baby shark themed party

Have you ever tried to make a balloon banner? You know, the fancy pinterest-perfect ones? This baby shark themed birthday party was the first time I tried to make one; key word tried. They are incredibly difficult to make. Even with a balloon arch decorating strip that provides a template to theoretically make the process easier, it's really hard and takes a long, long time. Needless to say, I think I will be ordering pre-made ones in the future.

I ordered an electric balloon pump to expedite the inflating process- blowing up over 100 balloons is a challenge in and of itself. Given the baby shark theme, I went with shades of blue and silver for the balloons and general decor. To add further variety to the balloon banner, we inflated the balloons in varying sizes.

 

We placed one of the balloon banners along a bannister. Below the banner, we added more balloons spelling the birthday kid's name and "shark" as found here. Lastly, we cut segments of foil curtains and added them to the staircase.

To make things easier, I purchased a baby shark themed decor pack online. This came with a good amount of things that we used mostly for the photo backdrop where the cake and pictures would be. I added a 12 month photo banner for a personal touch. The balloon banner was placed on top, along with fabric and foil curtains on a metal adjustable backdrop stand.

Totally worth staying up until 2 AM for (really, I'm not being sarcastic).

baby shark themed party

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

mayoon part 2: constructing a backdrop

Part two of the mayoon decorations will be all about the backdrop for where I was sitting, and how we constructed it!

I wanted something with fabric hanging in the backdrop similar to the engagement decorations, but the challenge was finding something to hang the fabric from. For the engagement, the fireplace mantel served that purpose. For the mayoon, I decided to create something with two poles placed vertically on the side and a horizontal pole placed on top. The top pole would be something from which I could hang the fabric, and the side poles would provide support and stability. Fittingly, my engineer dad and architect stepmom gave me this idea.

Instead of making a trip out to buy some PVC pipes, I found some large bamboo plant stakes in my garage that seemed perfect for the job. Because they were bamboo, they weren't perfectly straight, but the fabric covered the imperfections. I used heavy duty masking tape to tape the poles together to create a pi-shaped (π) frame. To save my newly constructed frame from toppling over, I used masking tape to tape the lower parts of the side poles to my TV stand. Before adding the fabric to the frame, I basically had two bamboo poles taped to both sides of the TV stand, with a horizontal bamboo pole on top. The TV was of course on the TV stand, but it didn't matter because the fabric would soon be covering it.

Next was hanging the fabric. I bought 2 cuts of shiny green fabric and taped the fabric over the horizontal pole on the top. This was pretty simple and having the green (versus a lighter color like gold or silver) hid the shadow of the TV from underneath the fabric. I had leftover gold fabric from the engagement decor, which I attached with masking tape to the top of the curtains (behind the frame/backdrop). This way, it hid some of the curtains in the back and added another layer of decor.

Adding the rest of the touches was easy. I added some red tulle to the ends and hung a longer piece of it down the middle, and added some petal garland pieces to the end. I added a flower garland with yellow flowers to provide some contrast against the green, and to disguise the slight crookedness of the bamboo. 

And that was it!

Here's an action shot from later that night with my sister, me, and my friend Saleha:

mayoon part 2: constructing a backdrop

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

mayoon part 1: tulle, petals, and lights

After a long hiatus (during which I found out where I'm going for residency for the next 4 years and got married all within a week), I'm back and well-rested, finally!

This post features the decorations me & my sister did for my mayoon. In case you don't know what a mayoon is, here is a great explanation. If you don't feel like reading the explanation, then it's basically this: a girl's party consisting of music + dancing + singing + food. Although decorating for it was a huge project, we started weeks in advance of the event so it wouldn't completely exhaust us. Then again, that only gave me more time to go really hardcore with the decor- I just couldn't help it. Since it's so much, I will be dividing this event into two posts. This post will feature the tulle + flower petals, and the next post will talk about how we built the "stage"/backdrop behind the bench. So without further ado, let's get into it!

The doll is a souvenir my parents got from a trip to Pakistan years ago. I thought she would make for a cute greeter to the party! At the front door was a cart with the doll, chocolate, a floral S that I made (with the instructions here), and baby khussay (shoes).

The color scheme is usually vivid and bright colors with mostly green and yellow.

Just like tulle was a huge theme for my engagement decor, we introduce green tulle, with yellow and red, for this event. I originally wanted a tent-like draping of the tulle for my engagement decor, but we opted for draping along the wall. So for this event, I seized my chance and went for the tent look. We got about 40 yards of yellow tulle and 40 yards of green tulle (with a 50% off coupon, this comes out to about $17 for the yellow and green tulle, respectively!). We grabbed pushpins and a ladder, and began doing back and forth between the outer edge of the room's ceiling and the center of the room right about the light fixture. We alternated between yellow and green for a more fun look.



 Lastly, my sister had the brilliant idea of adding loose fabric petals on top of the yellow tulle, which contrasted beautifully. I knew creativity ran in the family!

Next was the continuing theme of the rose petal garland. I had some leftovers from the engagement decor, so this was extra that I found space for. We outlined the tulle in the room with the garland to add some red.

