This 5 year old is something special. She decided, after Mom provided many options, that her theme choice this year for her 5th birthday would be a DONUT POOL PARTY, I was scratching my head! Huh? What did one have to do with the other? Well let me tell you, a quick little Pinterest search, and wow this little genius was on to something! There were a ton of great ideas and inspiration for donut parties, not so much pool parties, but definitely donuts galore. So I said, “Ok, Mommy can make this work!” and off I went to create the Donut Pool Party of her dreams.
I couldn’t find an invitation that I thought would suit the theme, and yes, I am old-school, I still mail paper invitations for parties, I just love it, makes it feel so much more exciting to me. I love receiving paper invites, so I scoured Etsy to find digital images I could use for this unique theme, and voila! I designed her Dunk & Donuts Pool Party invitation. I printed them through VistaPrint on Pearlescent cardstock and they are magical.
Next on the list was planning and organizing the rest of the event! We go all out for her birthday parties, it’s pretty much the biggest event we host at our home all year besides Thanksgiving. So there is a lot of planning involved of course. I make my lists (which I’ll be sharing in a separate blog post soon), and start contacting my vendors about 8-12 weeks out.
My next favorite thing to do is to create a Pinterest Board to save a ton of theme inspiration pictures, the one for this party can be found here *Donut Pool Party I created my own list of DIY projects for the party, which included these adorable sprinkle round table covers, full tutorial to come. But the short version is:
1) I purchased tablecloth vinyl at Joanne Fabric and cut out the shapes to resemble icing on a donut; to do this, fold the fabric into 4 squares inside out, draw out your rounded icing edge, cut, and it should create 4 symmetrical sides on your circle table top.
2) I then designed the sprinkles on my Cricut machine using iron-on vinyl in pink, lavender and mint (I purchase my vinyl from Etsy), and used my heat-press to transfer them onto the table covers.
Of course, every pool party isn’t complete without pool floats!! So I made sure to coordinate the pool floats on the invitation with the ones for the pool during the party, this is something I planned when I chose the images for the invitation, I wanted to be sure to use images of pool floats that were available for purchase which included a unicorn, flamingo, swan and a huge donut!!!
Next on the list was making sure there was entertainment, goodies for the kids, and most importantly cake!! My second DIY project was the ice cream truck favor boxes that I personalized with each kid’s name, the template was purchased on Etsy, these were extremely time consuming to make, and required participation from my family, so if you have helping hands, then I recommend adding these festive boxes to your party. Third DIY project was painting a Thread Rack purchased at JoAnne Fabric to hold small powdered donuts for the Dessert table. I also made sure to set up a bar cart outside with sunblock, bug spray, and had sunglasses for all the kids as another party favor. Also be sure to have some spare pool towels as oftentimes guest forget theirs even though I included a reminder in the invitation. Here are a few more pictures of our Cake Table, Favor Stations, and Kids’ Seating area with donut themed coloring activity for a break from the pool. For entertainment we had a water slide, and my daughter’s favorite entertainer, Ziggy the Clown.
The cake table was another favorite DIY project. I have an Ikea table that I save for parties, I like that it’s versatile because of its neutral color palette. For this party I decided to incorporate the donut sprinkle theme and purchased sprinkle vinyl stickers from Amazon in the colors of the party, mint, lavender, and pink!! Here’s how it turned out!
DIY Alert! I needed a clever way to display the donuts on the dessert table so I purchased small cake stands and decided to create Cloche’s or covers for the donuts. It would have to be tall enough to hold a stack of donuts straight, so I purchased these clear plastic candy jars from Party City, and knobs from Home Depot. I painted the wooden knobs, and glued them to the bottom of each candy jar, and here you go! No stale donut and it protected them from bugs. I also purchased the #5 on the dessert table and painted the base in yellow, and added the white icing and matching sprinkles.
The party was a success!!! This little 5 year old had a blast with all her friends in the pool, water slide, eating donuts while Ziggy the Clown cracked them up, and having everyone sing her Happy Birthday and celebrate with her was just beyond what she imagined. Scroll through the gallery of photos to see the results of all of the hard work! Enjoy!
Vendors List: Cake by @PattyCakes ; Party Rental, Backdrop and Balloon Columns by @soireepartyrentals ; Backdrop Image by LittleMagicPrints ; Favor Table printables by PrintPartyRepeat ; Pom Pom Garland by FancyFlamingoDesign ; Custom Donut Pinata by PinatasRoco ; Favor Headband Supplies by PrettyinPinkSupply ; Birthday Hat by LittleBlueOlive ; Dessert Sprinkles by Sweetapolita ; Photography by MonicaBlancoPhotography
