A 12 Dancing Princesses Birthday Party!

I was so excited to get to do a party for two of my students from Sonoma Conservatory of Dance - Olive and Zoe are precocious sisters with a penchant for dance, and when their mom Julie told me they were itching for a Ballerina Birthday I was instantly excited!  There were so many great elements to this party, from the theme to the craft to the decorations, that I'll be blogging about it for awhile, be sure to check back!
The girls celebrate their birthdays together, since their birthday are separated by just a few weeks, which I thought was a sweet tradition, not to mention twice the fun!  The girls chose 12 Dancing Princesses as their theme, and Julie had a lovely book by Su Blackwell with fantastic illustrations to set the mood and tone for our dance lesson (I loved this book and will definitely be blogging about it more soon)!

A happy birthday guest!

Tutus and a pretty table!

Olive, Zoe, and their guests were absolute princesses.  We skipped and twirled through the enchanted forest where the princesses disappeared to at night, pretended to slip on our own fancy slippers to walk, tendu and march in, and used wands, scarves and ribbons to bring life to the trees, butterflies, and castle we read about.

After our own dancing adventures, students from Sonoma Ballet Conservatory performed excerpts from Les Sylphides and Raymonda for us.  The dancers were lovely, and received many rounds of appreciative applause before getting into craft time.  Each guest got their very own canvas to decorate a pair of ballet slippers for this super fun craft.  Here are some of the results...

Crafty action!

A SCD dancer performs

Look at that face!

Big birthday smiles : )

I have to say, The 12 Dancing Princesses may be a new favorite theme of mine for Ballerina Birthdays.  Julie had a wonderful vision to decorate the space, and with the excitement of the birthday girls, their guests, beautiful costumes, fun dance lessons and the lovely dancing by Sonoma Conservatory of Dance, it really was a birthday to remember!

Creative Crafts

Happy April!  Despite the persistent rain of late, I've had some fun spring crafts in the works and wanted to share!  I had a Ballerina Birthday this past weekend with a gaggle of boys in attendance and wanted to make sure they had something fun to dance and play around in, and I thought capes would be a perfect prop for would be knights errant, pirates and princes.  I'm planning to spruce them up a bit with maybe some fur trim or a lightening bolt applique, but these were super quick and easy to make, and fun for playtime.  I also found these paper masks at JoAnn's and decorated them up with some glitter paint, markers, and some stones, another quick and fun craft for your super heros or masked ball debutantes.  

A few weeks ago I was inspired by a Fancy Nancy craft I found at Michael's for a butterfly bracelet.  Here's my version, done with a child's hair tie, ribbon, and a paper butterfly.  This could also double as a ponytail holder, but also looks pretty cute as an accessory I think!

My good friend Janice is off to a new home and adventure in Seattle and while she was cleaning she came across these cute pink lanterns she used to throw me a birthday party a few years back.  She passed them on to me, and I paired them with a wonderful strand of paper roses I found at Baksheesh in Sonoma (a favorite store of mine in the downtown area).  So pretty!