Planning a Wizard of Oz birthday party

In some ways it was a distinct advantage planning from the UK. There are a great deal of party products with a Wizard of Oz theme in the US, where it’s still extremely popular, but much less is readily available here. This in turn forced us to use our imaginations more and meant my daughter and I spent some fantastic quality time making things together for the party.

There's a book of Wizard of Oz crafts (available here in the UK, see side for US readers) that I could have really used, but we didn't find it until too late. Never mind. We spend many hours happily researching gingham, green and rainbow ‘things’ that could be used. We even started a pinterest board. Here are some of the more fun details that made the party theme.

Table cloths were another problem. I would have liked gingham, but wasn’t paying a small fortune for expensive ones. There are options, though. Oilcloth is relatively inexpensive, and you can buy some very cheap cotton. I went with plain pale blue paper cloths in the end. They match the coulour scheme of Dorothy's dress, and really, 3 and 4 year olds really don't care about matching gingham accessories, as it turns out. Who knew?

There are a good number of tutorials and ideas out there for how to make a yellow brick road. I looked at most of them and dismissed them for being impractical, way too clever for me to do and likely to look daft with my skill level. Plus of course there was the problem of sourcing things in the UK that the US bloggers were enthusiastically telling me all about.

In the end I found a really simple method that was brilliant fun to carry out with a then 3 year old. We bought some sheets of BRIGHT yellow wrapping paper, which was fairly thick and slightly shiny. Next we picked up a large sponge, of the kind you use to wash cars with.

One easy way to theme a meal is via cupcake decorations. I bought ready made cupcakes this time (There’s only so many hours in a day)  but decorated them myself. we had 3 types.

* Ruby glitter cupcakes
* Poppy cupcakes
* Witch’s leg cupcakes.

I saw some wonderful melted witch cookies and cakes but they were just too frightening for some of the children attending this party. What they did enjoy though was the equally violent but somehow more humorous upturned cupcakes we made with witches’ legs sticking out from underneath. These looked like a really simple idea but took a little experimentation to get ‘right’, and as you can see from the photo some techniques worked better than others. I have the tools to have made these well from polymer clay, but it’s sadly inedible. If I were to do this again I’d rent or borrow proper tools, because making these with general kitchen equipment was tricky.

One of the most popular platters was a rainbow of fruit! Strawberries, satsuma segments, mango, grapes, blueberries make a beautifully vibrant plate, and most of it was demolished.

Costumes were optional and wide ranged. Our daughter was, of course, Dorothy, complete with gingham dress and a sparkly headband. Her costume was home made by an incredibly talented friend (Not me!) but there are some good costumes available online, too.  Other children came as all kinds of things, and it was lovely to see their imaginations fuelled by the costumes. We had Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion playing on the yellow brick road with Snow White, among other people.

One of my daughter’s birthday presents was a Wizard of Oz necklace, made by Lunarrastar on Etsy. Etsy is a rich source for anything, but especially for small details and themed gifts. If you love something, there’s sure to be an etsy seller that does.

The activities were fun to plan, and there was so much potential in adapting party games to fit the theme. Pin the tail on the lion or the heart on the tin man were suggested for instance. In the end I opted to have someone else do the games (I got a little stage fright), so in stepped One Red Elephant!  

There was a puppet show with props that took up most of the time. Tracy’s props are usually deliberately made with objects the children and their parents might find at home which encourages them to experiment with storytelling and crafting in their own time. We therefor had an amazing wooden spoon Dorothy for instance.

Pro tip; Paper bags are cheaper than plastic party bags and they look like you’ve made a real effort. You can get them in bulk from ebay or amazon and in a huge range of colours. We chose Emerald City green as we felt the poor Emerald City was underrepresented. We were also lucky enough to find some great vendors who will customise themed stickers. We found ones that matched the invitations we chose, which the birthday girl had a wonderful time sticking onto the bags.