The Party Planning Process: A Behind-the-Scenes Look

I'm so excited to finally get everything done and start planning our party, I've been putting it off for too long! With two families coming together, this is going to be a special day. We have so much to do, but I just want everything to be perfect.

We decided to call the activity "Pump and Splash," which is like a DIY water pump play system. It's perfect for our little one's age and interest, and we can't wait for him to enjoy it. The vintage rugs from our office are going to be layered down as the base for our seating area. They're gorgeous and add a nice touch to the outdoor decor.

I'm still in shock that our baby is turning 2 years old! It feels like just yesterday he was a tiny newborn, and now here we are with two big kids running around. We have so much fun together as a family, and I know this party is going to be an unforgettable celebration.

We set up a "Moon Phase" coffee table display for the birthday boy's special day. Unfortunately, our fountain isn't working at the moment, so we've filled it with faux flowers instead. But it still looks cute and festive! We also created a photo station slash magical moon kid hang zone. Our kids loved playing with old pillow stuffing from an office project, and we brought out Moon's play table to make it feel like a special area just for him.

I'm so excited to reveal the theme of our party – a carnivory theme! I found a company that specializes in vintage caramel apple stands, and they're going to be the centerpiece of our party. We'll also have a taco grill set up, and we're using a Radio Flyer wagon as the drink holder. It's going to be so much fun!

The kids are going to love making their own moon-themed crafts, and we're setting up a DIY station for them to do just that. I'm talking about painting, gluing, and making all sorts of creative messes. It's going to be a blast! We'll have a playlist going, and the whole backyard will be filled with music and laughter.

We've got one last surprise planned – a special birthday song for Moon. I want him to feel like royalty on his special day, so we're singing happy birthday in all its glory. The kids are still buzzing from their playtime activities, and they can't wait to share what's coming next with us. We're going to close out the party with a final farewell gift, and then it'll be time to say goodbye.

The party is over, but the memories will last a lifetime. We had so much fun celebrating Moon's 2nd birthday with our friends and family. It was a day filled with laughter, love, and all sorts of creative DIY projects. I'm so grateful for this community that makes every special occasion feel like a celebration. Thank you to Ship for sponsoring today's episode – we couldn't have done it without you!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou are invited to moon's second birthday party with lots of diy we don't have much time to pull it together but with a little love sweat and hair we are going to make this happen for our baby boy who is oh my gosh you're turning two i can't believe it thankfully our sponsorship is on the ride with us to help it all get done so don your party hats or whatever you want to wear and let's get ready to sing happy birthday to the moon man himself can't wait to decorate there's so much we could make how will it turn out omg we're having a baby birthday buddy years old moon got his first leaf blower you spray the camera whoa hello back on the couch hello oh you're going in for the kiss already fresh lipstick and everything wow anyways welcome to moon's second birthday party this was like in high demand from you guys i mentioned it in like two videos ago like in passing hey would you guys want to see that and literally every other comment on that video was like yes we need to see moon's birthday party for his first birthday party it was in the middle of the pandemic so we didn't really have one we had your parents over and we had a cake for him and that was yeah but it was at the time where we literally didn't know like how to have people over so oh yeah and everyone was mad everyone wore masks and we like took like family photos with them like six feet distant that was his first birthday party so definitely wanted to have a different feeling for this so if you guys have been uh following us on instagram which if you don't please do we post a ton of stuff over there but one of the things that we've always done is we've really celebrated all of moon's in between birthdays oh yeah like his like month birthdays which people who don't have kids or haven't been like around children that closely are like why do you celebrate the months like he's a year and a half he's not like 15 months or whatever but when you are around children and you really watch them grow the months mean so much because they are so different from like 12 months versus 16 or 18 months i mean the changes are exponential so it's worth celebrating the month birthdays oh the moon i know there's mixed feelings out there about you know sharing your children's birthday parties and all that but you guys have been part of our journey you guys are our family you guys saw moon come into this world if you watched the first vlog we are having like a private little like dinner celebration with him on his actual birthday but then this is like the first like birthday party that we're throwing that you guys are gonna come along too and he's gonna be so happy to have both sets of his grandparents there that's a big thing about this party because all of his family's coming in so my parents kate's parents your sister and then we're also having some