Water Lagoon Party -2yr- Water Park

Rivitt’s Water Lagoon Birthday (2yr old) For my daughter’s 2nd birthday, I started buying & planning as soon as her 1st birthday ended. I knew immediately what theme to go with when I saw all the end of summer sales an at home water park theme. So I made sure to visit our local water park for research. It was hard work, but someone had to do it.

INVITATIONS: I didn’t want to have ‘traditional’ invitations to send out to all her invited guests. I looked online on Facebook  & found someone to design a water park ticket invitation with her picture. It came out FANTASTIC & very ‘real’ looking. (I actually had a few people asking if they were going to need to bring their ‘ticket’ with them for entry.) To have the design created, it only cost me $12 plus an additional $2~$3 to print the amount I needed at our local Walmart’s Photo Center. Very affordable. *Note* On the back of each invitation, I put a label listing my daughter’s birthday registry places that I thought would be helpful for everyone or at least give an idea of what she liked or would like.

WATER PARK LAYOUT: Fortunately for me, I have great front yard space to accommodate the water park theme at home. On one side of my home, we had put up our 18’ x 48 above ground pool as soon as summer came into season. I knew this would be great for the adults & older children. On the opposite side of my home, I had set up the toddler section. (I wanted to keep the smaller children away from being tempted to try to get into the bigger pool.)

For the toddler section, I had set up a baby pool filled w/ water balloons, a butterfly sandbox filled w/ water as a substitute baby pool ($20 bought off of Facebook), a borrowed inflatable medium-size pool, a Little Tikes slide ($10  bought off of Facebook), a Little Tikes mini jungle gym climb & slide ($20 - flea market), her toddler table & chairs ($8 - Goodwill), her baby bath chair that I kept to use as a beach lounge chair & her 3 toddler-sized lawn chairs ($5 each Walmart). At the corners of both sides of my front yard I placed tables & chairs for the guests to eat at. (A family friend loaned me the tables & chairs as a favor.)

For a little shade, I placed beach umbrellas next to the tables (both borrowed); & as a final touch I lined ice chests along my side walk way. After setting up everything, it looked SO cute & VERY much like a water park! J *Note* I took my time throughout the year to buy everything so that way the expense wouldn’t hurt my pocket. Also, I made sure to put on the invitation for guests to bring their own lawn chairs for sitting just in case. 

DECORATIONS: My front porch & a set of bedroom windows were where the bulk of the decorations were placed. I covered the bedroom windows next my front porch w/ table covers made into a curtain of streamers. Under the windows, I placed my yard table covered w/ a table cover to be used as a gift table. Between the gift table & porch, I put my little one’s wagon filled w/ the party favors. At the front of my porch, I placed a table covered w/ a table cover & colorful flag banner for the birthday cupcakes & cookies. I put my 2 cupcake towers at each end of the table. (I bought these the year before & they’ve been a great investment since.) In between the 2 towers I placed frog plates w/ cookies. (I found the plates during Easter for a $0.25 each on clearance.) On the porch, I placed 2 tables in an L layout for the food & covered each w/ a table cover.

As a backdrop for 1 of the tables, I covered part of the wall w/ a white table cover & put a few colorful balloons on the cover as well as frog stickers as accents. (Very last minute idea that ended up looking really cute.) On the roof top of the porch, I put my little one’s personalized birthday banner that I bought the year before. It’s felt & you can switch the year every year. To help the guests find their way to my residence, I had initially made 3 posters to look like water park signs that gave the guests directions. I decorated them with the theme of the water park & put on the bottom of each sign a direction.

For example, 1 sign had 4 Blocks w/c I had put on the corner of a main street, another had. This Way that I put mid-way & 1 that said You Are Here w/c was right in front my home. (I’m sure by this point it was obvious of the party location, but I thought it would still be cute to have sign just in case. Unfortunately, w/ so much going on, I didn’t get a chance to put them out. (However, I do plan on framing the You Are Here sign as a memorabilia for my little one.) On my front porch, I put more balloons and streamers as well as put foams mats on the floor that my little one already had. Since I only wanted 1 entrance used for the guest restroom in my home, I put signs on all doors that said Employees Only. (It was a polite way of keeping people out of certain rooms & everyone had a good laugh seeing the signs. J) *Note* I bought all the decorations at a Dollar Tree & HEB except for the birthday banner. Very cheap!

FOOD: I served hotdogs w/ chips & mixed fruit.

CAKE: Instead of a traditional birthday cake, I opted for cupcakes & a smash cake for the birthday girl. For drinks, I made sure to have plenty of water & punches in the ice chests.

PARTY FAVORS: Since I immediately knew the theme I thought would be great for my little, I had bought ¾ of everything the year before on clearance w/c was AWESOME & helped TREMONDOUSLY. I had tote bags ($1 ea @ Dollar Tree) decorated w/ a painted frog & gift tag that I made using Avery’s Business Cards for each child. Each tote bag had personalized bubbles ($0.75 on clearance for a pkg of 8 @ Walgreens), a pair of sunglasses ($1.97 for a pkg of 6 @ Walmart), travel size sun block ($0.99 ea @ Walmart), a swim noodle ($0.50 ea on clearance @ Walgreens), squirt water bottle that I decorated w/ a frog sticker ($0.50 ea on clearance @ Dollar General & $1 for a pkg of stickers @ Dollar Tree) & a couple of snacks: 1 lemon pie, 1 pkg of mini donuts & a personalized mini soda bottle ($3 on clearance for each bag of 20 pies & 20 pkgs of mini donuts @ a local thrift bakery & $0.25 ea @ HEB, respectively).

Side Bar: I did the math on the cost per complete party favor & I spent less than $4 per party favor. How awesome was that? All in all, my year of planning might have been a bit extensive, but it definitely paid off in the end. There was a lot that I still wanted to do, but didn’t get to but that’s why there’s always next year. Also, I stayed well within my budget that I had set for myself & everyone had a blast! 

PS: To make sure I didn’t miss anything, I had a photographer friend be my ‘official’ water park photographer. She took pictures of everything & it made it a lot easier to know that I didn’t have to worry about taking pictures myself.