My beautiful Rosebud is ready for school! To celebrate this special milestone 5th birthday we had a gorgeous vintage school/alphabet party. ‘R for Rosa, R for Ready for school and R for Red rose’, which is what my gorgeous little girl dressed up as for her alphabet dress up party.
“It is the time you have spent on your rose that makes her so important.” Antoine De Saint-Exum ry

Theme:

(Photo credits: SR Photography)

Vintage school mixed with red roses for my Rosebud. Such a beautiful combination to work with. It was so much fun gathering and using all these school bits and roses,
“It was roses, roses all the way.” Robert Browning.

Invitations:

The wonderful Andrea from Miss Shine Design designed the most perfect invitation and matching printables for our party. These will soon be available to purchase through her Etsy store if you would like to have your own ‘Ready for School’ party. The blackboards and school handwriting are so adorable. Sending party invitations is one of our favourite parts to hosting a party.

Decorations:

Blackboards, old school furniture, apples and roses surrounded by a gold alphabet. A vintage theme is so lovely. I ‘begged and borrowed’ old school bits form friends and hired some other bits from Jen at The Little Carousel. Jen has fabulous kid’s party supplies, we love her kid’s tables and chairs. We used glass jars with wooden school supplies like rulers and pencils in them to decorate the tables with a beautiful vase of red roses as centre piece. I had the whole alphabet in gold foil balloons and a collection of beautiful black and gold large paper fans from Dots n Spots party store. I also purchased the cute gold spotted plates and straws from Dots n Spots. I popped an apple on each plate for a cute school themed addition. Two old wooden desks with missing lids looked fabulous with red roses spilling out of them. Miss Shine Design’s party printables added the perfect touch to almost everything; the milk bottles, cupcakes, school satchels, food labels and party signs.

Food:

The food highlight had to be the toffee apples followed by the blackboard biscuits with chalk liquorice lollies to match. Neapolitan rice krispie held a nostalgia feel, school wrapped sandwiches were a must, layered raspberry jar desserts, mango yogurt ice blocks and veg kebabs to name a few. All this delicious party food was washed down with some homemade watermelon fizz. I will add recipes for our party food to the blog over the next few weeks.

Party Fun:

Dress up parties always provide there own entertainment as guests enjoy each others outfits. From A to Z we had an Ariel and an Angel, a Zombie and a Zebra. Daddy Ian was an ice cream, jelly tip style for some kiwiana! Rosa’s beautiful dress is from the clever Crystal at Cadenza Bella. I was so excited to have an excuse to buy this gorgeous dress for her (do you need an excuse!) Rosa’s such a bouncy wee thing I wondered how the dress and her would go, but she partied all day in it and yes it is possible to jump on the tramp and do the monkey bars in this divine dress.

We had a photo booth for the kid’s to share their outfits in. Super cute! The children also enjoyed some vintage school games outside; hopscotch, jump rope and ‘Queenie queenie who’s got the ball?

We couldn’t have a school party without some school work! All the children got their own old fashioned school satchel modelled from a leather school bag of my brothers. We looked at Mark’s school bag and some old school photos before the children spent some time decorating their satchels and doing some ‘school work’ on personalised letter/name worksheets I had popped in their individual school satchels.

We listened to this adorable Dean Martin alphabet song while the children did their ‘school work’. It matched our party so well.

Cake:

Daddy Cake Baker decorated this stunning two tier chocolate cake for our Rosebud. He made a beautiful job of the ‘ombre’ icing and finished it off with a sprinkle of gold lustre. We decorated it with red roses and a lovely cake topper from Dani at Rogue Collective. Dani makes custom cake toppers and our ‘R for Rosa’ cake topper was simply beautiful. Dani also makes other party decorations and will work with your party theme. We had a little collection of R objects snuggled in by the cake for the kid’s to spot. A red racing car, rabbit and ring.

Favors:

Another party favourite of ours is thinking what party favor we can give to our guests to thank them for coming to our party. I loved having the opportunity to support a local business. My Happy Crayons makes custom hand poured crayons which are non-toxic and so cute. Sea made such a great job of creating individual letters for each child and a matching little object. Rosa loved giving these to her party guests.

Most of these beautiful photos were taken by the lovely Stacey from SRPhotography and our friend Claire, with a ‘hidden talent’, captured the party in action. Beautiful photos for us to forever treasure our special little girl’s 5th birthday party!

I think our gorgeous Rosebud had a fabulous 5th birthday party. She smiled the whole time and finished her day off disco dancing with glow sticks. Happy school days Rosa!
And from the words of Dr Suess to my girl, “Kid, you’ll move mountains! And will you succeed? Yes you will indeed! (98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)”