Girls In the Craft: Dria's Birthday......AGAIN!

Another Birthday Adventure for Dria. This year we decided on an Around the World theme. We started planning and organizing in May. Here is how it all went down.................

We started with the invitation. It was an airline ticket/boarding pass. We got the template here: http://www.ayleebits.com/ and made them by hand. Raymond actually created the AMC Airline logo :)

We ended up creating our own slip cover from scratch (ad libbing a bit). We made a personalized one for each guest and then hand delivered them---that was half the fun for Dria!

Then, on to personalizing the passports I purchased from Oriental Trading Company. We scanned the girls yearbook pictures to personalize them inside. Once they arrived to the party their tickets were stamped and they were issued their passport. Here you see it with the added passport stickers from the coordinating destinations we visited.

After landing at each destination their passports were stamped with typical site seeing stamps (France---Eiffel tower stamp, Italy---Leaning Tower of Pisa Stamp, Hawaii----flower stamp, China----hanging lantern stamp) and they were given a passport stamp sticker to adhere inside the passport.

To decorate the front door we purchased a foam wreath and wrapped it with old map paper. We created a rosette for the center out of the same paper. We cut out "Bon Voyage" with my Cricut and strung it on the front. We added flags from Oriental Trading Company and hung it outside:

Here's are some pictures of the check-in table and the 'gate':

Each chair at the gate had a 'luggage' bag on it with each girls' name on the luggage tag. The bag was stamped with different travel theme stamps and adorned with a strip of old world map paper. Each bag had a sheet of passport stamp stickers to decorate the bag with while waiting.

I ordered these balloons from Amazon and got the balloon sticks from a local party store. I thought they were a fun touch.

We wrote out a mock Departure Screen on a dry erase board.

We picked up this world map at the thrift store and made the banner using extra flags we had ordered from Oriental Trading Company (we just took the poles off the flags and adhered them to the twine).

Here's a picture of the girls in the 'gate' decorating their 'luggage':

We placed a walkie talkie on the table in the 'gate' and used another walkie in the room to alert the passengers to line up for boarding. The 'airplane' was our stair case (the invite did say to pack a healthy imagination!).

In advance we had found U-Tube videos of airlines speeches to passengers, etc. We saved them to favorites to play on our IPAD. While the girls were on the plane they watched the videos. The first one was a spoof of the safety instructions to the passengers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO5BFhWdgk4&feature=related .

The second one they watched was the flight attendant doing a rap of the safety instructions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_o_xn-q5Zk

And the third one, on their way to the lay over in Hawaii, they watched this one of a flash mob on an airplane doing the hula:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=fvwp&v=zcwy1qsQ6sY

Also, we found appropriate music for the IPAD to play at each country.

We moved a walkie talkie to the staircase so that the 'pilot' could alert the passengers of take off and landing.

Once they got off the plane the first time they were each given a charm bracelet with a passport charm on it. They received an souvenir charm at each destination: Italy---globe charm, China---Chinese coin charm, Hawaii----seahorse or starfish charm, and France---Eiffel Tower charm.

First destination: China

The Chinese lanterns were decorated with Dragons and Chinese symbols cut out with my Cricut. The gold take-out boxes were also decorated with Chinese symbols meaning 'girl'.

While in China the girls first started by using chopsticks to get five mini marshmallows out of their gold take-out boxes. Then, they made Lucky Star origami stars. They even wrote special messages inside some of them to give to others. One of the girls handed me one as she left the party. I opened it up later and it is said, "Thanks for inviting me." What a sweetheart, huh!?!

The girls also received Chinese coins in decorative red Chinese envelopes and Asian themed treats to take home in their 'luggage'. In China we also did a surprise activity. Since Dria and I have been planning her birthday parties together we started a tradition where I add something she doesn't know about as a surprise for her. The surprise activity was a Fortune Teller Fish. If you aren't familiar with these, they are from the 70s. Apparently the heat from you hand causes them to curl up. On the back of the package there is a key to interpret the results of your curling fish. Although it wasn't necessarily a Chinese activity it was red and looked kinda like a Koi fish so I thought it fit pretty well.

The Chinese coin charms they received for their charm bracelets were all different so we passed around a printed out chart of the meanings of each different charm so they could see which was theirs.

Then, it was back to the plane to set off for Italy.

In Italy we had pasta. The girls had a choice of three sauces and could dip their bread in olive oil sprinkled with fresh ground pepper. The drinks were a three tiered/colored drink representing Italy's flag---Red, white and green. They ate and I told them trivia facts about Italy.

Then they boarded the plane again headed for a layover in Hawaii. They were greeted with a Lei and "Aloha" as they departed the plane.

You have to look hard but there is a cocktail umbrella wreath as decoration on the market umbrella pole---gotta love Pinterest!

I don't actually have pictures of the girls in Hawaii. They got Pina Coladas dressed up with grass skirts and coconut tops to drink with pineapple straws in them.

They also got rainbow fruit skewers.

My fruit kabobs were inspired by this pin from Pinterest. Mine looked nearly identical to this, unfortunately, I didn't photograph mine. The link to the original pin is no longer available on Pinterest or I would have added the link to give credit where credit is due............

They played a telephone game with nonsense sentences with Hawaiian words/themes. This is where things got hectic. I looked up at this point and realized the party was over in twenty minutes and they hadn't even gotten to France yet. I asked the girls to come in and go directly to France while I tried to call each mom to tell them to pick up a little later. Because of that I missed out on taking pictures.

France was a French Cafe and Le Louvre Museum---complete with a picture of Mona herself.

Here is a picture I took before the party. It is missing the cream puffs on the bottom plate and a platter of homemade crepes with chopped fruit and whipped cream. The three tiered platter was made from an idea on Pinterest using old plates and glass candle sticks from the dollar store. The paper Eiffel towers were cut out on my Cricut. The Globe pops were also inspired from Pinterest. If you look closely at Mona you can see her face is cut out. We used this later as a photo prop for the girls. Not all of them wanted to do this activity. I was going to use the picture of each girl as a thank you postcard but since they all didn't want their picture taken with the prop I ended up just printing 13 pictures of Dria as Mona and stamped postcard on the back. Dria wrote her thank yous out on the postcards and we got cute little Aloha postcard postage stamps to put on them.