It is my favorite time of year! Party time! This year our son celebrated his third birthday with a three rex dinosaur birthday party. Dinosaur party games were played. Dinosaur party treats were eaten, and there was even a visit from a giant inflatable t-rex!
This DIY Photo holder made from a hula hoop is an inexpensive way to show off photos at a party or display Christmas cards.
This year our son turned 2 and because he is so fascinated by the moon these days a “two the moon” space party was the perfect fit for our little astronaut!
Continue Reading “Two The Moon Space Party”
I am excited to share our son’s lumberjack birthday party with you today. It was a 1st birthday filled with flapjacks, flannel, family and fun!
Last weekend Brent and I had a blast throwing a fall party on my family’s boat dock. I love planning and hosting parties. In another life maybe I will be a party planner but for now I will just have to settle on hosting festive get-togethers when the occasion rises.
FYI: This post contains affiliate links to products we used and liked for our fall party on a boat dock. As an Amazon Associate Gray House Studio earns from qualifying purchases. This is at no extra cost to you. We appreciate you supporting this site. Read our privacy and disclosure policy.
I’m an introvert so I am not a huge fan of big blow out bashes but rather intimate gatherings with friends and families with lots of time to chat one on one and nice thought out details to enjoy. I contribute this love to my parents always throwing me fantastic birthday parties growing up.
It was a cool (by Houston standards) October night as we gathered on the boat dock under the cozy string lights and carved pumpkins, drank apple cider from jars and sat around the fire talking and laughing while we made and ate our very messy s’mores.
When it comes to parties, we really enjoy creating an atmosphere where guests can feel totally immersed in the setting from the music to the food, to the lighting and location. I wanted guests to feel transported to a cozy fall cabin in the woods even though we were really in the suburbs in Houston!
It is easy for Brent and I to get lost in all of our home projects and day jobs so it was a great opportunity to slow down for a bit and enjoy an evening with close friends and family where the hardest decision was one s’more or two.
This party was a fun change of pace. We had a goal to keep it fairly simple and stick to a budget of next to nothing and it turned out better than we could have imagined. Below are the details of our fall party on the boat dock.
A boat dock may seem like a strange location for a fall party but I like a challenge. Thinking outside the box when it comes to the location for a party just adds that extra element needed to transport guests to a different place. Working with the smaller space forced me to get creative thinking about the different areas guest could enjoy but the unique setting on the water made it feel really peaceful, cozy and intimate.
** We are aware that this location wouldn’t have worked if we had more than 15 people at our fall party, there were small children in attendance or if a large amount of alcohol was consumed because it was dark and three out of the four sides were surrounded by water so there is a good possibility that if any of those factors had been present, someone would have taken a step in the wrong direction and ended up in the water.
That is why we make sure to pick our location first and plan the details accordingly. I am happy to report we all stayed perfectly dry.
If you know anything about me by now, you know I am a sucker for string lights so it was a no brainer that I wanted them at the party. String lights just scream cozy to me. We used our favorite string lights from Hometown Evolution.
They are the same kind we used to create a canopy of string lights in our backyard and we love them because they hold up great (ours are still going strong in our backyard), are easy to install, look amazing and create the perfect ambiance.
We also tried out Hometown Evolution’s paper lanterns and they worked great for our party. We hung one large lantern and two small lanterns in fall colors over our conversational area. We used some LED lights from IKEA that were left over from our coffee bar inside of them and it worked perfectly. They really completed the whole magical lighting look we wanted.
My family is big on pumpkin carving. We have a yearly tradition of getting together to carve pumpkins and then making it into a contest by posting them online for our friends and family to vote to see who wins bragging rights. It’s all for the sake of friendly competition.
This year we decided to incorporate this family custom into our fall party. We created a pumpkin carving area. We asked guests to BYOP (bring your own pumpkin) but also made sure to have a few extras on hand in case anyone forgot. We supplied carving supplies and extra patterns for those who didn’t bring their own. If party goers were up to the challenge, they could enter their pumpkin in our annual contest.
Stay tuned because we will be posting this year’s entries next week for you to vote for your favorite and help us pick a winner!
