Birthday Pool Party

A couple of months before my little one turned 6, I told my boys that we were going to scale back this year and have smaller birthday parties.  They didn't complain so we moved forward with our plan.  I am still able to influence the little one's decisions on birthday parties - this year I suggested a pool party and he was GAME!  With my mom and nephew in town along with two other families (parents included - no life guard needed!) we hosted a fun pool party for his 6th birthday!

While pregnant with my first child, I ran across an image of a pool party birthday cake in a parenting magazine and told myself I would do that someday.  After viewing a few more images for inspiration, I created this cake - complete with a blue Jell-O pool, and of course a used #6 candle.  He is the 2nd child, he gets a lot of hand-me-downs.  He didn't care that the piping wasn't perfect and the white frosting didn't entirely cover the red velvet cake - he LOVED it!

For the invitations, I used some of my stockpile of beach balls (we buy them when they are like 25 cents at the end of the season), blew them up, used a Sharpie to add the details, let dry, deflated, and shipped.  I saw the idea on Oriental Trading - but since I only had a few to make, decided to go big or go home instead of purchasing the smaller version.  Our guests had a lot of fun blowing them up and then sharing the details with their kids!  Although, my mom told my son that she usually stuck the party invitations to her refrigerator....he told her she needed to blow it up and play with it!  :)

When I asked my little one, what he wanted to serve at his party, his first response was "Cocktails! For the adults!" - that was a super proud parenting moment for me.  We did serve a signature cocktail - a Harvey Wallbanger - a bit of a story behind that one - but stay tuned for a separate blog post!

He also asked for chicken nuggets and PB&J - we agreed on chicken nuggets, fruit, and veggies.  We love Chick-fil-A for nugget trays and purchased our fruit tray from them as well.  I also served "beach balls" (aka cheese balls) and "pool noodles" (aka Twizzlers Rainbow Candy Twists).

For the kiddos, we served "pool water" (aka blue Kool-Aid) - this was a complete copy/paste from my friend Gretchen who served this last year at her daughter's birthday party.  Yes, that is her awesome dispenser that we use at our Easter parties.  I told her I was going to fill with Powerade - she convinced me that Kool-Aid was the better choice - she was right.  This entire dispenser was consumed by 8 kids.....OK, over the course of about 7 hours...when you have a small party, overstayers are a guarantee...

Lastly, for the party favors, I purchased these flip-flop straws and attached to a set of three cake pops. Each guest received one beach ball cake pop and two decorated cake pops - they LOVED them! Thanks to  Claire's Cute Cakes for making them - they were a HUGE hit!!!

I purchased those adorable gift tags from Lauren Haddox Design on Etsy.  Easy.

A huge thanks to my mom for assembling the party favors!!!

We had a wonderful time celebrating the little guy's 6th birthday!  I hope you are inspired by some of these ideas!