Riley's Ocean Fairytale 11th Birthday Party

 

Hello, here is a birthday party from last year with an unusual theme for my cousin who loved the beach and (I think) reading stories: "Ocean Fairytale" is my preferred theme title, but it basically combines ocean/beach/story/storybook/fairytale/book themes all into one. 

Looking back, I don't love the color palette but I wanted something unique at the time, so it was a blue to green gradient (mainly turquoise and a sky/baby blue) contrasted by a brownish, mustard-yellow-type orange and enhanced with other neutral browns. 

Handmade elements and DIY clam and pearl party favors:

-The giant palm-like leaves were painted and cut paper.

-The backdrop was made from painted and cut posters.

-The castle was also made from a poster, combining watercolor and pen.

-I had made the banner for my classroom by tying together strips of fabric to a string, cutting and hot-gluing triangular book pages, and for this party I taped on top hand-watercolored ocean pictures I outlined and shaded with ink pens. The signs were also handwritten on top of watercolor swatches on cardstock. 

-For the chocolate 'pearls' I bought a box of Whoppers.

-The 'sea snails' were cinnamon buns.

-For the clam and pearl favors, I bought a pack of mini wallets in the party favor section of Walmart. I drew shells on cardstock with gel ink or Sharpie pens, cut them out, and stapled them on top of the wallets. I placed a Whopper in each one, packaged them, and that's all there is to it! 

I hope you found this post useful, thank you for visiting! 

-Lauryn 

Colorful, Modern Boho Mother's Day Party (2023)

 

Good morning, happy Wednesday! This event and long past relevant, but maybe this theme can be applied to summer events. This year for Mother's Day I did a colorful, boho theme with a mainly complimentary color palette featuring bright blues, orange, yellow, gold and brown. I struggled to come up with a theme and actually choose these colors and this theme when I was inspired by a design on a tee shirt from my church (which had the same font as the calligraphy on my 'Best Mom' sign below). For favors, I used car scent candles and tea bags. The flower balloons (which you may recognize from my past parties, I've re-used them a lot this year) were from Walmart and were around $3 for four, I think. 

Instead of sharing it as a separate post, I went ahead and included a quick Mother's Day gift idea below since it had matched the party. The pictures are pretty self-explanatory and these types of basket fillers might be helpful for birthdays, too. I got the lama/alpaca succulent planter from Ingles, the stickers came from a bulk teacher set I bought on Amazon, and everything else from Dollar General. 

I hope you enjoyed this post, and look forward to sharing more content soon! 

-Lauryn 

Jacob's Music-Themed Graduation Party

 Hello everyone, here is one of many, many events from a while back (this was from June) I am trying to get caught up on. This was a surprise graduation party for my brother themed around his passion, music. It was not as big and grand as I hoped, but I did what I could. I had tons of help from friends and family who deserve credit for many of the great puns, who helped with the photo display, favors, displays, balloons...actually everything. (Thank you Jessica, Bernice, Robert, Edwin, Mont, Lillie, Morgan and Hayden!) They did a great job of setting up. I was foolish and made the mistake of putting out a record to sign (and forgot the pen to sign it with) in the sun, so that melted into a weird,  crumpled shape. I also used candles as part of the party favors. Shockingly, they too melted in the approximately ninety-eight degree weather and ruined the favor bags. The beautiful cupcakes came from our local Cornelia Sugartopia (I don't remember if the toppers were from somewhere else, though). Despite some chaos and mistakes on my part, I think my brother had a great time. The color scheme was mainly gold, dark blue, with some added pops of dark red and black. 

Thank you for visiting! I hope this at least gives you some pun ideas for any music graduates you might know!

-Lauryn