Mad Hatter Birthday on a dollar store budget

 My Middle turned the big ten. Double Digits. I am a birthday lover. You betta believe that when someone wakes up on their birthday in the house, it becomes magical. I usually decorate the dining room the night before with whatever their favorite theme is. They get to pick their favorite dinner, and everything that I find special about them, is incorporated in their day. Giving is totally one of my love languages, so I LOVVEEEE to make a huge day of special for the birthday person.

Middle is kind of quirky, and awesomely sweet. Plus one of her nick names is Mad Hatter. What- my kids have nicknames for days. Middle is just in a list of a bajillion names that I call her. In fact, up until this party, Baloney always thought we were calling her the Mad Hattren. When I asked Middle about having a Mad Hatter birthday, she flipped the wonderland out, and was so incredibly excited about the idea. But she didn't want a tea party. Um which is kind of the point, but I went with it. That's what makes the Middle so unique, she puts her own twist on what the should be's and makes them the could be's.

I didn't have tons of money to throw at this, seeing how I have a gaggle of kids, 2 who have birthdays a few days from each other. I hit up the dollar store...and was amazed at how easy this was going to be. To me, the Mad Hatter is vibrant, crazy, funky, whimsical, with a little bit of fancy. Flowers, cards, black and white. I chose yellow, pink, teal, green and bits of purple and then just ran with it.




I made these  ruffled streamers I found on pinterest. More importantly from this tutorial. She is a genius. I whipped these up in about 5 minutes and it was magic, watching them ruffle before my very eyes. My new favorite streamer decoration.

 This is Middle's banner. I took funky pink zebra wrapping paper, slapped that to the wall, printed out my letters in a Beyond Wonderland font. Took some Joann's cardstock that was 40% off so about 30cents a paper, and then glittered around the outside of the paper to the cardstock for that wonderland glamour feel.

And banner up close.

I used harlequin patterned fabric I got at Joann's. It was $4.99, and I had a 50% coupon. I got a yard, then cut it in half and then half again and used it as a runner on the tables. This table had a dollar store yellow tablecloth underneath. I used various tea pots/cups stacked in the background  along the table. The food was a little tough. Because unless you are feeding a bunch of kids, no one wants to come over for mini sandwiches. So sticking with the mini theme, we had mini tacos. With chips, salsa, black beans and rice, deviled eggs, and fruit kabobs. To play on the theme, we printed out "Eat Me" tags and tied them onto the fruit sticks.

So I mentioned Middle didn't care for tea cups. I found small sparkling apple cider bottles for .79c, and Middle LOVES those. And they seemed just perfect for being a special, wonderland style drink. I just wrapped a strip of card stock around the bottle covering the label, and added a "Drink Me" tag with colorful ribbon.

The table inside had a flower table cloth, with the harlequin runner. Joann's had these hideous tulips on sale for 70% off, so for a few bunches it was about $3. I'm glad nobody bough these things so I could. We took empty cans, tied a big pink bow around them, and placed the flowers in it. Then I took pipe cleaners, also found at the dollar store (seriously, I had no clue they had bright fun colored pipe cleaners, I was giddy at the find.) I wrapped them around a pencil and made curly whirly sprigs and put them in the cans as well, to add to the whimsical feel.

Middle and her cake. It was a semi topsy turvy cake, I kind of read the instructions wrong for the first layer, but whatcha gonna do. Middle was delighted, and we  used the sparkler candles, so when it was lit up, it looked crazy magical.

A bigger picture of the setting indoors.

Okay so here is some more little details.
(1) I took a 2 pack of playing cards (99c for 2!) and hot glued them to fishing wire and used it as a hanging backdrop behind the food table.

(2) The streamers hung up with dragonfly lights wrapped around the canopy, and I also hung pink and blue pinwheels from the inside.
(3) The tags for the food.
(4) I also made yellow and green ruffle streamers
(5) Found a flower serving tray and took the utensils and placed a dollop of sparkle glue on the ends, just to fancy them up.
(6) My funky assortment of plates and super cute green napkins complete with utensils on it.