friends over which like it's so 2021 we invited you guys drum roll please we invited three kids over to our house massive party pandemic baby pandemic parents like unfortunately he didn't have a playgroup they're like the kids of our friends one of them's our neighbor um but thankfully moon is like super chill guy he enjoys hanging out with all kinds of kids so today we are showing you how to make a last minute birthday party cute and fun for a toddler because we planned this party two days before okay so here's the plan we want to have this party in our backyard and we want to use every inch of it so if you remember we have the side of our house you walk down we have this area in front of our garage then we have the pergola area and then we have the grass yard so what i'm thinking we'll do is we'll create a magical entrance area along the walkway where we'll have the food carts and then we'll have balloons over the top of what will be a cozy indoor outdoor kind of feeling seating area for the adults you will round the corner to our pergola area where there will be a fleet diy moon backdrop as well as a seating area for the kids and then the grass area will be for all of our cool fun interactive water play pumps this is melinda ryder she is responsible for my pink her melinda mixes up those colors custom and they're all just like varying shades of pink because we don't just do one color you gotta get the dimension so we are so last minute i actually had books a hair appointment for this week while we simultaneously prepare this birthday party yeah while we prepare and while i fill up balloons all right so projects okay so projects we want to do the moon cut out so like a bigger version of so like yeah photo backdrop and like probably like his name and balloons above or something so making two columns everything we're doing at the party and then everything that we actually need to order which we're going to use shift because shift is like a reliable like same day delivery and this is important that we get like a shift shopper because their shoppers actually communicate with you and really care to get like exactly what you need so yeah like you can message back and forth with your shopper and they are your personal shopper like it's an extension of you in the store and this is so important for me because i'm super specific about the colors of balloons that i want to get so i am going to be communicating with our ship shopper about balloon colors what are we thinking about furniture we should just rent some furniture from our office and bring like the test sofa and green i think so like so like a few chairs like your furniture outside yeah cause that always looks so fun like when you come to a party and there's like rugs down like we have all those vintage rugs still at the office it's a great tip for you guys because like literally if you want to just have like an outdoor party like we're not even having people inside you can just move like your cute furniture outside bring out your rugs you know they'll dust off they'll vacuum off if you get a little bit of outside dirt on them and it will sew up the ante of your party we decided we're getting a taco cart and a caramel apple cart but but i asked the beverage car because i just felt excessive oh so we need to buy drinks so i'll put that on the ship list so yeah what do we want like waters it's been a while since we partied oh they have happy birthday and foil that's cute oh sparkling apple it izzy those are good all right so this balloon garland i'm really excited about i debated on whether or not to use balloons because obviously it is not the most eco-friendly thing however i made sure that we are getting entirely natural rubber latex balloons and obviously just make sure you do use helium just don't do any balloon releases because that is when they go and drop down into the water and it's bad it's been a while since like i took a hey hey okay so the plan should be to find a couch we got a lot of those some accent chairs to make a conversation area we got a lot of those coffee table we got a lot of those rugs we got a lot of those i think we have no issues this is one of our new pieces i mean this is a this is a huge moment we're doing samples of like hard furniture so we did couches beds chairs yeah they're called case case pieces so like these are all going to be for sale hopefully by the like what september okay so these are the stella pieces i'm obsessed so this is the pull which i'm so into it's this feather pull in a beautiful gold you can see it here on the side table okay little sneak peek i love the stella but i feel like we should go a little more saturated with the color palette that i have in mind and do the test let's do this the dark the green oh cool we have a lot of antiques that we need to get rid of like this thing my mom got us that ride she just got was so excited that we had a baby coming she couldn't resist um oh gosh okay so the i think we do the two mustard velvet effie chairs on either side oh yes those are the rugs we want okay so big rug yeah those two rugs big rug no there's three rugs three vintage rugs big rug but anyways yeah we've got a lot of skates so we're gonna get i gotta get my tools let's get started okay let's get them in the car oh we got lots to do baby and everything nice and clean for your party are you excited about your party so these are all the colors of balloons got them through shipped thank you my personal shopper i want it to be like kind of rainbow kind of pastel kind of like a little retro feeling and so filling up all the balloons is key using the balloon inflator because i don't have