Anabelle’s Endless Summer Surf Party

I’m super excit­ed to share the details of my daugh­ter’s End­less Sum­mer surf par­ty for her 7th make-up/un­birth­day! Ever since Anabelle was born, we’ve been throw­ing big par­ties when com­mem­o­rat­ing her spe­cial day. The cel­e­bra­tions, as well as my par­ty plan­ning skills, have evolved and devel­oped through­out the years, from her very first Poo­dle in Paris par­ty to her 4th Find­ing Nev­er­land birth­day to last year’s Vin­tage Hawai­ian Luau. Due to work com­mit­ments and all the crazi­ness from the release of my book in the same month as her birth­day this year, I gave her the option of cel­e­brat­ing at Dis­ney­land and she jumped at this chance! So, we head­ed to the Hap­pi­est Place on Earth and cel­e­brat­ed the big SEVEN with family.

Fast for­ward a few months to July and with the book pro­mo­tion slow­ing down and Sum­mer vaca­tion upon us, we were dis­cussing invit­ing friends over for a pool par­ty. Anabelle and I decid­ed it would fun to trans­form the get-togeth­er into a make-up birth­day, or rather, UN-birth­day! It usu­al­ly isn’t quite warm enough to swim in the month of April, so this would pro­vide the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to take advan­tage of the hot Vegas weath­er and the amaz­ing pool at our com­plex. Since we had a luau last year, I want­ed to stay away from this theme that is often asso­ci­at­ed with pool par­ties. Because my hus­band and his fam­i­ly are big surfers, I thought a GIRLY SURF THEME would be ide­al! And with the ongo­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of the neon trend, I knew I want­ed to make this Sum­mer­time par­ty super bright and fun!

I began with design­ing the invi­ta­tion and found the exact clip art designs I want­ed in Maree Tru­elove’s Etsy shop. The vivid col­ors and fem­i­nine details of the surf­board designs were exact­ly what I envi­sioned! I drew inspi­ra­tion from the poster of the clas­sic surf film, End­less Sum­mer, as well as icon­ic 1980’s beach looks. I also used the clip art designs to cre­ate addi­tion­al signs and tags through­out the par­ty details.

To wel­come the lit­tle surfers to our par­ty, I envi­sioned mak­ing a chalk­board surf­board with live­ly neon writ­ing. I have every inten­tion of cut­ting out a surf­board out of a foam core board for this project, but as I was shop­ping at my local Tar­get store and they were replac­ing all their Sum­mer mar­ket­ing prod­ucts, I noticed a card­board surf­board that was going to be thrown away. I asked if I could have it and voilá! I pur­chased some chalk­board paint at Jo-Ann Fab­ric and Craft Stores to cov­er the entire­ty of the card­board. When I first paint­ed it, I was anx­ious because my brush was leav­ing streaks, but when it dried, I was hap­py that it did com­plete­ly smooth­ly. After I fin­ished paint­ing it, I saw this great post from my friend, Court­ney at Piz­zazzerie about chalk­board paint ideas, includ­ing the use of chalk­board spray paint, which I did­n’t even know existed!

For the design on the surf­board, I made sure to first sketch it out on paper so that I would have an idea of spac­ing, both hor­i­zon­tal­ly and ver­ti­cal­ly. I also mir­rored the font I uti­lized on the invite and par­ty goods by typ­ing some of the words out on the com­put­er. When I was ready to trans­fer my design to the surf­board, I did the entire thing in pen­cil first to allow for errors, then retraced every­thing with neon chalk mark­ers. I used both reg­u­lar and fine point mark­ers, which wrote very eas­i­ly and because they were chalk, I was able to cor­rect any mis­takes with the mere use of a wet paper tow­el!  I was real­ly hap­py with the end result.

Next was the food table. I decid­ed to com­bine both the food and desserts all on one dis­play due to the num­ber of guests attend­ing and my attempt to lim­it the food offer­ing. Why lim­it it, you ask? Well, this is the first time I’ve had to throw a par­ty in 108° heat, so I real­ly want­ed to invest in easy food that every­one would enjoy {despite wet fin­gers} and that would­n’t melt with­in min­utes of being set out! You guys, it was seri­ous­ly HOT. While tak­ing pic­tures, I had to take a minute to cool off in the pool because I was real­ly feel­in’ the heat!

Due to the bright, col­or­ful neon trend, it was super sim­ple to find match­ing par­ty decor in hot pinks, teals, yel­lows and accent col­ors like orange and lime green. From items found at Tar­get, like the Oh Joy! col­lec­tion pic­nic bas­ket and cups and the Char-Broil pink bbq {seri­ous­ly, one of my favorite things EVER}, to col­or­ful food bas­kets, uten­sils and pails from the 99¢ Only Store, to beach ball paper lanterns from Ori­en­tal Trad­ing Com­pa­ny and last, but cer­tain­ly not least, hot pink flamin­gos, I was eas­i­ly able to coor­di­nate the table decor at a super afford­able price! Scroll down for some high­lights of the table and decor.

Decor and Crafts Highlights:

♥ Surf bus

I pur­chased an adorable met­al beach bus from Cost Plus World Mar­ket that was orig­i­nal­ly red, so I paint­ed over it with DecoArt Patio Paint in aza­lea to match back to the par­ty colors.

♥ Beach huts

I paint­ed unfin­ished wood bird­hous­es, then attached print­ed dig­i­tal col­ored wood paper that pur­chased from the lagar tixa shop on Etsy with Mod Podge to the front of each one to resem­ble fun beach surf huts.

♥ Col­or­ful pineapples

I spray-paint­ed a cou­ple of pineap­ples with a bright col­or on the bot­tom and gold metal­lic on the leafy crown to match the col­or palette and make them pop.

