Florida Life with Laura

I can’t even express how excited I am about this party. So excited that I’m about 99% done with it with a full 3 weeks to go. At this point I’m almost reaching to try and come up with more things to throw into it so that I have more planning I can work on. 😂 For instance, I haven’t even pulled my cricut out once. Surely I can come up with some sort of decor I can make with the cricut just for fun.

I’ll summarize what I’ve done the past couple weeks.

First, I set out to find the ultimate, no-fail cookie dough recipe to use for the design your own cookies activity. We ate SO many cookies that week, but it ultimately was a success, many batches over, and hopefully this recipe won’t let me down on party day.

Next, I focused on macrame for a week. I came up with an assortment of crafts for the guests to do. A variety of keychains, diffusers, tassels, and wristlets will all be possible for them to make. We will also make little dream catchers during craft time. I taught my 5 and 8 year old girls how to macrame just to make sure this was easy enough, and each of them learned in 5 minutes, so we’re good to go.

After that I focused on the spa. I decided which spa activities we would do and then hit the stores to find all the supplies. Just about all of it was easily found inexpensively on Amazon or at Dollar Tree. I am personally very excited to partake in the spa.

I also tested out the sugar scrub bar, and I love how it turned out. I can’t wait for that activity.

Next I planned the food. My brain got stuck on this for a good long time, trying to figure out something I could serve that wouldn’t be a full meal but also wouldn’t require me having to cook before or during the party. Finally I had my breakthrough and it was easy from there. I’m going to have a mimosa bar at one table with different juices, alcoholic and nonalcoholic sparkling wines, red wine, and berries. At another table I’ll have a light brunch type of spread with bagels, cream cheese, donuts, croissants, muffins, fruit, cheese, and crackers.

I bought these pretty pastel reusable plates from Target and some coordinating napkins. With 3 daughters, I will surely be able to use them again at another party, and it was only $6 for the whole stack.

The last few days I spent making a detailed schedule so I don’t miss any details. I realized I have 2 points in the schedule where I need guests to be occupied. The first is the 15 minutes when they first arrive. We need a warm-up activity. The second time is after we bake the cookies I need 10 minutes to clean up the cookie stuff and set up the crafts. So I came up with 2 basic games everyone can play at these times. The opening game will be “what’s on your phone” and guests will try to be the first to find a picture of a specific item in their phone’s album (examples: a farm, snow, food, etc.). The other game while I’m doing cookie cleanup will be “find a person who”. I made a list of things that apply to one or more of the party guests (ex: a person who can play an instrument), and everyone will have to try and find the person or people at the party who match the prompt.

This past week I also planned the decor in detail and ordered everything. We will have a lot of frameless tea lights and candles, fairy lights, and marquee signs. A large pastel fringe backdrop. Flower petals. And balloons shaped like clouds hanging from the ceiling (I decided to do this instead of making clouds from scratch). It should be a super relaxing, calm, pretty environment.

One thing I decided I should do for this party is have printed instructions for the macrame projects. This will allow guests to work on them more independently so I’m not running myself ragged helping everyone. So I made my own printed tutorial on how to make various macrame knots with photos of each step, and what lengths of cord they will need for specific items. This ended up being pretty long and I decided I would compile the instructions into a booklet. Then I decided I should add the “find a person who” game to the booklet as well so that I don’t have to print that up separately. And then I decided I should add a cover and a back cover to make it pretty. And for the heck of it, I also threw in a page that outlines the spa services and another page with the party’s menu, and yet another page with the full party schedule.

To summarize that last paragraph, I have now legit made a 10 page “program” for this party. Like it’s a play or a wedding. If the guests respond positively, I may start doing this at every party. We’ll see.

The other thing I’ve been working on is a photo slideshow. I always like to find some way to utilize my television, and I decided this is how I will use it. I am tediously selecting my favorite 20 photos of Elsa from each month of her life. That’s 107 months worth by the time of the party x 20 photos = 2,140. Maybe it shouldn’t be hard to select 2 thousand photos, but I have nearly 90 thousand on my devices, so it’s been a job. Thankfully, I have another 3 weeks to get it done.

And just to be a super nerd, I decided I will play each photo in the slideshow for 5 seconds. This will age Elsa the equivalent of 1 year every 20 minutes, so over the course of a 3 hour party, guests will be able to see her grow up from birth to age 9. That’s just how I roll.

Overall, I can’t wait until our girl’s night in! I’m starting to think Elsa’s Cloud 9 is a lot like mine!