that much oxygen nor does joey to blow them all up with your mouth so the balloon garland looks like complicated but it's actually so easy you take two balloons and you tie them together to make a pair and then you take two pair and you kind of just like wrap them around each other so these quads are going to be the thing that you're then going to string onto a nice long piece of fishing line just kind of string it through the bunches i just sort of like wrapped it around the middle part of each quad to make sure they're nice and secure and i went kind of like rainbow ombre order with the balloons i also have a few bigger balloons that i'm going to attach using glue dots once the garland is up on the wall so we've been celebrating the month marking them and the way that we've done that is we've taken a picture of him every month in front of the hand-painted moon that i painted while i was pregnant with him i painted that on his nursery wall and it was just a great way for us to have like a size reference for him as we took the pictures over the months so for the photo backdrop we wanted to have something special but also just something to bring in another like scaled item we were like let's take this moon idea and just make it big all right so i'm gonna 100 make this up on the fly so i'm just gonna get a four foot by four foot piece of plywood from the hardware store so i'm just gonna make a really simple stand so that the moon can like be off the ground but also so you don't really see the stand i want to be like sort of set back behind the moon so i'm just putting these supports in the back of the moon and attaching them to these two by fours that i've sort of built into like a triangle stand and then it'll have some feet in the back that i'm just gonna put some sandbags on and number one goal is to just make sure the stand doesn't like fall on a kid so i'm just making sure that the stand is super like heavy duty we're gonna paint a moon on this circle yeah the moon on the playroom while i painted when you were in my tummy and now we're painting this one together looms are actually really easy to paint guys i'm telling you this you're going to be like yeah right but try it it's just like contouring like you if you know how to like stipple brush like bronzer onto your face which i arguably know how to do um i might have put on too much today you'll know how to make a move oh oh whoa what yeah doing that yeah we're making a move so good morning okay it is the day of the party my hair is like too toned because i had melinda doing my highlights but i didn't have time to put my pink on because i just wanted to get everything done we had so much to get done but oh my gosh i'm really really excited for this party i can't believe we're actually having a party i can't believe we're gonna have both of our families together for the first time both sets of grandparents like it's all just so special i woke up just with such a good excited feeling in my heart so yeah let's let's try to pull this together pull the backyard together and you guys are gonna come to the party so we got this really cool activity that's called pump and splash and it's almost like like diy water pump play system i think this is perfect for his age sort of his interest so we have these gorgeous vintage rugs at our office that i've just had for years now and i haven't had the heart to sell or give up and i'm so glad that i haven't yet because they are perfect layered down um as the kind of base to our seating area outdoor red cuddle oh my gosh i can't believe our baby is 2 years old this is going to be a fun party we have so much to do still here come here with dada you're not allowed to see the rest of this though we're gonna surprise you okay so one like center so we are hoping that these their command strips hooks we're hoping that these will work to hold up the balloon garland they will to mount the balloon garland you just use like little removable wall hooks they sell outdoor ones for like christmas lights which are great because they stick to stucco walls which is what we have and then using the glue dots and putting those on a spaces to just kind of attach those bigger balloons just giving it like that much more all right the moon phases coffee table debut at moon's birthday our fountain is currently not working we need a new pump for it so rather than have it running i just brought the box of faux flowers from our office and we're just filling the fountain with the faux flowers and it looks so cute and festive around the corner on our perla that is the photo station slash like magical moon kid hang zone so we use the old pillow stuffing that we had at the office it was a couple left over from the clouds project that we did for the maze lee girls and we brought moon's play table out from his playroom so it's just a little cute kid table for him to sit with his friends what where did you get these like family-owned company that does this yeah do you have to hook it into anything i know this is our oldest kid she's she's impressed so we're using some more of the metallic balloons to stretch across the entrance to the party again using height bringing your eye up making it feel like a 360 experience official guest our first official guest you may recognize her from the mr kate decorates oh yeah that's me knock knock i'm mr k mr hate royalty right here i wanted to like create a carnivory theme so i found this company that has vintage caramel apple stands i just thought that was really fun we're also going to have a like taco grill set up and we're going to use his radio flyer wagon and we're gonna make that like the drink