My little sister was having her first baby and we were so excited to shower her! We have a big family so I was looking for a spot that could accommodate 60+ people and our local park had an availability in June (so rare!) so we jumped on it. I wanted to make it look nice so tried lots of new ideas with this party – some worked really well and some were failures. Mostly because of the wind which was surprisingly strong in the middle of a June afternoon in California. Let me know if you try any of these and/or have ideas to improve.
DIY Decor
Flower Boxes: I was looking for an easy and relatively cheap way to cover the long picnic tables with flowers. It felt like we had a ton of space to cover – each table was more than 16ft and we had 12 of them. I got some 1″x3″x 8ft furring strips from Home Depot, nailed them together at the edges to form the “box”, stuffed them with floral foam, and bought flowers from Costco
Stuffed Balloons: In addition to decor coverage across the space, I wanted to have some vertical coverage too. I was originally hoping the curtains would provide some vertical decor but that didn’t work out so heavily relied on these stuffed balloons for some height. Unfortunately, they were no match for the wind so they always looked blown over. If it was indoors, I think they would’ve fared better. Video kind of shows you step by step but basically I bought 18″ Clear Balloons from amazon. Blew them first to stretch out the plastic a bit. Put a PVC pipe in the hole to stuff the plastic flowers through. Blew up the balloon again and tied it tight to the Balloon Stand from amazon. Put the balloon stand in a white basket from Dollar Tree and filled that basket with lemons and oranges. I would recommend using a balloon pump as those 18″ thick plastic balloons CANNOT be blown up by mouth or hand inflator.
Backdrop: My cousin had made multiple archs from the 8ft foam insulation at Lowe’s for one of her parties and I recycled that, painted it orange and yellow and hung some marigold garlands that I had from a previous party from the trees. Here’s a really good video on how to cut the archs from the 8ft foam.
Notable Purchases
Tablecloths and Rubberbands: Big fan of buying linens from Amazon in bulk and having them on hand for all of our parties. They are sturdy, easy to wash and easy to store. Also, the table rubber bands are the unsung hero of this whole event considering the wind. You can barely seem them but they really helped keeping the linens down. They are literally giant rubber bands that you put around the table and the tablecloth to keep the linens attached to the table. Also, here’s a link for the gauzy mustard colored Runners that we put underneath the flower boxes.
Drapery: So my grand idea was to hang curtains like fancy drapery between the columns of the shelter. The original thought was that I could string the curtains onto stainless steel cable (like the kind that can hold market string lights) and secure them to the metal trim of the shelter with heavy duty magnet hooks or heavy duty zip ties (no tape allowed). It made sense in my head but the wind and balance between weight and coverage was the downfall. In every picture, the curtains are the clear indicator to how strong the wind was. If anyone wants to try it and reinforce it with a different tool or has any ideas, I would welcome it! I think the idea of drapery around a picnic shelter – especially one that is shaped like this – would be amazing.
Curtains
Wire to hang them
Magnetic Hooks for attaching Wire to Gutter
Thankfully, I had this Here Comes the Sun tablecloth/banner/balloons Kit to make up for the curtain fail… at least this stayed up.
Goodie Bags
Big fan of goodie bags that are functional and thought these items were cute:
Hand Cream
Games
We played a bunch of games – some required active participation and an audience and some were passive games played during the mingle sessions.
Passive Games:
1) The ever so popular forbidden word games. Because my sister was having a boy, we used bowties as the thing to collect and I loved these doggie Bowties. Any time someone said the word baby, they would have to give up their bowtie.
2) The every so helpful, Diaper Raffle. Every person that bought a different size diaper was entered into the raffle for that size. Sister was stocked for months.
3) Guess the baby – we got 10 baby and childhood pictures from the mom and dad to be and people had to guess who was in each picture. Everyone loved seeing old pictures of the guests of honor.
Active Games:
Baby Bottle Chug: Filled a bunch of dollar store bottles with juice to see who can chug the fastest. Poking extra holes in the nipples will definitely help move this game along faster – NB nipples are SLOW!
Fastest Diaper changer: We had 3 stuffed animals and people raced to see who changed the diaper and dressed the baby the fastest.
All of My DIY 