This blog post was probably my favorite to write. If you have been following my page for a few years you know I like to get creative with design and décor. If you are creative and any bit handy, you can bring your event to life without sending a lot of money.
Décor:
Now that I have my theme in mind, I started my pinterest search to get some design inspiration. After a few searches I got some ideas of things I really liked and things that I really did not like. Out comes the sketch pad and markers and we start to sketch what we envision the jungle to look like in our house. I knew I was going big and wanted to use some of my rentals that I have collected, and available to rent my shameless plug, as our basic starting ground. We decided to do 5 vignettes for our party: outside welcome, foyer, photo wall and ceiling, sweet table, and the watering hole drink station.
Outside: I always love arriving at a party and having props showing theme as the first thing you see, its gives an excitement to the entrance, guests just can’t wait to go inside and see what’s in store! This can be as basic or as elaborate as you like. Because our event is in February in Newfoundland, we decided to play it save with some jungle like signage to welcome our guests.
Foyer: Once inside we wanted guests to have a small space to take off boots and jackets and get ready to enjoy the party. This space is small but equally as important!! We did some simple ivy garlands over the door leading in to the party room, and added some jungle music. Music and lighting is an inexpensive way to add big bang for your buck.
Photo Wall, ceiling etc: Once you pass through the ivy garlands you are in the main party space!! We have beams in our house so we decided to hang some jute rope, artificial greens and some jungle animals. On the main wall we wanted to do a photo booth wall. We wanted our friends and family to have lots of pictures to remember John-Derrick’s big celebration. I used the boxwood wall from my rentals as the base and built a grass hut around it. It was simple, we just ordered a bunch of grass skirts from amazon and put them all together! We added some jungle like signage and some jungle animals we had around the house. To soften the corners of the boxwood wall and to make it more whimsical, we added some soft balloon garlands.
Sweets table: This was the décor element I was the most excited to design and plan! Starting with the 2 10 foot boxwood walls as my base, adding some balloon garlands in teal, forest green, brown, with pops of gold. Kelly, from Party Animals, has been doing my garlands for the last few years and is always up for a challenge so we brought her onboard to do the balloons. Now that I have my base wall, I wanted to do an epic dessert table. Hannah from Bake My Day and I had a virtual meeting to discuss the items I wanted, the look, the variety, the flavours and how I wanted to layer them to flank his epic first birthday cake. Once I had this plotted on my sketch, I had some empty space that needed filling. I decided to do some signage. I knew what I wanted it to say and the look, so I reached out to Allison at Idesign for her to bring my printing ideas to life!!
Watering hole and Bar- This area is more so for the adults J A fun little themed bar complete with pineapple palm trees, delicious punches and of course jungle signage. In order to bring the theme together, we added balloon clouds about our island.
We will feature pictures of our party elements after our event 🙂