holder we'll put a bunch of ice in there with the drinks and it'll be really cute we're talking about your birthday party you gotta cover your ears so you don't know what we're gonna do put your fingers in yours okay all right let's talk about it quickly so we're going to make the moon we're going to make them we're going to paint it's going to be oh put them back in and then we're going to we're going to put it in make it out of plywood and we're going to put like a standard let's go to moon's birthday party let's go hey emily can you stand up here watch mama's hand wash my hands ready so yeah yeah cool happy birthday to you happy birthday to you happy birthday dear moonlight happy birthday to you there you go about to be closing time we're going to have a second caramel coconut i had six tacos two caramel apples and i'm soaked it's a good party did you have such a fun birthday party yeah yeah yeah was that what was your favorite part um the balloons and the caramels did you like the water toys yeah the water did you have fun with the other kids yeah thank you for coming to moon's party it was such a blast to share this with you guys um let us know in the comments below what your favorite part of the setup was if you guys do any of these diys make sure you tag us on instagram because you will be part of our family over there too huge thanks to ship for sponsoring today's episode make sure to downloadyou are invited to moon's second birthday party with lots of diy we don't have much time to pull it together but with a little love sweat and hair we are going to make this happen for our baby boy who is oh my gosh you're turning two i can't believe it thankfully our sponsorship is on the ride with us to help it all get done so don your party hats or whatever you want to wear and let's get ready to sing happy birthday to the moon man himself can't wait to decorate there's so much we could make how will it turn out omg we're having a baby birthday buddy years old moon got his first leaf blower you spray the camera whoa hello back on the couch hello oh you're going in for the kiss already fresh lipstick and everything wow anyways welcome to moon's second birthday party this was like in high demand from you guys i mentioned it in like two videos ago like in passing hey would you guys want to see that and literally every other comment on that video was like yes we need to see moon's birthday party for his first birthday party it was in the middle of the pandemic so we didn't really have one we had your parents over and we had a cake for him and that was yeah but it was at the time where we literally didn't know like how to have people over so oh yeah and everyone was mad everyone wore masks and we like took like family photos with them like six feet distant that was his first birthday party so definitely wanted to have a different feeling for this so if you guys have been uh following us on instagram which if you don't please do we post a ton of stuff over there but one of the things that we've always done is we've really celebrated all of moon's in between birthdays oh yeah like his like month birthdays which people who don't have kids or haven't been like around children that closely are like why do you celebrate the months like he's a year and a half he's not like 15 months or whatever but when you are around children and you really watch them grow the months mean so much because they are so different from like 12 months versus 16 or 18 months i mean the changes are exponential so it's worth celebrating the month birthdays oh the moon i know there's mixed feelings out there about you know sharing your children's birthday parties and all that but you guys have been part of our journey you guys are our family you guys saw moon come into this world if you watched the first vlog we are having like a private little like dinner celebration with him on his actual birthday but then this is like the first like birthday party that we're throwing that you guys are gonna come along too and he's gonna be so happy to have both sets of his grandparents there that's a big thing about this party because all of his family's coming in so my parents kate's parents your sister and then we're also having some friends over which like it's so 2021 we invited you guys drum roll please we invited three kids over to our house massive party pandemic baby pandemic parents like unfortunately he didn't have a playgroup they're like the kids of our friends one of them's our neighbor um but thankfully moon is like super chill guy he enjoys hanging out with all kinds of kids so today we are showing you how to make a last minute birthday party cute and fun for a toddler because we planned this party two days before okay so here's the plan we want to have this party in our backyard and we want to use every inch of it so if you remember we have the side of our house you walk down we have this area in front of our garage then we have the pergola area and then we have the grass yard so what i'm thinking we'll do is we'll create a magical entrance area along the walkway where we'll have the food carts and then we'll have balloons over the top of what will be a cozy indoor outdoor kind of feeling seating area for the adults you will round the corner to our pergola area where there will be a fleet diy moon backdrop as well as a seating area for the kids and then the grass area will be for all of our cool fun interactive water play pumps this is melinda ryder she is responsible for my pink her melinda mixes up those colors custom and they're all just like varying shades of pink because we don't just do one color you gotta get the