Hi, guys. Welcome back to my channel and to another video. Today, I'm going to be sharing
with you the at-home party prep that we did for my son Jackson's birthday. He recently
turned four years old so we had a little party for him at home. We don't normally do parties
like this at home, for their birthdays I tend to hire out a space at a self-play and invite
friends and family to that, but because we couldn't do that this year due to the pandemic,
I just thought if we're going to have a home party with very few friends that then I wanted
to make it as special as I possibly could. I'm going to show you everything that we did
today. Everything has been DIYed as well. We made the cakes ourselves, We filled up
the piñata. I'm going to show you the party bags that we did, the decor. Also, we DIYed
an amazing balloon arch, I'm so pleased with how it turned out. I'll just talk you through
everything that we did. The party took place on a Saturday so a lot
of the prep we did the Friday night before, once Jackson was asleep in bed. Then I did
also do some prep on the Saturday morning because the party wasn't until the afternoon.
So yes, I hope you really enjoy this video. I know it's a slightly different one for me,
but hopefully it'll give you some ideas and inspiration if you are also having an at-home
party. I must also stress that this party happened before at the rule of six came in,
in the UK. We actually had this planned for the Saturday and then the rule of six started
on the Monday after. We're pleased that we managed to get in this little party for him.
Caleb's birthday is actually in about six weeks time so I'm really hoping things will
change by then, because as a family of five, we could invite one person. But anyway, with
all that said, let's get into the video. The night before the party, we started prep
on this balloon arch because we thought it would take the most time. I actually found
a kit on Amazon for just £11.99 and it came with everything that we needed to make our
own DIY balloon arch. It came with 117 balloons, and I went for a blue one that because Jackson
really wanted a Sonic birthday. Then it also came with the tape that you need and the little
glue dots. It didn't come with the balloon pumps, but we actually already had two balloon
pumps at home. This is the string that you thread the balloons
onto. As the boys and Matt were pumping up the balloons, I was threading the bottom of
the balloons through this clear tape that has lots of holes in it. As you can see, it
was pretty simple to do. You just pull that through and then it just stays on. I was just
adding them as soon as they were blowing them up, about three or four holes apart. It was
pretty simple and effective. It was time consuming because you do actually have to blow up the
balloons, so I would definitely start the night before. But there were so many different
colors of arches you can get on Amazon so if you want something like this, you could
definitely save money by doing it yourself. Now, while Matt keeps blowing up the balloons,
the boys and I are going to fill up this pinata. I found it on Amazon. It's just a big number
four and I thought the kids would love this. We've never had one before, but I promised
the boys that we would fill it up together before they went up to bed. I literally just
want to Poundland to get some stuff to put inside it. I tried to not go too crazy on
the hard sweets because I know sometimes I don't appreciate that or mums don't appreciate
that when you just fill up their kids with sugary, sugary sweets, so I tried to get a
little bit of chocolate, I tried to get some biscuits and then some marshmallows. Yeah,
we did try to limit the kids on the day when they did actually smash the pinata, which
I shall show you later on in this video. But yes, we're just looking at all of the stuff
that we got and then we're literally just going to stick it into the piñata. There
is a little hole there. So yeah, really simple to do.
This is the best chocolate. This is going to be the best pinata ever.
Aw. How appropriate that we're also watching Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory on the TV while we were doing this. Then that's all filled
and I'm also adding the confetti that it came with.
Next up, I'm going to be doing a pass the parcel. As he's got a Sonic birthday, I saw
this little stretch Sonic in the shops and thought that that would be perfect. I'm going
to put Sonic in to the middle layer and I'm actually going to wrap that one in red so
that I know that that is the one that I want to land on Jackson, that is the final, big
present. Once that's all done, I'm going to wrap it up again with a different colored
gift wrapping paper. In between each layer, I will be adding as little Minion chocolate,
which you can see on the right there, so that every child that opens up a layer gets a chocolate
so it's like a little gift for them. On the day they were absolutely thrilled to get that
little chocolate inside their layer. I'm just adding that in, wrapping it up again, and
then I'm basically going to repeat that. I think I did about eight layers in total so
that every child would get a little treat. I'm obviously changing the color each time
so that we know. So yes, this actually went down so well. Especially
at one point in the party, the kids were getting really boisterous on the bouncy castle so
it was a great way to calm them down, to get them to all sit in a little circle. We played
the music and then they could play pass the parcel. They all loved it and it just really
did calm all the children down. I also wanted to show you how I did his party
bags or goody bags for when children were leaving. I picked these ones up in Wilkinsons,
I just got dinosaur ones and unicorn ones. Then I got most of the contents just from
Poundland. I picked up some packs of cards, some little bubbles, some little recorders,
and then I've got those Minion chocolates as well and some Haribo. So yeah, I'm just
going to put names on each one. There was quite a variety of ages because obviously
Fraser is nine, Caleb's six, and Jackson is three, and then their cousins are different
ages, so I did really want to get the age-appropriate things in there. Because it was such a small
party, it was easy enough to just write their names onto the bags and then I knew who was
getting what. I did packs of cards for the two older children, each one got a Haribo
and a chocolate. They all got bubbles, which they loved. They all got a little recorder
and a little sticky man. Then I'll show you later, but we made cupcakes
and then I also put a cupcake in each one as they left. But yeah, I think these are
just really exciting and also a really good way to calm the meltdowns. At the end of the
party when it's time to go and they don't want to go, you can always say, "Well, you
will get your party bag," and then they're happy to go.
