A fairy themed birthday table

Last month my sweet girl turned one - to celebrate we held an afternoon tea of chocolate cake and fizz to mark this grand occasion.

I knew I wanted to create a magical table for her with a subtle fairy/woodland theme so came up with this wall hanging and cake stand using my homegrown flowers. I'm SO happy with the end result, Milly's birthday came at the end of the summer holidays and I have to admit I felt rather faded but was determined to create something beautiful to celebrate my girl. It's been a summer of change and adjustment so I needed to keep the decorations as simple as possible but also had a massive need to create something new. I made the wall hanging over the course of a few weeks using up bundles of fabric and ribbon, eventually it'll hang above her cot. I shared the process over on my Instagram stories and got such a buzz from the kind words I received, it's in my highlights if you want to take a look (sharing tutorials is my favourite thing about social media). I went for muted dusky colours of mauve, green and natural cream with a shot of shimmer using these iridescent tassels from Other Letters .

For the cake stand my Dad kindly transformed my vision into reality one Friday afternoon. I have been buying wooden planks from a local garden centre for £2 throughout the summer - I can't resist them! I wanted the cake to sit amongst the flowers as if it was on a forest floor, he added holes so I could add vases underneath and made legs out of an old christmas tree. After a quick sand down it was the perfect stand for this most beautiful cake. I ordered this cake from a local company called Wilma's - apart from tasting as good as it looks - the owners put so much love and care into every cake. They perfectly colour matched the icing to harmonise with the rest of my scheme.

Gone are the days when I could spare a morning decorating, having the wall hanging and cake stand pre-done saved me so much time. The longest job was adding flowers which took no longer than half an hour. All these flowers are homegrown from my garden - I used a mix of roses, astrantia, hydrangea, dahlia's cosmos, ferns, rudbeckia and ivy. I know, I know, cosmos and dahlia's aren't forest flowers but I used some artistic licence and added them for their colour and movement - it was scary but also fun to try something new, luckily it paid off! To decorate the cake I used a custom topper, gold crown and candle from Other Letters.

Even though my creativity can sometimes feel lost under the washing pile or hidden in the toy cupboard at the moment, I'm glad that its there when I need it. I had so much fun putting this together - making the everyday beautiful really is the best.