parties Archives - TaylorMade

Wild Animal Party

April 3, 2019 By Taylor 2 Comments

My boys are at the stage where a party at home just isn’t as cool as it used to be, they love party places like the trampoline park or an indoor playground. There are definitely some good things about that, like leaving the mess for someone else am I right? But the party planner in me cringes at the thought of it because how will I have fun decor haha?! Thankfully, 8 and 9 year old boys don’t care about party decorations but I still really love a theme and I really enjoy decorating. So, when my son told me he wanted a Wild Animal Party at a play space I thought… challenge accepted!

Thankfully the place we booked did have private rooms, but I kid you not the employee on the phone told me I would have under five minutes to decorate! I mean… I am speedy but not that speedy. I decided I would just keep it suuuuper simple and have everything done ahead of time. If you follow me on IG (@taylormadecreates) then you know that includes my husband helping me carry a balloon garland into the building haha!

Speaking of balloon garlands, I get a ton of questions about them general. Apparently I can’t have an event without it involving balloons haha, so I am going to work on a FAQ balloon post that will be coming soon. But, this one was super simple! I ordered a pack of mixed animal print balloons from amazon and a pack of dark green and lime green balloons. I used balloon tape and my trusty balloon pump and just popped the balloons into the balloon tape. Then I used my

My son loves wild animals so last year I grabbed these animal cutouts at the target dollar section although I didn’t have a plan for them at the time. I haven’t seen them recently but I did find something super similar at Oriental Trading Co online. I used double sided tape and just taped them to the wall… remember I had 5 minutes :) I also used a disposable table cloth under a runner we already for the table.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to bring in a ton of decor, so I went ahead and got animal print gift bags… party utility part decor! I honestly never really use gift bags, I usually love to do something homemade for party favors, but my son really wanted gift bags… birthday boys can be so demanding ;) I used my Cricut to cut the boy’s names out on the bags.

Speaking of birthday boys and their requests, my son really wanted a “wildcat” shirt. So I… you guessed it… used my Cricut to make him a birthday shirt. I found a cougar silhouette online and used metallic silver heat transfer vinyl on a yellow shirt. When we got to the party space and they told me we were assigned to the “yellow room” and I felt like the design gods were really helping me out haha. Unrelated… I bought this yellow shirt in a pack on Amazon and my boys have loved all of these shirts!

Last but certainly not least is this amazing cake. My mom is a very talented baker and I am definitely not, so early on I started asking my mom to make my kids cakes and now it is a big tradition at our house! My kids turn their orders in weeks in advance and she has even been known to “practice” to perfect her designs! This year we told her the theme and she came up with quite the masterpiece! Can you even handle the cheetah icing?!

She made a triple layered zebra chocolate and vanilla cake with salted caramel buttercream cheetah icing! It really stole the show.

Overall, it was a great party. I survived the five minute party prep, and somehow managed to include a balloon garland and gift bags haha! I know our boy had a great time and that is really all that matters ;)

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Mermaid Birthday Party

July 9, 2018 By Taylor 1 Comment

This last week Bee turned 4! We had a weekday playdate party at our house with some friends and fun was had by all! She requested a Mermaid Birthday Party months ago so I went with it… thankfully there is a ton of Mermaid stuff out right now :) For the decor I just did a balloon arch, one food table and then we had some fun party favors! We blew up a big kiddie pool, a slip and slide and we also had a mobile Snowcone Truck come to our house so that was a big hit!

If you follow me on Instagram (@taylormadecreates) you know I got lots of help with my balloon arch this time… Yay for big kids :) I always get a lot of questions about balloons… I usually buy way too many but I like variety and I like options. I had 3 shades of pink, 2 purples, 3 mint/teals and a bag of white balloons and the bags usually have about 25 of each. I also like a variety of sizes for the balloons. I used THIS STRIP this time to make the arch. If you haven’t used it or made an arch it’s not quite as pretty but it’s also WAY easier! It’s just a thin, clear plastic strip with holes in it and you push the end of a blown up balloon in the hole. (this is a link to amazon but I have found it a few dollars cheaper at party city.

