Nestling: Reveal

I know I have been a little MIA lately, but I am thrilled to show you this cute party I styled for a client who requested a beach/pool party for her friend's son a few weeks back.

My client already purchased invitations when she contacted me, so although these weren't used for the party, I went ahead and created some for the shop:

Guests were served hot dogs off the grill and an assortment of sides, like Cheetos "beach balls" and Doritos "shark fins".

Bent straws taped to the side of cups turned an ordinary drink into a scuba mask and tube.

We lined the hot dog plates with tissue paper and stamped parchment paper. This was such a fun, easy, and free (I already had the stamp) way to dress these up.

The dessert bar was dressed up in the same bright fashion:

We made "Sea glass lollipops" by melting jolly ranchers in the oven and sticking lollipop sticks in them. I love the organic shape they all took on.

Blue jello was given a punch of color with these cute "beach ball" candies I found at the dollar store.

The cupcake wrappers were one of my favorite things in this party package - they look like little sand buckets complete with handle! We blended up graham crackers to create the 'sand' on top of the cupcakes. The shovels were piped using yellow candy melts using the same tutorial I used for the spider webs I created for Halloween.

For added decoration we placed large vases filled with sand on the table. Placing a small sand castle mold in them added a fun and playful look without the mess :)

To really dress up the table and just make it more fun for the kids, I created these accessories to attach to regular paper plates. I love how this turned something inexpensive (the plates) into something custom.

Outside guests were treated with fun games such as water balloon and water gun fights, a sand box, and a small pool.

Outside, the guests were served "grown up" cocktails as well - champagne and popsicles! Such an easy (and yummy!) treat.

We staged our favor table to match the dessert bar since they were close together. The backdrop was made using colorful tissue streamers twisted up. Such an inexpensive idea, but it totally adds that color that this party needed.

Guest left with sand buckets, pool noodles, and lots of other goodies. We dressed up the noodles with some extra water bottle labels.

But, let's face it : the lollipops were the star of the show ;)

Simple bags filled with shark crackers (also found at the dollar store of all places!) were made a bit more colorful with small sand molds (found in the dollar isle of Joann's):

I have had this valentine idea pinned for almost two years now, and I thought it would make such a cute idea for the gift table:

I had a blast styling this party. How could I not with all these bright colors?! It was definitely the perfect way to start the summer :)

This party package is now available in my shop!

Invitations

Party Package

Here is a rundown of where I found all the items:

Striped Paper Straws

Glasses used for "Beach Water"

Rainbow Paper Lanterns

The sand buckets, shovels, and paper lantern lights were all purchased from Five Below

Pool noddles, Rainbow Lollipops, water guns, and misc. candy was purchased from the Dollar Tree.

Happy Monday, ladies! Hope your summer is going well :)

xo,

Rachel

Holy moly, the time has finally come - I have sorted through the gazillion photos I took of our party and am SO excited to share them with you now! Hope you are ready for a super photo overload ;)

This theme has been in my top ten 'dream' parties to style, so when our son choose this I was over the moon! The party was held at our house in the evening, leaving many of the boys to spend the night for some late night gaming. This was great in theory (and everyone had a blast), but WOW was it a lot of work! I kinda felt like I ended up planning several parties - the real one with activities and goody bags, the 'late night' one with night time activities and treats, and then breakfast in the morning. And with a house full of boys - whew, there was a ton of, um...movement :)

The party started off with these fun invitations:

To start off the party, when our guests entered the house they were greeted with a sign that told them to grab a hat and mustache (crowns were available for our "Princess Peaches"):

I'm going to be honest here: I had better plans for the red plant monster, but things fell apart...literally :) So plan B came into play:

Unintentionally, it turned out to make quite the great spot for a photo op:

To kick start the party, the kids each made their own personalized pizza in "Luigi's Pizza Kitchen". Each pizza was served in an individual pizza box. The kids could write their names on it and it helped us keep track of who's pizza was who's. Plus, it's just fun to get your own box ;)

After dinner, were the activities - I think my favorite part about the party!

For the egg hunt, I purchased a ton of white eggs and just painted polka dots on them. They were filled with all our left over Halloween candy - a win-win situation!

Next up was the OBSTACLE COURSE!

The entire time that the kids were running through it I had the Mario theme song playing from our stereo to really make it feel as if they were in the game. (downloaded from iTunes). First up the kids had to do a run with a red ball between their legs and then go through a red tunnel. I never took photos of this, but I did take photos of the good stuff: {and, ahem, pardon our hot mess of a back yard. It's been a long winter}

For the ghosts, I purchased 36" balloons from online (resources below) and just made paper cones for the arms and printed up the face/eyes from an image I found online and glued it on. You could paint a face, but I knew I would never be happy with my own handmade job - plus I think this saved me time on the actual day of the party.

For this part, I just printed up some of the red plant monsters and attached it to a stick that I jammed into some spray painted oatmeal cans.

The board was an amazing find that a friend and I got from a garage sale for a $1! I just painted it green and added some photos of the 'bad guys'. I then purchased some tennis balls and wrapped them in blue and red tissue paper for the fire and ice balls.

The last part of the obstacle course was the hit of the party:

I just purchased some brown/gold balloons and taped on their faces that I printed off the Internet. I then cut a paper plate in half, punched a hole through both of them and pulled the bottom of the balloon through it and taped it secure.

After all that hard work came the dessert table:

{these cake pops were one of my favorite things about the party!! I will be posting a tutorial on how I made them soon!}

We went the same route that we did with Cayden's snowflake cake, where we purchase a cake with fondunt from a local bakery and then did all the decorations ourselves. The figures were purchased and the rest I made out of fondunt at home.

To go with the cake, Jason made some amazing homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream (birthday boy's favorite!} that we placed in some cute "Gelato" cups garnished with (what else?) mustache spoons.

Finally, favors were handed out:

I was really inspired with how Kara had painted a tv blue for her party, so when I saw this beauty laying on the side of our street one day, I just knew it was fate and had to paint it!

Two of my favorite items in the goody bags? These custom made "Yoshi Tongue" blowouts (available in the shop now!):

And these adorable mustache whistles:

After the first batch of guests left, we played some fun games outside, including glowstick tag in the dark. Finally, it was time for the boys to come inside where they settled down into their jammies and watched a Mario movie and played some Wii. For the snack we made popcorn from our machine as well as a couple of chocolates: