Components of a Candyland Wonderland

As you know Samantha just turned 1. I started planning for this celebration 3 months ago. The theme: CANDYLAND!! The second I picked this theme I knew I was in trouble. heehee :) The possibilities for this are ENDLESS!! So I started to google and get ideas. Holy Moly!! Every single party I found with this theme was incredible. I wanted so badly for my party to be just as fantastic for my little princess as the ones I had scene online. So I got to work (literally). I ended up making more then half the stuff I used for the party just to try and cut down on the cost. I think that I did succeed in keeping the cost down too. Don't get me wrong it was still a bit costly BUT it could have been so much worse :) So lets begin shall we

The invitations

I wish I could say this is an original idea but it is not. I did however change things up a bit to make it my own. I got the idea from Divine Party Concepts who got it from Hostess with the Mostess. I searched for 2 weeks to find the perfect striped paper to use and this in turn decided my color theme with was basically the colors of the rainbow and pink (as you can see in my rainbow of invitations picture above heehee). As I continued my online searches I kept coming across candy buffett's, banners, cupcake toppers, water bottle lables etc... I of course wanted to have all of these things for Samantha's party so I went ahead and purchased a download version of Photoshop elements to help me with some of these things and of course my trusty Cricut came in VERY handy as well.

Let's start with the candy buffet. How do you even choose which candy to use I ask? It was very difficult and I still ended up with close to 16 different things I think but it was so cute and totally worth it. First I needed jars. Well I wasn't about to spend $10-15 per jar so I went in search of them at Goodwill and Salvation army stores. This worked out GREAT b/c I didnt spend more then $2.99 on a single one of the jars I used. Pretty good huh? Well now they were going to need labels. So I got right to work on my cricut. Because i had a rainbow theme every label was a different color and then I had the bright idea to do the candy names in multi-color too. This took forever but I am so glad I did it b/c it looked so adorable (if I do say so myself).

The candy buffet slowly coming together

Close up of some of the tags

Yes, I cut out every single letter out of paper and ran them through my xyron sticker maker and stuck them on there by hand. Hello my name is Emily and sometimes I get a bit CRAZY haha :)

The bags that I got for people to put candy in were so cute b/c they literally were candy shop bags. I think I ordered them from Bake it Pretty but of course I cant find them on the site at the moment. I made the scalloped circle on my cricut for the the tags but the sticker that is on the scalloped circle I got from Sweet Petite Designs. She also did my Thank you notes and my return address labels.

A close up of the super cute tags.

Thank you's!

Well now that I had this great Candy buffet coming together I had to have a banner letting all my guests know what it was. I titled it Samantha's Candy Shop and went to work on a banner for her along with a highchair banner and a regular Happy Birthday Banner. I see these adorable banners on etsy all the time and they dont come cheap so I know I saved money by doing it myself. I was very pleased with the way it turned out. You will get to see the other banners in the birthday party post I will do soon :)

Some of the other little details that I ended up making myself were cupcake toppers, water bottle labels, some (though not all) thank you tags for the favors, a door sign and station signs. You will understand the station signs better when I post the pictures of the actual birthday party but here are some pictures of the other items I made.

The cupcake toppers. This is where photoshop elements came in handy. Sorry the picture is the wrong direction but I have no clue how to rotate it.

Water bottle labels. I even self laminated them and it did sort of work but I think it wasn't 100% successful b/c I cut them to close to the paper and they didnt have enough room to seal properly. oh well :) I got the idea to make these myself from Glorious Treats.

A close up of the label

Door hanger

Extra Thank you tags that I attached to the favors for the kids.

Now that I was all set up with the little inside details it was time to move to the outside. Bring on the big decorations :) Most of these decoration ideas came from seeing them online as well. They really were all so adorable and most of them didn't take long at all. I had lollipops lining my walkway to the door, giant candies hanging from our pergola in the back yard, flat candies just placed randomly in the house, giant plastic ice cream cones courtesy of a friend of mine and the most work intensive of them all was the lollipop topiaries.

Giant lollipops. I got off easy with these b/c my sister let me borrow her wooden christmas colored lollipop that I covered in colored tissue paper and then covered in colored cellophane.

Giant candies that hung from the pergola in the back yard. These are a Martha Stewart idea I think and were very easy to make. Its a paper lantern covered in cellophane and tied on the ends to look like a giant candy. I hung them with fishing line.

Giant plastic ice cream cones! How adorable are these? All I had to do was add the ribbon to them and TADA! I was fortunate enough to get these from a very sweet friend of mine who is a store manager. They did a swet side of summer promotion and hung these in the windows. She was going to throw them out before remembering the theme of my birthday party. How awesome is she I ask? Thanks so much to my friend!!

And last but not least are my lollipop topiaries. SO CUTE!! and such a pain in the patookie to make haha. I was so lucky to find the tin holders that I put them in at Hobby Lobby. They were in the gardening section on clearance and there were 4 of them, a pink, blue, purple and green. It was like they were just waiting for me to come and buy them :) It took 2 large bags from SAMS and 1 regular sized bag of dum dums to make the 4 topiaries. I had two 6" and two 4". They were completely cute though and totally worth the effort of making them. I would do it again in a heart beat.

4" on the left and 6" on the right

The last thing I made for this party was a bow for the birthday girl. I had ordered two types of lollipop ribbon early on so that I would have options when it came to matching her dress. Here is the ribbon I went with

And here is the dress she wore with it

Well there it is :) all the components that make up a CandyLand Wonderland. I did make additional centerpieces but (and this makes me want to cry) I didnt get a single picture of them. I was so busy running around on party day that even though the thought to take the pictures crossed my mind it just never happened. SO SAD but what can ya do?

Stay tuned for the actual party pictures to see all these party components in action :)