I had the honor of styling a vintage 3rd birthday for my friend’s son yesterday. I love an all American Baseball theme and always wanted to style one. My kids are not yet into baseball, but what I love about styling parties is that I can use my creativity outside of the 3 birthdays a year that I throw for my kids.
I love when I have creative reign. My friend Marissa has always been super low key and trusted my vision for this party, and I am completely thankful for that. I have been obsessed with the balloon garland lately because its both stylish and fun and completely appropriate for kids’ birthdays. This party was at a children’s event place, so we had 15 minutes to set up- yikes! So I thought of something that can be pre made with minimal loading and set up. I saw online a happy face balloon mosaic and thought, I can totally turn that into a baseball! Completely pre-made and just set it on a crate for the back drop. Here’s how it turned out:
To make that balloon mosaic, I tried to keep it as simple as possible. Here’s how:
- I had a big box from all my online ordering, and I just free handed a circle and cut it out. No fancy projector or anything like that because I knew that I can just round it out later with mini balloons.
- I, then, spray painted the box white since it was a brown box and let it dry.
- I, then blew up regular size balloons. I used 12 of them for this particular project. I just eyeballed where I wanted it, and just cut an “x” out with a box cutter or exacto knife, pushed the tip of the tied balloon threw the hole and taped it from the backside. I did this for all the regular size balloons, loosely filling the circle up
- Then, I filled in the gaps and “rounded out” my imperfect circle with mini balloons, attaching them with glue dots-best invention EVER.
- After that, I just free handed the red stitching using card stock. I had to used a couple pieces of cardstock for each side. Again- I did not want to wrestle with my Cricut or make this “perfect” stitching. I’m all about trying to simplify things since I spend way more time than I care to admit on the details and on my parties in general. FYI- This balloon design took WAY less time than a balloon garland!!! AND it was way easier to travel with! So happy how this turned out!
In styling the rest of the dessert table, I had to narrow down what I wanted to include. I went to Hobby Lobby and found some wooden baseball frames and thought of somehow creatively listing the dessert items on there. After purchasing, I was thinking I really wanted to include the old “Take me out to the baseball” song, so here is what I designed as a printable and framed it to display on the dessert table:
Although I wanted to include all the ball game staples, I wanted to do it creatively, so I made cookies shaped like hot dogs and displayed them in deli paper and served popcorn in cute boxes I also found at Hobby Lobby.
I had those mini brown sacks leftover from Ethan’s dinosaur party, and used my Cricut to make a stencil of the “PEANUTS” lettering and painted it on. We included this on the side of “Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks”……….. with these treats, I don’t care if I never get back! lol
For the dessert displays, I wanted to keep it rustic and vintage. I already had all my wooden boxes, and galvanized cake stands from past parties. I did make a purchase for that vintage crate to display the popcorn in. That was a Michaels find, and I just had to have it!
Here is a closer look at the individual desserts which included cake pops, decorated cookies, chocolate covered oreos and all the usual ball game suspects:
The cake design was from a picture my friend provided me, so I don’t know who came up with the original design, but I did change some things to make it my own and added the number 3 fondant topper. I like how it popped against the baseball balloon back drop:
We also ordered a personalized mini bat and ball to commemorate Lucas’s third birthday. Something he can keep forever to remember this special day.
Lucas loved it! I mean look at that face!
He’s winning, and it’s not a shame! Root Root!