Smurf Party

My little neice and nephew are having a Smurf-themed birthday! We thought finding party supplies would be easy because that movie came out recently, but I guess that hype fizzled out fast. There were a few things at party city, but they weren't even that cute....Soooo naturally, I had a billion and one ideas, not to mention spent many nights wishing that they would come out with a Cricut Smurf cartridge. Next best thing was the Gnomes and Mushroom cart! Its a cheapo one, because there are only a few things on it, but for this party it was a jackpot! Even a mushroom house! So we made mushroom house invitations :) I cute the mushroom pieces from cardstock, and then my sister in law printed and cut the party information and stuck it on the back.

My biggest project thus far has been the banners. I already had the red and blue and white cardstock in my supplies, and I had seen an adorable project on pinterest where someone had used pages from a worn out children's book to make a banner. Wellllllll these weren't exactly worn out books, but they were little inexpensive paperbacks! As a book lover who felt shameful using her kindle for about a year, I felt even worse buying books for the purpose of cutting them up!! I felt like I was going to burst into flames at the Barnes and Noble counter. I used the Ribbons and Rosettes cartridge to make little rosettes, and put smurfs in the middle. I used my teeny tiny scissors to cut out smurf figures from the parts of the pages that didn't get turned into the banner. I cute some mushrooms as well. I think the banner is going to be hung from the eaves on the patio for the party, so I wanted it to be double-sided. The rosettes are stuck onto the banner string by a two little jewels and some hot glue. If this had just been a girl party, you can bet there would have been way more glitter and gems...just sayin'....

It also turns out that since I have the cricut expression, and I am lazy about updating firmware, I just slid under the cut-off for using Sure-Cuts-A-Lot. I am definitely a newbie, and much more comfortable with Craft Room software at the moment, but I was able to put together a large smurf from an SVG file, so the kiddos can do "Pin the hat on the Smurf!"

I am planning on making table decorations with little terra cotta pots, and perhaps a blue and white trifle as an extra dessert! Will do a second post if those work out.

*****UPDATE******
The party was awesome, and the decorations came out great (was still making them up to the very last second, of course) Here are some of the final products in action...and my blue trifle at the end lol