I always see all these blogs with people who do DIY around their house, and it always looks so good. They refurbished that dresser and made a headboard out of nothing...so amazing, but I don't have one decorating bone in my body. I wish I did though! I try...but mostly I have my mom come over and tell me what to do :) Then I copy it year after year and do the same thing every year.
That being said I do love crafting. I won't even go into the hundreds of pages of scrapbooking, one day I'll have to show you my collection. Unfortunately all scrapbooking has pretty much stopped since having kids...:( But I have discovered online books, and I'll have to do a post on that too...okay I digress. I'm going to show you what I do know how to do, how to throw a party :)
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| source for the background |
Let's just assume you have a reason to celebrate and you've picked a date.
Step 1:
Think of the person you're throwing the party for and then chose a theme. I almost always have a theme, it's what makes a party fun right?
Chose whether you're going to buy invitations and send them out, or do an Evite or Paperless Post (I like this one because it's a little fancier than evite, and it's mostly free). If you do go with the snail mail route, I like using Vista Print. The prices are super reasonable, and every card is really customizable. You can take what they have and move words around, add more words, it's awesome. Granted they don't have the fancy choices that some of the other sites have, but the price more then makes up the differnce. For Mini Fox's birthday I had someone do the graphics on Etsy and then I used Vista print to print them out.
Step 2:
Once your theme is chosen, run with it. I always try to think of what decorations I want. With birthday parties, I always want a Happy Birthday Sign, so whether you buy it or make it, I almost always start there, that way I can base my decorations off of that. I heavily use my Cricut to make all of the decorations.
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Decorations: Try to buy as much as you can. I always try Oriental Trading Company first, then I hit up Party City. Occasionally I'll hit up Dollar Tree just to see what they have. I actually found cute wheel barrel at Big Lots of all places, only $5. Plus the kids played with it for the next 2 years, until the gardener decimated it, oops!
A great place is Facebook. We have several after party FB groups that people try to sell their party stuff. It's how I usually sell everything I've done. Throw an ISO (In Search Of) post out there and see if anyone can help you out. It's how I got a lot of the ladybug stuff.
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| The lady bug month by month was bought from someone else, so was that container holding the flowers, saved me so much time not having to make that stuff myself, which I probably would have done. |
Another easy way to make things "fancy" is do something fun with the plasticware.
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| This was for the Bridal Shower I threw for my Best Friend |
Just remember this: It's also okay to buy everything! For my sister's surprise party, I bought almost everything! The only thing I made were the "flower" poofs, using a modification of my PomPom Tissue DIY.
Step 4:
The food, duh. You have to have good food. I try to come up with something that matches the theme of the party. Like for Baby Fox's 3.5 birthday party we had BBQ food from Lucille's. I thought getting ribs = dinosaurs bones...hey good enough for me :) For Mini Fox's Lady Bug party, we did sort of a sweet picnic theme, chicken salad sandwiches, fruit, a few different salads.
A great place to really spruce up the decorations is the food. Create little signs for everything, it's a really nice touch and even though it's super obvious that it's fruit, a cute sign helps make it look so much more complete.
This is from Mini Fox's Baptism, the theme obviously was baptism, but I made these little cards using the logo from the invitation. This was the invitation, I went into Vista Print, pretending I wanted to buy the coordinating Thank You cards, then screen shot that, put it in Paint saved the picture, put that picture in Word added some words...and there you go.
Looks like I had these made right? Nope just at home on my computer.
Step 5:
Know where you want stuff the night before, drink table, cake, food, gifts, etc. Usually we try (we're getting better at this), to set up as much as we can the night before, as most people probably do. We literally put the bowls and serving trays that we want, and I put labels on them, chicken salad sandwiches go here, crockpot of meatballs goes here, etc. That way when you're running late the next day, the people helping you know where everything goes because you've labeled it.
Don't forget the music. Even if it's just softly playing in the background, it just changes the mood of the party when there is music.
There you have it, click here to see the parties that I've thrown. Mostly they revolve around kids...but hey you can use the same principles to throw just about any party!
Now go check out some of the other ladies, and see what they've made.
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Daily Style Finds | Making The Most of Everyday | Puppies and Pretties | She Thought She Could
Foxy's Domestic Side | Once Upon a Time & Happily Ever After | Sprinkled Just Right Linking up with Faith, Sarah and Heather for Mommy Moment, Angel at Sew Crafty Angel and Shelly, Abby, Arien and Katie for Hit Me With Your Best Shot, And all the girls over at Tuesday Talk |
