Hey girlfriend!
I LOVE a good birthday party. I just love the excuse to get all my friends together in one place and spend time with my favorite people! I think birthdays are a great excuse to get everyone together and I always try to plan something fun. Last year, I planned for all of my friends to attend a candle making class! It was so fun to do an activity with all my friends and this year I wanted to plan another activity based birthday.
I try to plan activity based parties for a few reasons. It gives everyone a hands-on project and can also allow people to be able to take something home with them as a memory of the day! I feel like I’ve been to a million birthday dinners and I just have loved switching it up by throwing activity based birthday parties instead!
This year I threw a vase painting party! I got the idea from a Tik Tok I saw last summer where vases are repurposed by using water based paint and baking powder. It seemed easy enough and for months I’ve been wanting to do this with my friends! My birthday seemed like the perfect excuse to get everyone to participate.
I decided on a brunch party to really make a day out of it and allow the girls to meet up with the guys after our brunch and painting party to day drink. It worked out perfectly with timing.
I then decided on a theme (because who doesn’t love a good theme) of citrus because it was brunch and I loved the idea of oranges and lemons everywhere! I decided to call it Brunch & Brush and naturally went all out with the theme!
The Decor
I really wanted a balloon arch and found this one on Amazon. There are SO MANY balloon arches on Amazon I was having a really hard time choosing. I decided on this one because I loved the cohesiveness of one color and liked that it came with multiple balloon sizes. I really wanted a few big statement ones.
Setting up the balloon wall wasn’t challenging as much as it was time consuming. We had 5 of us helping and it probably took us an hour. The balloon wall only lasted a few hours with the wall stickies that came with the packaging. To secure it, we ended up using three thumb tacks and string to wrap around the top of the balloon arch to secure it. This worked the best and I would do this again in the future.
For the centerpiece on my island, I really envisioned tons of greenery and piles of citrus. I picked up lots of greenery from Trader Joes and two packs of oranges and one pack of lemons. I just scattered them around over the eucalyptus and greenery leaves and it turned out so cute! This was a really simple way to make a statement piece. Another floral arrangement I had planned to make before I received so many beautiful birthday flowers was clear vases filled with oranges or cut lemons in water with baby’s breath on top. This would have been another affordable way to really make a statement with florals.
The Food & Drink
For food, I decided on a brunch board with waffles, mini pancakes and lots of fruit. We did breakfast tacos, fruit and mini avocado toasts. Everything was so yummy and it was the perfect amount of food! We also did a mimosa bar set up with orange juice, pineapple, and grapefruit juice. Topping for the mimosa bar were pomegranate arils, grapefruit chunks, raspberries and blackberries.
The Vase Painting
To set up the vase painting part of the party, I went to GoodWill and bought 10 vases! When I checked out, my total was around $30! It was such a cheap way to gather the vases and repurpose them. I got paint samples of four different colors from Lowes. Each paint sample was around $5. I got an off white, a beige, pale pink and a rust orange color. Lowes and Home Depot can make paint samples in stores of any color! I also grabbed a few paint tubs to be able to mix the paint with the baking powder.
The ratio of baking powder to paint is one cup of paint and one tablespoon of baking powder! We found different colors needed a different number of coats but the paint dried fairly quickly. Painting the vases with the baking powder gives them this ceramic effect that looks super unique and more expensive. It makes it look like the vase was made by hand. Everyone’s vases turned out so cute and I love that everyone got to take their vase home with them to always remember the day by.
The Details and Final Touches
I really envisioned cutesy signs at each little station for the party. I created a few templates using Canva! I’ve added them here for you to use as well! If you wanted to change the text, upload to Canva and put a white box around the text so you can still keep the background. I had a mimosa bar sign, a brunch & brush sign and a party favor sign.
I made everyone little bags of toffee as a cute party favor! I love toffee. My family makes it every year for the holidays and I made a bunch last week as a birthday treat to myself so I wanted to also give some to my friends! I got the individual twist tie bags from Etsy and made the tags in Canva.
I THINK that about covers all the details! I’ve had a lot of requests the past few days to share all the details including the sign templates. I hope you have the opportunity to throw a fun brunch party and if nothing else can paint your own vase soon! This was such a fun birthday, I love giving my friends an activity based party to get everyone involved. It makes the day super memorable and I love that my friends will all each have a vase to remember the day!
xoxo,
Zoe
