With our kids birthdays falling two weeks apart, this year we decided to have a combined celebration with our close friends and family. Invites were made and sent a month prior, to tell our loved ones to reserve the date for our morning tea within the grounds of our local art gallery.
Sadly we had wet weather the entire week leading up to the party and the grounds would have been pretty soggy, so we decided to change the venue at the last minute. Fortunately for us we had the perfect wet weather option up our sleeves - our family home is soon to be demolished to make way for a new one. Our lounge room would be large enough to hold everyone and the large level garden was perfect for our jumping castle and for the boys to kick around a soccer ball.
Once this was decided (the day before), I rummaged through my party supplies stash (which is pretty substantial from collecting over the years) and took everything over to the house to set up. Decorating was easy given that I could hammer nails into wherever my heart desired. I had already ordered some helium balloons and the mini foil HOORAY balloons on sticks and planned to use them in the garden at the gallery; but having them all inside our house made so much more impact than they would have outdoors. I decided five minutes before our guests arrived to scatter some of the Knot and Bow confetti that
I sell in my store all over the floor. It did a great job of hiding the heavily worn carpet and the kids loved playing with it too!
The cake table is my work desk from home, I’ve always loved the look of a plain white trestle as a feature table, so jumped on the opportunity to use it for the party. I grabbed some cheery flowers from our local Woolworths the day before the party when I was going to make my last minute food purchases and popped them in Mason Jars that I had at home. The other gaps on the table were filled with pops of colour from the treat bags I tied with some gold glitter
tinsel ribbon and kraft name tags, and of course the two beautiful birthday cakes that were made by Paper and Poppies. The pink cake was vanilla flavoured with marshmallow flavoured icing, Willow loves Peppa Pig so I thought I’d decorate the top with one of her many figurines and some confetti sprinkles. The cake bunting was made using the
thick glitter tape I sell in my store, I folded strips in half over some twine, then cut the bottoms into shape. Morgan’s cake was beautiful too, he loves anything chocolate so the sundae option suited to him. It already had quite a bit going on so we just stuck a little minion on top and a glitter number 5. My kids love donuts so while I was at the local super market I grabbed two boxes of mini donuts and piled them up on a little cake stand and had them up there with the cakes. The different heights worked well together. The final touches to the cake table were a timber platter of tiny tea cup biscuits my sister made and of course the two clear confetti filled balloons that framed the table.
We had a second trestle table laden with savoury food and drink dispensers. My mum is famous for her yummy sandwiches at our parties, so she took charge of making these. We also had mini quiches and little zucchini muffins. Your average un-sighltly plastic trestle table was disguised with a white and gold confetti table cloth, and was framed by large foil balloons, a pink number 2 and a blue number 5. I also used the opportunity to dig out the tassel garlands I purchased last year for Willlow’s 1st Birthday party, along with more honeycomb balls I had from previous years celebrations.
In the end the weather was kind to us and did hold out aside from one small shower, so the kids enjoyed running around on the grass and bouncing in the jumping castle while the adults watched from the deck.
All in all it was a great party, I was more relaxed leading up to it than previous years as it was so thrown together and I didn’t feel any pressure, after all it was meant to just be a morning tea picnic in the park!
Trestle: Ikea
Star Sunnies: Spotlight
Catering: Self
Confetti, gold ribbons, cake toppers, glitter tape all available
in my store