dimension so we are so last minute i actually had books a hair appointment for this week while we simultaneously prepare this birthday party yeah while we prepare and while i fill up balloons all right so projects okay so projects we want to do the moon cut out so like a bigger version of so like yeah photo backdrop and like probably like his name and balloons above or something so making two columns everything we're doing at the party and then everything that we actually need to order which we're going to use shift because shift is like a reliable like same day delivery and this is important that we get like a shift shopper because their shoppers actually communicate with you and really care to get like exactly what you need so yeah like you can message back and forth with your shopper and they are your personal shopper like it's an extension of you in the store and this is so important for me because i'm super specific about the colors of balloons that i want to get so i am going to be communicating with our ship shopper about balloon colors what are we thinking about furniture we should just rent some furniture from our office and bring like the test sofa and green i think so like so like a few chairs like your furniture outside yeah cause that always looks so fun like when you come to a party and there's like rugs down like we have all those vintage rugs still at the office it's a great tip for you guys because like literally if you want to just have like an outdoor party like we're not even having people inside you can just move like your cute furniture outside bring out your rugs you know they'll dust off they'll vacuum off if you get a little bit of outside dirt on them and it will sew up the ante of your party we decided we're getting a taco cart and a caramel apple cart but but i asked the beverage car because i just felt excessive oh so we need to buy drinks so i'll put that on the ship list so yeah what do we want like waters it's been a while since we partied oh they have happy birthday and foil that's cute oh sparkling apple it izzy those are good all right so this balloon garland i'm really excited about i debated on whether or not to use balloons because obviously it is not the most eco-friendly thing however i made sure that we are getting entirely natural rubber latex balloons and obviously just make sure you do use helium just don't do any balloon releases because that is when they go and drop down into the water and it's bad it's been a while since like i took a hey hey okay so the plan should be to find a couch we got a lot of those some accent chairs to make a conversation area we got a lot of those coffee table we got a lot of those rugs we got a lot of those i think we have no issues this is one of our new pieces i mean this is a this is a huge moment we're doing samples of like hard furniture so we did couches beds chairs yeah they're called case case pieces so like these are all going to be for sale hopefully by the like what september okay so these are the stella pieces i'm obsessed so this is the pull which i'm so into it's this feather pull in a beautiful gold you can see it here on the side table okay little sneak peek i love the stella but i feel like we should go a little more saturated with the color palette that i have in mind and do the test let's do this the dark the green oh cool we have a lot of antiques that we need to get rid of like this thing my mom got us that ride she just got was so excited that we had a baby coming she couldn't resist um oh gosh okay so the i think we do the two mustard velvet effie chairs on either side oh yes those are the rugs we want okay so big rug yeah those two rugs big rug no there's three rugs three vintage rugs big rug but anyways yeah we've got a lot of skates so we're gonna get i gotta get my tools let's get started okay let's get them in the car oh we got lots to do baby and everything nice and clean for your party are you excited about your party so these are all the colors of balloons got them through shipped thank you my personal shopper i want it to be like kind of rainbow kind of pastel kind of like a little retro feeling and so filling up all the balloons is key using the balloon inflator because i don't have that much oxygen nor does joey to blow them all up with your mouth so the balloon garland looks like complicated but it's actually so easy you take two balloons and you tie them together to make a pair and then you take two pair and you kind of just like wrap them around each other so these quads are going to be the thing that you're then going to string onto a nice long piece of fishing line just kind of string it through the bunches i just sort of like wrapped it around the middle part of each quad to make sure they're nice and secure and i went kind of like rainbow ombre order with the balloons i also have a few bigger balloons that i'm going to attach using glue dots once the garland is up on the wall so we've been celebrating the month marking them and the way that we've done that is we've taken a picture of him every month in front of the hand-painted moon that i painted while i was pregnant with him i painted that on his nursery wall and it was just a great way for us to have like a size reference for him as we took the pictures over the months so for the photo backdrop we wanted to have something special but also just something to bring in another like scaled item we were like let's take this moon idea and just make it big all right so i'm gonna 100 make this up on the fly so i'm just gonna get a four foot by four foot piece of plywood from the hardware store so i'm just gonna make a really simple