THE Playdate

Cat didn't have school last Wednesday and she's been in need of some special attention recently. I debated taking her to children's museum or something else fun and exciting, but didn't really want to drive far enough to make that happen. I decided I could put in a little time and make a fun and special experience for her right here at home, and it worked great. Plus, it was all over in time for 2 kids to take naps!

So I decided on a "Fairy" theme that would be fun and lend itself to games, and also let the girls spend some time outside. (Unfortunately, it had been raining for a couple of days before this, so it was still really wet and we were only outside for a little while.)

There were so many girls I would have loved to include, but I knew that if I was to keep the stress factor under control, I had to keep it small. So we ended up with just two girls from Cat's class at school and one girl from her class at Church. It was perfect. Notice Cat's coloring pages on the wall. She insisted on putting these up because they were fairy-ish.


The first thing was collecting food and gifts to put in the fairy house that Cat, Suz, and I made before the playdate. We knew that if we put nice things in the fairy house, some fairies would visit. So the girls got busy gathering flowers, acorns, berries, and leaves, and then we went inside to play some games, hoping that the fairies would be enticed by our offerings.


First we made our fairy princess crowns using this idea from Family Fun. Suz and I spray painted a piece of white posterboard, cut it into a crown shape, put some velcro on the ends to hold it together on different sized heads, and cut some slits into it. Then I cut small sections of silk flowers and leaves and let the girls insert what they wanted into the slits, and we taped them down on the inside. Simple and pretty - they loved it!


We played a matching game with sets of fairy wings. (Thanks for putting that together, Suz!) and then the girls found pieces of a fairy puzzle outside, and brought it in to assemble.



Before we ate lunch, we checked our fairy house and the fairies had visited! We know because they ate all the food, took the rest of the gifts, and left pixie dust all around the premises. Indisputable evidence; and the girls were completely awestruck. They all wanted to take some of the pixie dust home with them as a souvenir, and they all pointed it out to their parents as they left after lunch.


The girls brought their own lunches to eat, and we had pink party punch and a berry pizza for dessert. Suz also made each of them a big tissue-paper flower, which they were excited about too.

What a fun playdate, and much cheaper than anything we would have done out of town!