Smurfday Party- part 1- Decorations

My sister had a birthday in February but was living across the country with plans to move back here in the summer. She really wanted these Smurf mushroom house sets (she is in her early thirties, but used the excuse of being a teacher for wanting them... she's just always loved the Smurfs) but didn't want the hassel of having them sent there only to have to move them back so we ended up doing nothing for her birthday. Well, summer arrived and we were so excited to have her home again, we decided to throw a "smurf-prise" Happy Smurf-day Party to welcome her back and to celebrate the birthday we weren't able to earlier in the year. Note: it is WAY easier to make a surprise party for someone when they don't even know there is something to celebrate. We ended up going really overboard with the theme and it was a total success! It has been a secret for so long, it is nice to finally be able to talk about it. The decorations were started early in the planning process- my poor hubby has been living with smurfs for weeks now. Here are some highlights:
Smurf Wreath
I cut out a wreath form from a heavy-duty cardboard box and gathered the supplies (basically, a rotary cutter and some coordinating smurfy fabrics. The fabric was cut into 2 inch strips and wrapped around the wreath form tying simple square knots to join the fabric strips together carefully keeping the knots on the front. Afterwards, my sister's old Schliech Smurf figurines from her childhood were tucked into the knots. My mom spent hours meticulously cleaning each one and they looked great! A hanger was attached by threading ribbon through an over-sized button and that was it. Fast, easy and smurf-tastic.Life-sized Smurf Diorama
As everyone knows, smurfs are 3 apples high. I wanted to invite a few to join in the festivities so I scoured the internet for images of our favourite characters, blew them up to the desired height and printed them out on cardstock. Well, that WOULD have been easy-peasy except for the fact that we ran out of colour ink so we ended up fixing the half-colour ones and just flat-out colouring the rest with coloured pencils. That took a bit longer. My 6-year-old really helped out and did such a great job colouring- she did Brainy here all by herself! To make them stand, I attached them to clear baby food jars. Then, I just free-handed a mushroom house and a little bush to really make a proper diorama. I think the results were smurf-a-rific!Happy Smurf-day Banner with Crepe Paper Rosettes
I could not believe how much the "Cuttin' Up" Cricut font cartridge looks just like the official smurf font! Totally lucked-out there, so I HAD to make a big banner. The sides looked a bit plain, so that issue was remedied with Crepe Paper Rosettes. Here is a pictorial tutorial (hey, that rhymes!): If that was confusing (I think I'm confused and I'm the one who made it) you can find better instructions HERE and HERE. I love these because you could use them for so many things like awards or hair accessories, etc. AND you can make them as plain or as fancy as you want to.

Sooooo, getting back to the party; The gifts were all wrapped up in smurfy colours as well (and they were all smurf stuff). Like I said, we went WAY overboard with the theme and to hit the point home even further, there will be smurf-day posts the rest of the week - YAY!!!