I usually make all of our invitations but this year I was in a time crunch and I found this one on Etsy and thought it was pretty perfect… HERE is the link.

Total party planner fail.. I didn’t take any pics of the table once the food was all out but I promise it was pretty haha! We had a “brunch” theme. I made an egg casserole, lemon vinaigrette salad, chick fil a tray for the kids, goldfish and chips and fruit salad. The only thing I made that was on theme and cute were these little oyster cookies that I found all over pinterest. I just piped strawberry frosting between nilla wafers and added a candy pearl. I found the tablecloth, happy birthday banner, plates and napkins all from Target’s party area.

I added just a few drops of blue food coloring to some lemonade to make it look mint and called that “mermaid lemonade”. I had some champagne and OJ for the moms because #brunch. The pink bevnaps are from amazon HERE.Bee and I have the same birthday so I always like to do something matchy matchy for us ;) This year I made us matching shirts for the party.

Speaking of shirts… I made the cutest party favors. I found a place online who sells very affordable blank tees in tons of colors and sizes so for under $3 a piece I made all the party goers a tee with my silhouette machine, vinyl and my heat press. The boys got sharks and the girls got shells. I even had some mini guests :) I hung them up with twine and clothespins and the kids had fun finding their name after they swam.

My mom is always in charge of the kids cake… thank God for her because I am no baker! This year she had a cake planned then a few days before the party while at Kroger she spotted this one just knew it would be perfect for the queen of flashy, I mean perfect for Bee :) She also got her matching cupcakes and of course Bee LOVED it!

Just in case the kids didn’t have enough sugar, I found a snowcone company who comes to your party in a truck:) They make the ice part of the snowcone then the kids get to top it with their own flavor on the side of the truck… it was super cute!

How cute is this little mermaid swimsuit?! Guess where I found it?? Amazon haha… HERE is the link.

We had such a fun and festive time! Thanks to everyone to who came to help us celebrate… our little mermaid loved it!

Check out Bee’s past parties here!: Fiesta Party, Farmers Market Party, Peppa Pig Party!

A Peppa Pig Tea Party Birthday

October 11, 2017 By Taylor 3 Comments

This summer our sweet Bee girl turned three! We had a Friday Morning Playdate party with a friend who has a birthday the same week as Bee. They were in the same class in PreSchool so we just invited their class :) The other birthday girl was planning a tea party and Bee was excited about a Peppa Pig Birthday so we mixed the themes and threw a Peppa Pig Tea Party… Super fun!

I made the invitation in Illustrator and I love how it turned out! The other mom saw the wording on an invitation on Pinterest and it went perfect with our theme… I had it printed at our local copy shop and the best part was that we handed them out to the class on the last day of school in May so we didn’t even have to mail them.

How cute is her little birthday outfit?! I found the shirt at Old Navy, the skirt is from Amazon (HERE is the link) and I just hot glued some felt on alligator clips for the little piggy ears :) It was a water party so she later changed into a Peppa Bathing suit… she’s very fancy with her party costume changes haha.

I did a little mini balloon arch over the window in my breakfast room with all of the food. We all know how I love a good balloon arch :) I usually try to choose 4/5 colors for most parties so we tried to stick to Pink, Lavender, Yellow, Green and Light Blue.

For the food we went with a “tea party” ish menu. We had tea sandwiches, fruit salad, pasta salad, goldfish and popcorn in baking cups, watermelon and pigs in a blanket. My mom also made little “tea cakes”, snickerdoodles and sugar cookies. We also served raspberry sherbert punch for the kids and mimosa punch for the moms :)

The other mom throwing the party with me did the flowers in the piggy rain boot which I thought was so cute! And how perfectly girly are these flowers?!

For the backdrop behind the table I used a science fair board and taped the sides flat and covered it in felt. I cut the Peppa family out of felt and attached them together with hot glue. All of the Peppa Pig characters are reposition-able so Bee actually played with this for weeks after the party! Our other friend made the big “3” for her sons party earlier this year and asked if I wanted it… I have been hoarding it ever since haha!