stand so that the moon can like be off the ground but also so you don't really see the stand i want to be like sort of set back behind the moon so i'm just putting these supports in the back of the moon and attaching them to these two by fours that i've sort of built into like a triangle stand and then it'll have some feet in the back that i'm just gonna put some sandbags on and number one goal is to just make sure the stand doesn't like fall on a kid so i'm just making sure that the stand is super like heavy duty we're gonna paint a moon on this circle yeah the moon on the playroom while i painted when you were in my tummy and now we're painting this one together looms are actually really easy to paint guys i'm telling you this you're going to be like yeah right but try it it's just like contouring like you if you know how to like stipple brush like bronzer onto your face which i arguably know how to do um i might have put on too much today you'll know how to make a move oh oh whoa what yeah doing that yeah we're making a move so good morning okay it is the day of the party my hair is like too toned because i had melinda doing my highlights but i didn't have time to put my pink on because i just wanted to get everything done we had so much to get done but oh my gosh i'm really really excited for this party i can't believe we're actually having a party i can't believe we're gonna have both of our families together for the first time both sets of grandparents like it's all just so special i woke up just with such a good excited feeling in my heart so yeah let's let's try to pull this together pull the backyard together and you guys are gonna come to the party so we got this really cool activity that's called pump and splash and it's almost like like diy water pump play system i think this is perfect for his age sort of his interest so we have these gorgeous vintage rugs at our office that i've just had for years now and i haven't had the heart to sell or give up and i'm so glad that i haven't yet because they are perfect layered down um as the kind of base to our seating area outdoor red cuddle oh my gosh i can't believe our baby is 2 years old this is going to be a fun party we have so much to do still here come here with dada you're not allowed to see the rest of this though we're gonna surprise you okay so one like center so we are hoping that these their command strips hooks we're hoping that these will work to hold up the balloon garland they will to mount the balloon garland you just use like little removable wall hooks they sell outdoor ones for like christmas lights which are great because they stick to stucco walls which is what we have and then using the glue dots and putting those on a spaces to just kind of attach those bigger balloons just giving it like that much more all right the moon phases coffee table debut at moon's birthday our fountain is currently not working we need a new pump for it so rather than have it running i just brought the box of faux flowers from our office and we're just filling the fountain with the faux flowers and it looks so cute and festive around the corner on our perla that is the photo station slash like magical moon kid hang zone so we use the old pillow stuffing that we had at the office it was a couple left over from the clouds project that we did for the maze lee girls and we brought moon's play table out from his playroom so it's just a little cute kid table for him to sit with his friends what where did you get these like family-owned company that does this yeah do you have to hook it into anything i know this is our oldest kid she's she's impressed so we're using some more of the metallic balloons to stretch across the entrance to the party again using height bringing your eye up making it feel like a 360 experience official guest our first official guest you may recognize her from the mr kate decorates oh yeah that's me knock knock i'm mr k mr hate royalty right here i wanted to like create a carnivory theme so i found this company that has vintage caramel apple stands i just thought that was really fun we're also going to have a like taco grill set up and we're going to use his radio flyer wagon and we're gonna make that like the drink holder we'll put a bunch of ice in there with the drinks and it'll be really cute we're talking about your birthday party you gotta cover your ears so you don't know what we're gonna do put your fingers in yours okay all right let's talk about it quickly so we're going to make the moon we're going to make them we're going to paint it's going to be oh put them back in and then we're going to we're going to put it in make it out of plywood and we're going to put like a standard let's go to moon's birthday party let's go hey emily can you stand up here watch mama's hand wash my hands ready so yeah yeah cool happy birthday to you happy birthday to you happy birthday dear moonlight happy birthday to you there you go about to be closing time we're going to have a second caramel coconut i had six tacos two caramel apples and i'm soaked it's a good party did you have such a fun birthday party yeah yeah yeah was that what was your favorite part um the balloons and the caramels did you like the water toys yeah the water did you have fun with the other kids yeah thank you for coming to moon's party it was such a blast to share this with you guys um let us know in the comments below what your favorite part of the setup was if you guys do any of these diys make sure you tag us on instagram because you will be part of our family over there too huge thanks to ship for sponsoring today's episode make sure to download\n"