Kaja Bolton transformed her space with decorations to bring an enchanted forest to life for her child’s birthday.

I have always loved imagining a scene or a room or a setting and then creating it. As a kid in Norway, I didn’t often have the means to realize my imaginings, but now as an adult, I manage to work this into my private and professional life. For work, I love coming into a space and staging it with coordinated furniture and curated decor. I believe that the way a space makes you feel, directly correlates with what it can sell for.

In my personal life, I love throwing parties and getting creative with a theme. I want to transform the space with decorations, drinks, and food to create the perfect ambiance to elicit a festive mood.

This extends to my daughter’s birthday parties every year. A few years back, my theme was an enchanted forest — a fairy garden infused with magic.

Making a theme work starts with the decorations. I had a vision for a canopy of flowers hanging from the ceiling. I wanted purple willowy stems, but I was unsure how to suspend them, so I consulted a set designer who suggested I use chicken coop netting and then weave the flowers through the holes. Through arduous (and terrible for the paint on my ceilings) work, the result was a thick blanket of hanging flowers that truly fostered the enchanted forest vibe. I also hung lanterns amid the flowers to make it even more magical.

I incorporated the support pillars in my apartment as tree trunks and wrapped them in brown satin. Then, in my den, I sought to create Peter Pan’s pixie hollow, so I crafted a room-sized tent with white material and anchored it to the center of the ceiling. Between the material and the wall, I used white fairy lights so that from the inside of the tent, the outside seemed to glow.

The decorations were by far the most challenging part. The entertainment was easy. I hired two Disney princesses, Ariel and Tinkerbell, to carry on the theme and appeal to all the kids I was hosting. To make the kids really feel a part of this magical universe, I gave them all wings (which doubled as party favors). I was able to find them on amazon inexpensively and glued fake peonies on the back to make them special.

Going big with the decorations and taking time to ensure consistency with the theme went a long way. My apartment was completely transformed, and most importantly, the kids had a great time.