What is fall without apple cider? We created an apple cider station where guests could help themselves to cold apple cider (we are in Houston so it is not quite cold enough for hot apple cider) and apple and cinnamon muffins. My favorite part is the sign we made using two $3 cedar pickets, a stencil and spray paint.
If guests were not into apple cider we also had cold water and root beer on hand as well.
Our party started later in the evening so we had snacks and dessert available for guests. I recycled our fall crate display by cleaning the crates out and adding a new banner to make our s’mores bar. We used extra cedar pickets to create a wood plank table top and added a plaid table runner.
Mini pumpkins, lanterns and plaid blankets rounded out the details for our fall party to give it a rustic cabin vibe. I love the idea I saw of providing blankets to guests for when it gets chilly. It was fun to snuggle up so the conversation could continue even as the temperature dropped.
And there you have it, our fall party on a boat dock. It was the perfect way to spend a fall evening and it was so much fun to plan and decorate. I think I have just as much fun setting up and photographing all the details as anything else. Do your friends and family have any fall traditions? Share them with us below!
*Thanks to Hometown Evolution for providing the string lights and paper lanterns for our fall party.
We made a DIY tiki bar top to put on a table for a summer tropical party.
A couple of weeks ago I decided I wanted to put on my party planner hat and throw my dad a surprise Margaritaville/Key West themed party for his 50th birthday. My parents have a gorgeous backyard that lends itself nicely as a setting for a tropical party so my mom took my dad out shopping while we set up for the day.
A Margaritaville party would be nothing without margaritas and a margarita is best served from a tiki bar, so I asked Brent if he could help build the centerpiece for the party.
Ideally I wanted something that was lightweight, easy to set up and portable. Brent came up with a great design using mostly things we had left over in our garage. That’s what I call a win-win. The best part of all it was a huge hit and really made the party.
I thought that living in Houston there would be a pretty good chance that the weather would be mild in the middle of November. However, as luck would NOT have it, the night of the party was the coldest night we have had in Houston all year.
So a group of us are outside drinking our frozen margaritas from our tiki bar in 40 degree weather all bundled up with jackets and scarves. I’m sure my parent’s neighbors thought we were a little bit crazy but it was a blast.
Brent built the tiki bar top so it could pretty much be set up on any type of surface. We set it up on a metal rolling cart for the party but the second time my dad used it he set it up on a folding table. The nice thing is it breaks down fairly easy so it can be stored and set up again next year!
Shop the products we used for this project in one place.
FYI: This post contains affiliate links to products we used and liked for our DIY Tiki bar top. As an Amazon Associate Gray House Studio earns from qualifying purchases. This is at no extra cost to you. We appreciate you supporting this site. Read our privacy and disclosure policy.
1. First, we cut the MDF board to the size we needed (we made it a few inches larger than the table we put it on) with our table saw.
We used a MDF board because it is heavy so the table would be sturdy and it has a consistent surface so the vinyl floor planks would stick really well.
2. After that we created a lip using the pine on either side of the base to add support for the canopy and to make a large surface to screw in the legs for the canopy.
3. Next we used a straight edge ruler and a box cutter to score the vinyl floor planks to the appropriate size of the MDF board. Then we stuck each piece onto the board.
4. We made the structure of the canopy by cutting the boards to the size of the table top and attached them together using the using angle brackets.
We needed the canopy to be light so we used thin wood but because the wood was thin, it didn’t give a large surface to screw the boards together so we had to use angle brackets.
5. The next step was to stretch the landscaping fabric over the canopy structure. We then stapled it to the top of the canopy. We cut off the excess fabric.
6. We took the roll of kraft paper and scored the bottom half of it to get a fringe look. After that we started with the front and stapled the paper to the side of the wood.
We placed the next layer of fringe paper so it overlapped the staple from the previous layer of paper. We continue doing this going up the top of the canopy.
7. The next thing we did was cut the legs for the canopy out of the same pine wood. The front legs were cut shorter than the back legs to create a pitched roof. We assembled the table by screwing the four legs into the table top lip and the canopy.
8. We added a grass table skirt around the bottom of the metal cart to hide it. And finalized the tiki bar by adding a few tropical decorations such as paper lanterns.
Over all this project cost us around $40 because we had most of the supplies laying around and it took about two or three hours to put together. Cheers to a successful one day project!
