Have I mentioned that both of my girls were born in December? Makes for a busy month. My younger daughter had her party at a bouncy place, so it was low-maintenance. But my older daughter (yes, the one who dressed as Violet Beauregarde for Halloween) wanted a Willy Wonka party. And my apologies to the parents of the children who attended, but we had a full-on Wonka candy party. It was a mess!

We loved the original Gene Wilder movie and I recently finished reading the Roald Dahl book with the kids. Love that book. Overwhelmed by first-graders, I didn’t get many photos of the party yesterday, but took some this morning. My older daughter dressed in her Violet costume and I made a t-shirt into a Veruca Salt dress for my five-year-old (this character is so appropriate for her these days). My husband even rented a Wonka hat and jacket. But no, I did not dress like an Oompa Loompa. So first, we made Wonka bar invitations by wrapping a candy bar with a golden ticket printed on the reverse of the label (pictured above).

We made some recycled decorations like the mushrooms pictured above. These were made with the same technique I used making the Halloween bowls and I cut a fabric bolt for the stems. Then my daughter painted them. We also used cardboard fabric tubes for giant candy cane sticks by covering them in butcher paper and wrapping them with red velvet ribbon.

Then I asked a local mom to make this super awesome cake shaped like a Wonka bar. If you live in Atlanta, you can contact Christi of Frosted and Sprinkled to make a cake for your event. It tasted as good as it looked. The tablecloth was a patchwork of pinwheels made from the polka dots in Amy Butler’s Love collection.

The kids played Pin the Hat on the Wonka with the sweet picture that my daughter drew. Note the smear of chocolate on the poster board since I took this photo after the party. They also made candy canes from pipe cleaners and guessed how many jelly beans were in a jar.

The goodie bags were filled with cocoa mix for the kids to take home and a miniature swirl lollipop tied to the top.

I used gerbera daisies mixed with candy for the flower arrangements.

My daughters both painted lollipops for decoration. We used foam core board for these, but should have used recycled cardboard since we have so much of it around the house these days.

We hung paper lanterns and tissue paper flowers from the ceiling, served kettle corn, chocolate dipped fruit and carbonated water with twisty straws for “fizzy lifting drinks”. I found this cool French poster for the movie that we hung on the front door and I plan to have framed for her room. Yes, I went overboard on this party. Hope no kids vomited on the car ride home.

Here’s a fun project to make with the kids.  These are papier-mâché bowls made from paper bags and tissue paper.  We plan to use our bowls for Halloween candy.

I’ve never had much luck with the flour mixtures (maybe because of the humidity here), so I used a mixture of equal parts white glue and water.  I used a full bottle of glue for each bowl.  For the pumpkin bowl, I cut off the top of an actual pumpkin and used that as our base, but we just used a metal mixing bowl for the ghost bowl.  If you do use a pumpkin, be sure to cut it at the widest point so that you can remove the paper bowl when dry.

For both, I first covered the base with a plastic grocery bag (you could use plastic wrap), dipped strips of newspaper in the glue mixture, squeezed off the excess and laid the strips across the top until the bowl was covered.  Oh, if you’re working with kids, you will definitely want to do this project outside.  We let the bowls dry for a day, then brushed them with more glue mixture and laid tissue paper (cut into strips) on top.  We then brushed more glue on top of the tissue as we laid it around the bowl.  Once dry, you can trim your edges or leave them ragged.  We painted our bowls with acrylic paints and left the insides unfinished.  If you used colored tissue paper, you wouldn’t need to paint at all.  I just used some brown tissue paper leftover from packaging.  Now the kids are ready to fill up the bowls!

Stenciled Halloween Bags post for Alpha Mom.

Bat Mobile.

Pumpkin Pound Cake.

Ghost Garland.

Halloween Luminary.

Fairy Wings (made with tutorial from Threadbanger).

Halloween Ribbon Wreath.

Scrappy Owl Treat Bag.

Bat Leaf Prints.

Needle Felted Pumpkin.

Salt Dough Pumpkins from Alpha Mom.

Paper Bag Pumpkin and Ghost Bowls.

Maple Coasters from The Long Thread.

Turkey Placecards from Recycled Materials for Alpha Mom.

Glow Bowls, strand of 5, $65 from Diana Fayt.

Ginkgo Leaves Shoulderbag, $54 from Black Bags.

Old Fashioned Girl’s Dress, size 4, $39 from Like My Dress.

Wild Bouquet, 8″ x 10″ limited edition print, $20 from Ola Design.

Zukzuk Peacocks Orange, 8 1/2″ x 11″ print, $20 from zukzuk.

Little Amigurumi Hedgehog Pattern, downloadable .pdf file, $2.50 from purl.etsy.com.

Girl’s Orange Fruit Stripe Dress with Vintage Fabric, $35 from Bread and Roses.

Mint Valley Lip Balm, $3 from Dress Green.

Large Lampshade made from vintage wallpaper, $295 from When in Doubt, Draw Flowers.