Now that that's done, it is back to the balloon arch. While I've been doing those things,
Matt has blown all of these balloons up so now I just need to thread them onto the string.
I'm going to quickly do that and then that's all the prep I'm going to do for tonight.
Now it's the next day. I know I'm wearing the same jumper, but it was clean so don't
judge me. But today we're going to start out the day by making his birthday cake. We're
completely cheating. I've just got two mixes, they're Betty Crocker Devil's food chocolate
cakes. I thought keep it really simple. We've had some amazing cakes in the past for birthdays,
but this year just felt a bit different with having such a small party, I thought we could
just make a little cake and some cupcakes ourselves. The boys loved helping out with
this. I did do my hack of making the boxed cake mix tastes a little bit better, so we
swapped out the water for milk and we used five eggs instead of three eggs.
Yeah, so we're mixing up each cake mix in a separate bowl and then we're going to make
one cake and then some cupcakes as well. I'm just going to mix it up with my electric mixer
and then stick that into the oven, and then also tidy up
the kitchen. Now, back to the balloon arch that we started
making last night. As you saw, I put all of the big balloons onto the string that it came
with. Now I wanted to hang it around this door. With Matt's help, he put these little
nails into the wall. We do have the stick-on hooks, but I was really scared that it was
going to pull the paint off so I thought that this would be better. It worked pretty well.
We just attached the little clear string, because it has holes in it, we attach some
of the holes to the little nails. Then it also came with these little glue dots, there
was a big, long string of them. I don't know if I should have been using it the whole time,
but I didn't feel like I needed it, but once the balloon arch was actually up then I used
the little glue dots to put smaller balloons in places.
There were a few silver balloons in this packet and I thought that that was perfect because
it's Sonic colors, again. I was just sticking the glue dots onto the smaller balloons and
then looking at the arch and seeing where there were spaces that needed to be filled.
I'm literally just going to go around and do that until I'm happy with how it looks.
Now, back to the cakes. While I was doing the balloon arch, the cakes actually finished
cooking and then they were cooling. Now, I decided to make my own icing for some reason.
I thought how hard can it be? I did a whole thing of butter and then I think it was three
cups of icing sugar, I just got a recipe online, added some vanilla extract, and then we have
this really bright blue food coloring. I'm just going to mix it up, I thought Sonic theme.
Honestly, I've never made icing before. I'm not much of a baker, but I think it turned
out okay. Then I don't know why I stopped making the icing and now I'm doing the table,
maybe the cakes weren't completely cooled enough, but I'm just going to put this little
Sonic tablecloth out. Again, I just ordered a pack of Sonic decorations on Amazon. I feel
like he chose the most awkward theme to his party, because it was a really hard to find
Sonic-themed stuff. But anyway, back to the cakes. Now I'm going
to ice the cupcakes and then the big cakes. I found these little cupcake toppers that
were a Sonic theme, so I'm just going to stick them on top of each cupcake. Then I'm just
sticking it onto my little cake stands so that I can then cover the cupcakes so that
they won't go stale or there won't be any flies or anything like that. Then yeah, I'm
going to tackle the bigger cake. Once the cake was all done, I just finished
setting up the table by putting some drinks and crisps out and nibbles, but I didn't go
too crazy because it was just a two-hour party. I also put the party bags by the front door.
Then this was the final setup of the table area, I'm so pleased with how the balloons
look. We also hired this Perspex four for his actual birthday and she let me keep it
until the party. I also put out a little Sonic banner outside. We actually hired this bouncy
castle for the day, I think it was £75 pounds to hire for the day and it really did make
it. I felt like it gave the kids something to do and focus on and they really loved it.
He's looking.
They also enjoyed the pass the parcel and the piñata as well. Fraser was the one who
actually smashed it open in the end. But yeah, overall, it was a great day and Jackson had
such a good time. He keeps talking about how much he loved his birthday party and when
is it his birthday again. But yeah, this is some footage I took once they smashed the
pinata open. But anyway, thank you so much for watching.
I hope you really enjoyed this video, and I'll see you on the next one. Bye, guys.