Hello Everyone,
This is soooooooooooooo over due. As a matter of fact, this was just sitting in my draft for almost a year now. But better late than never right? Heh Heh…. First, we want to thank Paperless post for helping us with the e-invites! They are so easy to create and sent out, made the process a lot easier, we had OVER 80 guests. It was kinda like a mini wedding!!! It was crazy! I’m not sure if I would do a combined birthday party again, but it was WELL worth it for the kids though!!
The Venue
We knew we didn’t want to have it at our house because it’s just too crazy. I can’t imagine having 30 kids at the house! Being super OCD there’s no way, or ever I’ll be hosting that many kids in my house!!! We decided to rent the place at UrbanPark Playland we rented out the whole place to make it a private party – which I’m so glad we did because we had so many adults and kids!
Rent: $150/hour *price adjusted
Private: $125
Be sure to check out their other packages here: https://urbanparkplayland.com/party-packages-1
The Preparation
The Balloons Garland
I looked EVERYWHERE and started to sort out the prices, to my surprise to just do a simple garland costs from $400 + travelling + set up. So we are looking at $600 dollars give or take! We were on a budget and there’s no way we can swing that with everything else. So, I started to google youtube videos and trying to figure out how to set up the balloons garland.
If you are thinking of doing your own, here’s what you need:
- 5M
- 100 balloons
- Balloons tape
Noobie Tip:
IF you can, try to blow up the balloons when you are at the venue. My mistake was that I blew it all up at home, it was cold and raining that day – during the transportation most of the balloon deflated. I was pretty sad!
Hire a photographer:
We didn’t think we would need a photographer for the day, but looking back – I wish we had! We were so busy greeting our guests and handling our toddlers, we HARDLY got any good photos. We didn’t even get a group photo of everyone because it was so chaotic that day.
That was literally the best photo I found of all 7 of us. So, if you have the budget – hire a photographer to take professional photos!
The set up:
Ok, so this was not a 15 minute set up. But we had big plans and we wanted to execute it….. and we did! We got the private room which was amazing because we were bale to set everything up before the guests arrived.
How I made the backdrop:
You can view the full blog post here: DIY: Balloon Garland backdrop stand
I then just added different fabric to the frame. Super easy and you can spice it up with different colors too!
The Food
I really can’t take credit for this, as Christine is the real baker and she is amazing at it. She made the cake, the m&m cupcakes, and ALL the food. She really is amazing getting everything done. Seriously, look at that amazing cake. She even did our logo of our unicorn bunny! How cute is that. Did I mention that it tasted great as well?
She also did the unicorn cupcakes that was filled with surprised M&Ms the kids LOVED it. Even I loved every bite of the cupcake as well!
Some of the process photos:
It was such a big hit with the cupcakes!
Finally the favors:
We decided to give everyone a customized cloud hook. It took me FOREVER to make it. We wanted it to be personalized, but I forgot how annoying it was for vinyl names…. I made the same mistake when I did Ariya’s 100 day. You can read it here: How we Montessori Month 3 – 100 days celebration
I also made this board that had over 30 names. THAT took almost 6 hours to do.
This pretty much sums up Tristan’s and Ariya’s 2nd birthday. As I’m typing this…. their 3rd birthday is actually coming up REAL soon. I’ve been putting this blog post delayed for almost a year. But better late than never right? This year we are also hosting it at Urban Park Playland as well, we love it there!
Tristan enjoyed his time here!
This chubby bunny as well. She loved the ballpit!
And finally…… our very unorganized group picture. I really should had hired a photographer….
Thanks so much for reading!
