Theme: An Unusual Adventure

Tables: Dinosaur, Lego, Puppet, Alice’s Tea Party, Art

I hate to say, this was inexpensive for me since I had most of what was needed already in my craft closet. These are all extremely budget friendly ideas for any party.

Lets start with the Dino Table.

The centerpiece was a dinosaur terrarium. The only thing I bought here was faux fern which could be substituted for real fern if accessible.

 

The centerpiece was placed on 5 leaf place mats I found at Christmastree Shop but also available on Amazon.

Then of course the excavation kit. This was an inexpensive find on Amazon. Had I known it was going to be such a hit, I would have gotten at least 3 more. In my original plan, I wanted a large one of these in the middle where everyone could excavate.

Now on to the Music.

The center was made from tapes of course. These I collected for months from Goodwill. I only got ones that were on the tag sale. Inside, I folded cubes of colored paper and put battery operated lights in them. I found a pack at Goodwill for $2. Scattered on the table was blank sheet music. Circling the tape tower is mini wine glasses filled with different pitches of water. The circle the tape tower is on is actually a record I spun painted with my brother at his music studio. I found some cheap instrument toys I scattered around the table as well.

The next table was legos. Fortunately, our families kept these still highly coveted and expensive toys. I emptied what we use as a cork vase and filled that sucker up. This was heavy and LOVED.

The puppet table was fun.

I’m a vase hoarder and I keep buying more. This I had and filled with pompoms and topped with large feathers. The stuffies around the vase are hand puppets. The green jar is a spaghetti sauce jar wrapped in yarn. The masks are made of foam paper. I didn’t use a template for the masks but printed pictures of Muppets to get the right size and spacing. I’m sure you can find mask templates to print and cut from. The foam is great to work with since you can place a shape on top of it and press hard with a pencil tracing and it will imprint the shape long enough to cut.

Alice. Oh, Alice.

I could have decorated the entire wedding in this theme and I admit, I got a little crazy with this one. How easy and perfect is Alice though? I bought every tea cup I could find at thrift stores and Goodwill. I found $1 playing cards to scatter around. Dollar Tree has silver platters. And of course, the Eat Me cake.

The centerpiece was suppose to be a large vase with a large picket sign and a hole. I didn’t have the time to make this dream a reality. I bought a plastic yellow vase at Goodwill and stared at it til something creative happened. I filled the vase with stuffing paper I saved from deliveries. Then I glued moss (I had) on top. I left a hole and slipped a paper towel roll into the vase to make the hole. The inside was just colored with a sharpie. I printed tiny little clocks, a rocking chair and playing cards and glued them in. And the cat! He was printed and pushed down inside. A few were printed and tried  multiple sizes. The directional sign was a flat dowel cut to make little arrows, painted white, smudged with cocoa powder with chocolate and painted the words on them.

The hats!

These are out of the same foam paper. I did find a template for this. It took me days to find a good one and when I find it again, I will post here. These are tiny you will see. The cards were printed on cardstock for some, free hand for others. These glued simple enough together with hotglue and could be cut if there was any overhang. I’ll find that template! The hatters I used as inspiration were Disney, Depp, Carroll, McGee (below checkered).

Eat Me:

This was a Sara Lee frozen pound cake. I cut it into a circle and covered with chocolate melts. The writing I used melted white chocolate melts and wrote with a skewer. The glass dish was a lucky find at Restore for 50 cents.

Drink Me.

This was a Michael’s bottle. I caved when I coudn’t find the bottle in my head at any antique store. This one came out fine. The chain is from a spool of chain and the label was printed on cardstock and aged with tea. The decorative border was found by just searching “vintage label template”. The font is an Alice font from dafont.com.

The remaining tables: Art.

Every other table that didn’t have a specific scene was named art. Every table had crayons and the coloring book favor. Art tables had wine bottles wrapped in yarn and filled with pinwheels. They didn’t spin since I just glued to painted dowels. Art tables also had coloring pages of my brother and sister in law.

 

To finish the look, we added lights to the beams, hung paper lanterns and hung kites. I found a lot of large kites at Big Lots and inexpensive lanterns at Christmastree Shop.

I definitely felt lost after decorating for this for so long. I felt like I had nothing to do. This was an amazing time and I would do it over and over for them if I could! Love you Ross and Jamie!