Ooh La La!

 I have to tell you, I've been obsessed with some eye catching photos of french macarons on Pinterest.  I ordered some off of Etsy, and they are delicious.  I sent some to my sister for a little surprise.  I just had to get some for my daughter's birthday party too.  Of course, as luck would have it, the shop on Etsy was closed for this month.  I looked all over and was surprised to finally find a wonderful person baking them in right in our area.  So the party was built around these macarons and a french theme.

These beautiful and tasty french macarons were made by Christine Gold of Delices Europeennes.  Christine is so friendly and her attention to detail is amazing.  These delicate little cookies were packaged with care with sweet little stickers on the boxes that said "Merci" and "Delicieux!" Everyone gushed over the wonderful flavors. The boxes were from Marshalls, as was the book. (Hmmm, it must have been there because the french way to spell macaron is with one o!)

I found these sterling silver eiffel tower charms on The Slippery Pearl's Etsy shop. A big tip, if you have any creative abilities, you can search for things in the supplies section and make your own. I obtained all of these charms for 2.99 and found a lot of 10 bracelets for 9.95 at Sarah Jolwind's shop. If I had purchased the bracelets already made, they would have been 8-12 each. The girls loved them and immediately planned to wear them to school on Monday.

I love to incorporate favors that are part of the activities.  Originally, I thought I'd get wrapped canvases  and paint.  When I realized it would be chilly outside, keeping the party inside- I thought it would be best to use watercolors.  (Easy cleanup!)  I found these watercolor boards at our local Dick Blick in packs of 4 during a 40% off sale.  The easels were from Amazon.

We used watercolor pencils to draw pictures, and then went back over the pictures with water on brushes to create paintings.

The birthday girl's artwork.

Evian water was found at a great price at Homegoods. I borrowed the framed print from a friend.

The children built their own eiffel towers with sugar wafer cookies as an additional activity.

I found this project idea at AtoZkidsstuff.comhttp://www.atozkidsstuff.com/RatatouilleRecipes.pdf.

I found the "silver" tray at the dollar store and painted it with chalkboard paint.

I made the french birthday banner, simply because I couldn't find one that said what I wanted.  I printed the letters out and used a punch.  I sliced strips of paper and accordion folded them.  Then I hot glued them to the circles, and to the ribbon.

Aren't these sweet?  I found them on Made By Joel's website.  He also had a miniature version, which we printed out and included in the favor bags.  The site is chock full of printable paper toys.

French manicures for the little ladies.  This pen by Sally Hansen was a great time saver.

The kids dined on crepes, "french" toast, brie and apples, made more fun by having it for dinner.

I couldn't bring myself to mar the surface for the perfect macrons with candles, so I made profiteroles filled with vanilla pudding.  

Favor bags decorated by my daughter with stickers and the eiffel tower bracelets.

One happy eight year old!  Bonne Nuit!