it’s a jolly holiday with jettie…

Oh….it was definitely a “Jolly Holiday” with Jettie. I know I say this every year, but Jettie’s 5th birthday guys, it is going down as an all time favorite. How couldn’t it though?! First of all, it was themed after one of the best movies of all time. A movie filled with whimsy and magic and hats with daisies and cherries. And then of course there’s the songs. The brilliantly written, make your heart happy, songs of perfection.

Mary Poppins…practically perfect for a party in every way.

Going into this one I felt overwhelmed but in a good way. (If that makes any sense.) I knew I needed some sort of a plan and that is where I decided to focus on the songs.

The invite had all the Mary Poppins icons that we know – the parrot umbrella, hat, penguins, kite, spoon, ruler – with the heading being “Oh…It’s a jolly holiday for Jettie’s 5th Brithday”. The sweets table could only be one thing of course – “Spoonful of Sugar”. I had a kite craft station setup for “Let’s Go Fly a Kite”. And a cityscape silhouette for “Step in Time.”

First up, the sweets station. I really wanted to bring in the stripes from Bert’s suit (swap pink for red of course) and that is where I came up with the awning idea. We served cherry pineapple tea sandwiches, strawberry soup, powdered donuts and glazed croissants. But the star of this table was obviously the cake. Stacia from Cakecrazy outdid herself once again. I was thinking we would do a carousel cake but Jettie pushed for the Banks’ home…good thing she is smarter than her mom. The cake was every bit of delicious as it was beautiful. [Which makes cutting it just a tad easier.]

Guests arrived to a place setting of their own mini Mary Poppins hat headband and labeled drink containers. Across the room hung “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and yes I had anxiety spelling and ordering those letters. (It’s a big weird word!) Every corner had a little something…including a carousel house that was only made possible by my family. (They rule!)

Jettie is a crafter and seems to think every party needs a handful of “craft stations”. We go small and intimate on her parties so I went a little more involved with the crafts. I am not sure I will ever top these, by far my favorite stations I have ever created for a party.

Every girl got to make a “kite” out of clear contact paper and assorted shapes of tissue paper. There were twines and ribbon for customizing. The other station was all about magnets. I created designs for the girls to chose from to make their own “bubble” magnets. Once dry, each girl got a chalkboard metal sign to take home with them (complete with their magnets of course). I will talk about these crafts more in detail on a later post.

We also made sidewalk chalk favors for the girls to have. They were tagged with Bert’s famous “You think, you wink, you do a double blink…” quote. Loved the way they looked in the old suitcase.

I failed at taking many people shots this year. [Good news is that meant I enjoyed guests more.] We did manage to snap some cake shots though. Oh, and there was a giant ruler for pictures. Sort of a last minute thing I put up but I love how it brought that famous part of the movie into the party.

Believe it or not there are a few more things I wanted to do but all in all I think we covered our Mary Poppins bases. Thank you to our guests for making it so special for our Jettie. And as always, a HUGE thank you to my man and mom for putting up with my ideas and somehow helping me execute them.