I used my silhouette machine to cut teacups out of cardstock and sewed them together to make a teacup garland. I hung that up with a paper strip garland that I did the same way :)

We put a few cheap kiddie pools in my backyard, one was filled with water and one we filled with Jelly Beads (my kids are obsessed with THESE). I also bought this water toy at the beginning of summer (HERE is the link). It did end up with a few holes in it by the end of summer but we got a few months of play from it. The kids had so much fun playing in the hose and splashing in the water beads!

For the party favor we did a spin in the “adopt a pet” idea I have seen and we did “Adopt a Pig”! I found the Pigs at Oriental Trading Co. They had little shirts with sayings on them but I just cut those off. For the pig pen I got a green foam core board and made a little fence from popsicles sticks and just placed the piggies inside.

We have always had all of our kid’s birthday parties in the afternoon and I have to say the daytime playdate party was a fun change! Happy Birthday to two sweet girls!

Farmer’s Market Birthday Party

August 2, 2016 By Taylor 8 Comments

Guess what happened… last month Bee turned TWO! I can’t believe how fast time flies, cliche but true. Bee is the last baby and still in the stage where she doesn’t actually have her own friends… we also share a birthday (so fun) so I think I will milk the joint party a little longer haha. A few months ago I had the idea of a “fruit and vegetable” theme but when I was brainstorming with my mom one day she threw out the “Farmer’s Market Birthday Party” idea. I obviously loved it and ran with it!

There were a few things I knew I wanted like a balloon arch, an adorable hand lettered sign done by my talented sister and a water slide. The rest I kind of put together last minute but my goodness that balloon arch was cute haha! I saw House of Lars doing them last year and knew that I needed one in my life! I did the chicken coop tunnel for the base just like she did then just kept layering and layering balloons. It worked on it about 2 hours for two days. I would not have been able to ever get this done without a balloon pump (I used this one). I ordered 9 different colors (about 25 of each color) and just inflated them to different sizes. I loved how it turned out! The worst past is that it’s so temporary ha!

My sister is a calligrapher and hand letter-er (IG: handwrittenjane) so she came over a few weeks before and did the big Farmers Market sign, the menu sign, the food markers and the lettering on the carrot sign. I drew the carrots on this one and we were so proud of ourselves and our teamwork haha! I saw the inspiration from this pin HERE but couldn’t find the original source. The banner she did on craft paper is huge, almost 8 feet long and she hand painted that whole thing!

For the food table, I made some fresh salads, a big fruit salad and a veggie tray. I cheated and got Popeye’s Biscuits and Chick-fil-a! But you can’t beat them so why try?! I did however make homemade pickles veggies and cake balls! I saw these radish cake balls from an instagram post that @athomewithnatalie posted and I had to try them… they turned out so cute! I found the Homemade Pickled Veggie Recipe HERE. I also saw this gorgeous farmers market veggie tray here and I totally copied it!

My mom always makes our cakes and she did an amazing job this year as usual! I wanted a naked caked with berries and cream cheese frosting… she came over to assemble it and even had another cake that she did with chocolate frosting, sugared oranges and cherries!

For the bar, I used my new BARCART (!) and my new letter board for the Bar Menu :) I made spiked Berry Lemonade, Mint Limeade and Pink Grapefruit Jello Shots! I used this recipe and modified it from A Beautiful Mess.

As far as decor, I honest didn’t go too crazy because I already had the cute signage and balloon arch covered. I did get wooden flatware and red and white gingham plates and napkins HERE and HERE.

I picked wildflowers from a field near my house and threw them in some vases… free decorations for the win! For the long dining room table, I placed tall raw vegetables and herbs in mason jars with water and lined them up to make a centerpiece. Over our fireplace I hung packets of seeds on a rope with clothespins… PS- seeds packs are .10 at the dollar store!

We also had a water slide in the backyard for the older kids, which is a must in Houston in the summer. We always use City Wide Party Rentals, and I highly recommend them! If you are in the Houston area.. look them up, they have great customer service.

I posted all about Bee’s Birthday Dress HERE!

We had such a good time and Miss Priss is lucky to have such an amazing groups of friends and family to help her celebrate her day! Let me know if you have any questions about where I found something or a recipe I left out :)