The banisters already had yellow tulle and floral garlands from the engagement decor, so we added multicolor Christmas lights. Shout out to the Merrifields for letting us borrow a strand last minute when our lights blew out the day of the event!

Lastly, we added white sheets to the floor for seating/dancing and borrowed pillows and a dhol (drum) from family friends because, I mean, a dhol is kind of important for a mayoon- what's a party without drums?

Of course, a photo from later that night:

I'll be posting part two next!

mayoon part 1: tulle, petals, and lights

Friday, April 15, 2016

other small DIY details

The last of the engagement party DIY details are thrown into this post. These were small things I was able to do pretty quickly. The picture above was a decorative tray of fresh rose petals with tealights- the smell was amazing. I placed the tray on a coffee table in the family room area.

The other place I had fresh flowers was the centerpiece on the mantle above the fireplace. While the arrangement was beautiful, the vase/container it came in was an ugly yellow. Thankfully, I had some metallic gold spray paint that changed things significantly. 

We bought this spool of rhinestone ribbon that we used as a border around a large mirror above my fireplace. The ribbon was on sale at Hobby Lobby ($5 for 15 feet). We used masking tape to hold up the ends.

Lastly, we used the remaining gold tulle to wrap around the banisters. We then used straight pins to secure rose garlands onto the tulle. It added a nice look in the entryway when guests first walked into our home.

other small DIY details

Saturday, November 21, 2015

tulle

Part two of the house decorations for my engagement party involved a lot of tulle. The great thing about tulle is how cheap it is for the amount you can get (less than $2/yard). And if done right, it can look pretty awesome. We stuck to gold and red tulle and bought about 40 yards of each color. We hung it around the family room with red bows in between each wave of gold tulle. Hanging it up around the room really filled up the room. We had some leftovers which we ended up wrapping around the banisters. 

The individual bows themselves were three loops of fabric tied up with pipe cleaners that were fluffed up. We first hung up the gold tulle and then added the bows on top.

The hardest part was probably putting it all up. We had to move around all the surrounding furniture and bring in a ladder. However, I think the end product was totally worth it.

I'll be posting a part three of other tiny DIYs from the event soon!

tulle

Sunday, November 15, 2015

flower petals garland

Big news- I got engaged this weekend! 

In the Pakistani culture, we often like to celebrate the momentous event with family and close friends at home. This involves plenty of pictures, sweets, and gifts. One of my favorite parts of all of it, of course, is getting to decorate the house and DIY anything and everything I can. I wanted to document the huge DIY project a family friend and I took upon ourselves to complete here. Almost all of it was very simple- between interviews and trying to coordinate a million other details, I didn't have time to create anything that would be too complicated or time consuming (as much as I wanted to!). I stuck to a few basics (glittery stuff, flowers, candles) with a gold and red theme. I've divided it up into multiple posts focusing on the major decorations we DIY'ed. 

 I think it turned out pretty darn well!

This was the main sitting area for my fiance and me, so we wanted it to be the focal point of all the decor. The decoration piece I loved the most was the flower petals garland hanging above.

Flowers had to be somewhere in the mix. While the idea of creating garlands with fresh flower petals seemed beautiful, it would have gotten really pricey really quickly. Additionally, we would have to get the flowers last minute so they would stay fresh and it all seemed like too much of a hassle. Instead, I bought a bunch of red silk flowers (carnations, roses, pretty much anything red with big enough petals) with a few gold glittery ones. I cut up all of the flowers so I had a bunch of loose petals that I then sewed together through the sewing machine with a red thread. So simple. I ended up sewing over 150 ft. of this stuff!

The first place I hung the petals was over the mantle. The gold fabric underneath was from a craft store that provided a good contrast against the red petals. Using masking tape, we taped each individual garland at the top and then placed red fabric on top of the mantle to cover up the masking tape.

Next was creating an overhead piece with the petals. I used masking tape to tape the garland at the central area, and used pushpins on the other end. This part was definitely my favorite. To then cover up the masking tape, we create three flower puffs out of gold tulle and pinned them up.

Lastly, to my surprise, we still had leftover petals. I hung the remainder up in the kitchen above the kitchen table (the kitchen table light fixture happened to have the perfect coordinating colors!), and added some to a bare wall in the family room sitting area. 

I'll be adding more about how I used tulle and other small DIYs from the event later this week!

flower petals garland

Monday, November 9, 2015

DIY paper confetti garland

I've had this easy DIY pinned on my pintrest board for over a year now. It's easy because it's just two steps, but I've been putting it off because it requires using a sewing machine, and until a few weeks ago, I didn't know how to use one!

1. Cut out a bunch of circles (or shape of your desire) in cardstock or scrapbook paper. I used a mix of both papers, and I used a 1.5" circle shape cutter I got from a craft store

2. Sew cut-outs in a straight line with a small gap in between each cut-out. I tried to keep the sewing order random

And that's it! I went a little crazy and made a lot since they were so quick! Oops?

 

DIY paper confetti garland

Thursday, May 28, 2015