pride myself on styling and executing a top notch party on a not so top notch budget. Once I got my wheels turning there was no holding me back on this one!

Starting Point: The first thing I do is always write down all my ides in a notebook and brainstorm before buying anything. Impulse buys can turn out expensive and sometimes a waste of time. A routine trip to our local Christmas Tree Shop gave me the idea for more natural colors for the party. Greens, yellows, oranges and reds. I found these beautiful huge butterflies and flowers there for $ 2.49 a piece (granted it was 3 months until her party). 

Mushrooms: Another trip to the local Dollar Tree gave me the idea for these brown "natural" looking mushrooms. The idea came to me to use these moss planters for mushroom tops and also for snack bowls. I took two Dollar Tree plastic planters and hot glued them end to end, stuck another Dollar Tree Moss bowl on top and there you have it! The red mushrooms were the same "stems" but I painted our wooden salad bowl set (yeah not sure why I ever had these on our wedding registry) to look like mushroom tops!

Fairy Wings: My first intention was to buy Dollar Tree fairy wings and "glam them up" with flowers and ribbons. Since 15 girls were originally invited, cost was a factor. After scoping out more than 4 Dollar Tree stores with no luck, I turned to Ebay, Etsy and other sources. I finally found a good quality wing for a great price and then used Dollar Tree flowers and ribbon that I bought last Fall from Pick your Plum to make them more "woodsy"...They were $5 a pair but that was really the fairy goodie bags. The fairy "crowns" I made from pipe cleaners and flowers from Dollar Tree and left over curling ribbon from Christmas. These cost me less than $.25 each to make.

My mother made the little Woodsman Hats out of felt for the boys! (if you sew or have a friend that does, hats off to ya! I don't sew at all...) Less than $ 1 per hat!

Activities: Keeping little ones busy at a party is a tough job sometimes. You need a variety of options at any time. One of the activities was a Fairy Story being read by an older fairy (I hired three young girls from our Church to help out at the party - this way I can spend time with the birthday girl and soak all of it in) and I wanted that Mushroom Grotto feel to the story area. I looked all over for little red cushions to make toadstools and everything was out of my budget -- so at IKEA I found red round mouse pads and added my own "spots" to them...voila - toadstool pads for them to sit on in the mushroom grotto! $.99 a piece.

A fairy parade was so much fun for them using instruments and "flying" around the yard to wake up the enchanted forest.

Woodland Crafts - for the girls - paint your own fairy house. Each house was $ 1.00 at Michael s and I bought plenty of them. The Woodsman - my hubby, cut and sanded wooden plaques for them to paint.

Food: Kept it simple. I always seem to have so much food left over and the kids never seem to want to eat while they are so busy playing. However this party was opposite. I put out fresh fruit, homemade salsa & chips, tomato, basil and moz. sandwiches, salads. It was enough and the kids all ate.

Misc Items: My husband made the cake stands from elements in our yard. Cost was nothing! I found the "fairy" house in the woods and added a few elements to it from around the yard. Cost nothing. Fairy Houses - I found two bird houses at Michaels Craft store that were on clearance and turned them into fairy houses "for rent."

This theme could get out of control easily as I had so many more ideas that I just had to stop somewhere! The birthday girl had a blast and so did all the other children. The fairies have all returned to the Enchanted Forest and the woods are quiet again!

Budget: decor $ 50 + food $ 25 + goodie bags/wings $65 + misc $30 = $170

Thank you, Melissa, I always love hearing your stories and how you come up with your amazing ideas!

Do check out Melissa’s other fantastic parties on our site, her new blog, My Party Passion and her Facebook page.