The joys of creating a flower fairy party. Who knew?!

Great leaders know it is better to bend like a willow than break like a mighty oak. It's true in parenthood too. When you meet resistance, when your child does not share your vision, it's better to adjust your course in the pursuit of peace and harmony.

So it is with P's birthday plans. TLOML and I had a grand vision for a large, fully outsourced party. Somewhere with plenty of capacity, so we could invite friends from her current school and her old school, and other friends we've made along the way. Somewhere we could just specify a theme and they'd take care of all the details. P briefly considered our suggestions of the climbing gym, ice-skating, or My Gym. But ultimately she decided against - and she was unshakeable.

Her vision, instead, was for a party at home. A fairy party, at that. I tried to persuade her to have a horse or safari theme just so it wasn't so painfully girly but no. She really wanted fairies. And so, like the wise willow, I bent.

And I didn't bend just a little. I have now moved heart and soul into the Land of the Flower Fairies. I've made fairy treasure for pass the parcel, and a 'pin the wings on the fairy' poster, and special Flower Fairy signs to welcome our guests. I'm practicing making leaves and flowers out of buttercream to decorate the cake. I've ordered pink staples so that when I attach the pink crepe paper flowers onto the green ribbon I'm going to wrap the bannisters in they won't show up. I'm planning a trip to the Los Angeles Flower Market to buy sprays of flowers, and I've hunted out the best green rugs from the local Goodwills (because what kind of Flower Fairies would hang out on hardwood floors?). Today I sorted Tootsie Rolls so we only have ones which match my colour scheme. No oranges or blues, obviously.

Fairy treasure aka beaded bracelets

I can improve on these leaves. Watch me. I just need to watch another couple of hours of Wilton's videos.

I can't believe I wanted to outsource this! I am enjoying all this crafting and shopping and decorating more than I ever would have imagined. I'd say I've spent almost as much time and invested easily as much ardour into P's 5th birthday party as into our wedding. Thanks to Amazon and Dollar Tree hopefully it will cost a little less. The ratio of hours of preparation effort to party time is about 10:1. But it's all pure joy in the making, and I could not be happier.