My baby is four!
Since my son’s birth, I knew that I wanted to do a “HANK-A-PALOOZA” party (like Mitch-A-Palooza” with less Frank the Tank). I dreamed about an outdoor party with live music, a rainbow explosion of things kids love, balloon artists, face painting, kids going nuts and parents enjoying a cold beverage. I knew it would never happen because my son’s birthday is July 6th – hot, humid weather that always conflicts with everyone else’s Independence Day plans.
When your child’s birthday is anywhere around Fourth of July, you’re always going to run into a lot of scheduling issues. For once it actually wasn’t a problem because of Covid. Interestingly, COVID made my dream possible last summer. At the height of the pandemic, we celebrated my son’s fourth birthday outside, with live music, a rainbow explosion, social distancing and minimal contact between families.
First I had to create the perfect Old School poster to really sell the theme. I just use the filter on my phone, I used Canva to create a poster and then printed the sign at FedEx. It was super easy.
I hoped that live music would distract the parents from the fact that it was 100 degrees with 90% humidity. During quarantine, some neighbors wo were sent home from college played live music for the neighborhood on Friday night. I thought what better way to support college kids then to give them this gig. They did great job and they’re really talented kids. My plan worked. I provided live music and beverages and everyone seemed to really enjoy the day.
I ordered slip and slides and sprinklers from Amazon and Target. The only problem was I didn’t realize we only had two hose connections, so I ended up only using two sprinklers. It worked out because I chose the best two: a rainbow and a waterslide with sprinklers. The kids loved it!
We asked our local neighborhood ice cream man/snow cone man to stop by at a specific time and we ended up just buying snow cones for everybody. I got a cake from our local Publix.
To keep things somewhat sanitary we individually wrapped all of the hotdogs and put them on warmers before everybody arrived. We also did chicken fingers in my friend’s air fryer with french fries and they turned out amazing. People were raving about them. (And I finally bought an air fryer after that!)
We had plenty of snacks and juice for the kids and then lots of water because it’s Florida in July. I also got individually package beverages for every adult. Beer and white claw was easy, but I learned that dome of my favorite wines also come in individual containers, so I splurged to make it easy for me to be able to serve non-communal drinks.
Because of coronavirus we wanted to make sure people felt like they could distance so we used our entire yard and driveway for people to spread out and just get away from each other if they wanted to.Everyone was asked to bring their own chairs or blankets to spread out.
We also got a piñata which we thought could be fine with little non-edible treats inside. I’m really weird about giving other kids candy (I try not to). So I always end up buying just little tchotchke gifts.
This is my first time throwing a party at our house. To decorate, we did lots of rainbow and color to make it bright and fun. My husband and I tried to see how big we can make a balloon garland. We got it up to 25 feet of the front of our house. It was an easy way to decorate and add color.
I also did a backdrop by taking craft paper glue dots and crêpe paper cut into little pieces and just haphazardly sticking the crate paper in rows. I realize that the closer I get the rows together, the more rows I do the more full it looks. I only did about five or six rows on a 5‘ x 6‘ piece of paper and it looked great. I added balloons that I got from the grocery store. I also used an old sequin tablecloth that I’ve had for years, I got the “Four Ever Young ” banner and flags from Amazon.
Overall, it was just a really fun evening. It was good clean, and healthy fun. I have linked all of the supplies for your very on palooza below!
