Little Birdie Birthday

While normally I would just flood you with lots of photos and very few words, I've had a friend ask for details on how/why I did things, so I'm going to share lots of details on how to create a look similar to this.

My biggest challenge was trying to do all this (almost) only with things I already had on hand. I did purchase a few very inexpensive things at post-Christmas sales.

Here's a view of the overall look before the cake and some food were put on the table, but you get the idea. If you start with a neutral background for both the table and walls, it is really easy to add some coordinating colors and make it all tie together.

This Happy Birthday banner was supposed to be created w/ my silhouette craft cutter, but after a tiny part broke, I had to create this by hand. I did it the "old fashioned way", by printing off the very large font, cutting them out, tracing them on scrapbook paper, and gluing them on to the assorted brown backgrounds. I hot glued those to some cute ribbon and safety-pinned that to the tablecloth.

This is a pretty good picture to show you how I tried stick to just a couple food colors to make it look more clean/sleek, less cluttered table. The cheddar cheese almost didn't make it to the table because it is the only thing that is not a shade of green, red/pink (mostly pinks), or beige/light brown. Dirk thought I was ridiculous for saying the orange cheese was throwing off the whole vibe, until I showed it to him with/without the cheese. He couldn't believe how big a difference it makes sticking to the same color scheme throughout! (yes, I realize this was for a one year old's b-day party, but humor me and my craziness...)
Another thing I paid attention to were the dishes containing the food. Simple glass or white dishes really show the food off and make it seem less cluttered. A great thing about this, is clear glass or white is very cheap to find, can be mixed and matched with different styles, and is so very versatile (I won't tell you which food container's home is actually in my bathroom holding my makeup!)

Just another angle of the overall look. A tiny look at the Martha Stewart tissue pouf balls. These are great and really transform the overall look. The photos don't do them justice. Super easy and only $1 for the large and 50cents for the small... not too bad!


Okay- now for the close up details...
green/silver berry twigs on holiday clearance from joanns. Paper cutout bird shapes in the branches.
Wooden cake stand courtesy of my parent's firewood supply and my brother's chainsaw. Just a tip, if you want to do this and don't feel the need to put a protective coating of varnish on the wood, you'll want to cut it right before hand or it will dry out and start to crack all over... If this happens, just put it in the bathtub with a bit of water the night before for about an hour, then pull it out and let it drain. It will absorb the water and swell back up. Good as new!
Apothecary jars are always good for any pretty display. Put something pretty inside, like some pink m&m's and they make for great decor! No one needed to dig m&m's out either, as I had some more in a more accessible container.
Pirouettes from pepperidge farm look a lot like little sticks! They worked great with the theme.
For the hot food, I had chicken cream cheese and chives rolled up in to crescent rolls, some fancy pizza squares from costco, and some super yummy bbq and bacon Lil Smokies (not pictured). The 3 taller plates are temporary pedestal plates I made. White thrift store plates with some clear glass candlestick holders on the bottom. I just used a tiny bit of hot glue to hold them sturdy for the party. The hot glue gives it a really strong bond so they were perfectly stable, but when the party was over, I just popped them in the freezer for a few minutes and they came apart super easy and the hot glue spots popped right off with a little help from a butter knife.
The reason for the pedestal plates, besides the fact that they look fancy, they allow you to fit much more in to a small space since you can overlap them quite a bit! You can also do some multi-tiered ones, but I didn't have the right size of candle sticks for that. I was able to squeeze on about twice as much food as I would have if I just put plates side by side flat on the table.


Okay- moving on... Another tree with hanging hearts- $3 ready-to-paint found in the valentine section at Joanns. (Having a little girl's birthday right around valentines and Easter and right after Christmas is very convenient for finding plenty of cutesy decor.

I dyed the ranch dip pink. I don't know why. It was late at night. Whatever you do, DO NOT DYE FOODS w/OUT PROPERLY LABELING THEM! Even though I thought it was obvious that it was Ranch dip, being surrounded by lovely green veggies... ALL my guests thought it was some sort of berry fruit dip. This resulted in not so yummy grapes and strawberries, and very few of the lovely green veggies being eaten! (I was just going to do a regular standard veggi tray, then I realized, if I just omitted the carrots, it was all green! Sorry guests- no carrots for your ranch... though I guess it would have matched the cheddar cheese!)

Another tree- the largest... I bunch of branches stuffed in to a vase. I bought a few branches at Michaels on holiday clearance- they were very cute (but messy) willow(?) twigs with fake snow crystals all over them. While setting up they proved to not be enough, so I went out the the yard and got some branches from the trees. There are a bunch of birds in this one, some are christmas ornaments (but not Christmasy looking) and others are paper cutouts.

I found this cute bird wrapping paper in the dollar section at Target with all the Valentines stuff. After using it to wrap half our presents and as a table runner, there is still a ton left! Great deal for a dollar!

Okay, so my little name hanging from branch isn't even half as cute as my inspiration, but I still like it ;) My poor little bird on the left kept falling too! The ugly doors as a background really doesn't help it's cause... thankfully it looks much cuter in it's new home, Ginny's new room! The birds were chipboard bird shapes I found 8 for a dollar at Michaels. I mod-podged some pink and green fabric on to them. The sign was made the same way as the happy birthday sign (only thankfully all of it was with my Silhouette cutter). I attached it to a branch with some ribbon.

pink and green drinks. I took them out of their ugly regular drink cartons/bottles and put them in some carafes. I love carafes. I use them all the time for decorating pretty much anything. I've never gone in to a Goodwill store and NOT seen some of these so, finding them should be pretty darn easy! So the guests could tell what the drink options where, I labeled the bird cut outs, wrapped some ribbon around and with a dab of hot glue they were complete. The kids got strawberry/kiwi juice boxes since they were pink boxes.

Since most of the decor was from things I already had, it didn't all quite go together, but I think it mostly meshed well. One of my favorite things in this photo is the mason jars holding the utensils. Mason jars are like my carafes... very versatile for any type of decorating or serving. Tie some ribbon around it and it's super cute!

And last but not least, I knew we were going to be getting some close up shots of the birthday girl eating her cupcake, and I wanted to make sure there was a little bit of cute decor in the photo, yet it couldn't be anything from the table which she'd destroy. I whipped up this sign the morning of the party. It was very easy and you are welcome to use it for yourself. I should have hung the sign a bit lower, because it was still too high for optimal photo cuteness. It did the job pretty well though :)

So there you have it~ Lots of pink, green, brown, owls, birds, squirrels, woods, trees, etc.