♥ Food labels

I print­ed and cut out labels for the food on arrows in a vari­ety of bright col­ors, then glued them to lol­lipop sticks. Small neon pails were filled with crushed gra­ham crack­er and the signs were insert­ed inside.

Sweets & Food Highlights:

♥ Fon­dant toppers

For the cen­ter­piece of the cup­cake tow­er, I mod­eled a lit­tle surfer girl out of fon­dant that sat on the top tier. The cup­cake top­pers con­sist­ed of beach balls, col­or­ful flip flops, pop­si­cles, pool float­ies, sun­glass­es and a hang loose hand sign!

♥ Surf­board cookies

Absolute­ly AH-MAZING surf­board cook­ies were dec­o­rat­ed by my incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed friend, Sandy from Fire­fly Con­fec­tions, match­ing back to the dig­i­tal designs. I uti­lized them through­out the table to embell­ish the surf bus and beach huts, food label pails and saved one on which the surfer girl could sit. And they were deli­cious to boot! Oh, and as if gor­geous cook­ies was enough, Sandy’s book Arti­san Caramels is sched­uled to be released in the Fall of 2014!

♥ Pineap­ple can­dy kabobs

When brows­ing my Insta­gram feed, I caught a glimpse of these mar­velous pineap­ple kabobs by Sweets Indeed and I com­ment­ed to Marie how I wished I had seen them soon­er because they would be just per­fect for our par­ty. Next thing I know, these works of art are being shipped to me. Are they not THE cutest things you have ever seen?! I can­not get over Marie’s artistry with can­dy and I can attest that both she and her prod­uct are so, so sweet indeed!

♥ Water­mel­on krispies treat pops

What says Sum­mer more than water­mel­on?! As soon as I saw the adorable water­mel­on krispies treat pops that my friend, Glo­ry from Glo­ri­ous Treats made, I knew they had to make an appear­ance at our surf par­ty! We {yes, it was a team effort by myself, the hub­bie and the kid­do!} fol­lowed Glo­ry’s super sim­ple instruc­tions and made some large slices, as well as small­er ones that we pack­aged up and gave away as favors and they were a hit!

♥ Fish & chips

My dear friend, Tiffany, threw a pre­cious Under the Sea par­ty for her son recent­ly, which my fam­i­ly has the plea­sure of attend­ing. She had so many charm­ing details, includ­ing a bowl of fish & chips,  con­sist­ing of pota­to chips and gold­fish crack­ers! We thought it was so cute that we had to have it, too!

Refresh­ment Highlights:

♥ Cas­cade Ice zero calo­rie fla­vored waters

I had the plea­sure of meet­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Cas­cade Ice when I attend­ed the BlogHer Food Con­fer­ence back in May. After taste-test­ing sev­er­al of their 20+ fresh fla­vors, I fell in love and knew my fam­i­ly and friends would, too! I knew this pool par­ty would be the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to intro­duce them to my new find. Cas­cade Ice sent me a vari­ety of thirst-quench­ing  fla­vored waters with a trop­i­cal twist, includ­ing Coconut, Orange Man­go, Pink Grape­fruit, as well as some of their newest fla­vors, such as Coconut Man­go and Coconut Pineap­ple! Ummm… yum! Not only were they incred­i­bly refresh­ing on the 108° day, but also guilt-free since they con­tain zero calo­ries and sug­ars. Stay tuned for more on Cas­cade Ice, includ­ing a fab GIVEAWAY!

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, I save the favors to be hand­ed out at as the guests leave, but I decid­ed to put them all out at the begin­ning of the par­ty to allow all the surfer dudes and dudettes to enjoy them dur­ing the par­ty. From swim gog­gles to flip flops to pool toys, I uti­lized the lemon­ade stand I pur­chased from Jo-Ann Fab­ric and Craft Stores, as well as a vari­ety of plas­tic bas­kets, to hold all the goodies.

Activ­i­ties and Favors Highlights:

♥ Sun­screen & pop­si­cle fan station

Just like we did at last year’s luau, we had plen­ty of sun­screen to offer our guests, as the scorch­ing Vegas sun can be unre­lent­ing! In addi­tion, I enlarged and print­ed out bright­ly col­ored dig­i­tal pop­si­cles that I pur­chased from Side­tracked Artist’s Etsy shop, then glued jum­bo wood­en sticks to them to cre­ate fans.

♥ Pho­to booth props

I just adore the incred­i­bly fun and cre­ative pho­to booth props from Paper & Cake, so I knew we had to include them in our surf par­ty! We’ve used them sev­er­al times in the past, such as the 80’s themed props for my Grow­ing Up 80’s par­ty, so I was thrilled when I found the Beach Par­ty props. I print­ed and cut them out, glued wood­en skew­ers to them, then dis­played them inside a beach pail with foam inside to hold them up nicely.

♥ Sponge balls

I saw a tuto­r­i­al from One Charm­ing Par­ty to make cute water sponge balls, so I pur­chased some low-cost sponges from the 99¢ Only Store to re-cre­ate them. Not only were they super cute dec­o­ra­tions, they pro­vid­ed a fun activ­i­ty for the kids!

♥ Flip flops

For the girls attend­ing the par­ty, we found col­or­ful flip flops and dressed them up by tying sev­er­al neon rib­bons around the top of the straps, pro­vid­ing a burst of col­or and fun!

The weath­er was per­fect, the water was cool and the com­pa­ny was absolute­ly per­fect. We all had so much fun play­ing, eat­ing and cel­e­brat­ing, we were so glad the Sum­mer seemed endless!

Palm trees, ocean breeze, salty air, sun kissed hair…

that end­less summer…

take me there.

Merci Beaucoup!

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