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hi guys welcome back to my channel and to another video today i'm going to be sharing with you the at-home party prep that we did for my son jackson's birthday he recently turned four years old so we had a little party for him at home and we don't normally do parties like this at home for their birthdays i tend to hire out a space at a soft play and invite friends and family to that but because we couldn't do that this year due to the pandemic i just thought if we're gonna have a home party with a very few friends then i wanted to make it as special as i possibly could so i'm gonna show you everything that we did today um everything has been diy'd as well so we made the cakes ourselves we filled up the pinata i'm gonna show you the party bags that we did the decor and also we diyed an amazing balloon arch i'm so pleased with how it turned out so i'll just talk you through everything that we did so the party took place on a saturday so a lot of the prep we did the friday night before once jackson was asleep in bed and then i did also do some prep on the saturday morning because the party wasn't until the afternoon so yes i hope you really enjoy this video i know it's a slightly different one for me but hopefully you'll give you some ideas and inspiration if you are also having an at-home party and i must also stress that this party happened before the rule of six came in in the uk um we actually had this planned for the saturday and then the rule of six started on the monday after um so we're pleased that we managed to get in at this little party for him um caleb's birthday is actually in about six weeks time so i'm really hoping things will change by then because there's a family of five we could invite like one person um but anyway with all that said let's get into the video so the night before the party we started prep on this balloon arch because we thought it would take the most time i actually found a kit on amazon for just 11 pounds 99 and it came with everything that we needed to make our own diy balloon arch so it came with 117 balloons and i went for a blue one because jackson really wanted a sonic birthday um and then it also came with like the tape that you need and the little glue dots it didn't come with the balloon pumps but we actually already had two balloon pumps at home so this is the string that you thread the balloons onto so as the boys and matt were pumping up the balloons i was threading the bottom of the balloons through this clear tape that has lots of holes in it so as you can see it was pretty simple to do you just pull that through and then it just stays on um so i was just like adding them as soon as they were blowing them up about three or four holes apart yes so it was pretty simple and effective it was time consuming because you do actually have to blow up the balloon so i would definitely start the night before but there were so many different colors of like arches you can get on amazon so if you want something like this you could definitely save money by doing it yourself now while matt keeps blowing up the balloons the boys and i are gonna fill up this pinata i found it on amazon it's just a big number four and i thought the kids would love this we've never had one before um but i promised the boys that we would fill it up together before they went up to bed so i literally just went to poundland to get some stuff to put inside it i try to not go too crazy on the hard sweets because i know sometimes i don't appreciate that or like moms don't appreciate that when you just fill up their kids with like sugary sugary sweets so i try to get a little bit of chocolate i tried to get some biscuits and then like some marshmallows and yeah we did try to limit the kids on the day when they did actually smash the pinata which i shall show you later on in this video um but yes we're just looking at all of the stuff that we got and then we're literally just gonna stick it into the pinata there is a little hole there um so yeah really simple to do this is gonna be the best [Music] how appropriate that we're also watching charlie and the chocolate factory on the tv while we were doing this and then that's all filled and i'm also adding the confetti that it came with next up i'm going to be doing a pasta parcel so as he's got a sonic birthday i saw this little stretch sonic in the shops and i thought that that would be perfect so i'm going to put sonic in to the middle layer and i'm actually going to wrap that one in red so that i know that that is the one that i want to land on jackson that is like the final big present and once that's all done i'm going to wrap it up again with a different colored gift wrapping paper and in between each layer i will be adding a little like minion chocolate which you can see on the right there so that every child that opens up a layer gets a chocolate so it's like a little gift for them and on the day they were absolutely thrilled to get that little chocolate inside their layer so i'm just adding that in wrapping it up again and then i'm basically gonna repeat that i think i did about eight layers in total so that every child would get a little treat um and i'm obviously changing the color each time so that we know um so yes this actually went down so well um especially at one point in the party the kids were getting really boisterous on the bouncy castle so it was a great way to calm them down to get them to all sit in a little circle and we played the music and then they could play past the parcel and they all loved it and it just really did like calm all the children down and i also wanted to show you how i did his party bags or goodie bags for when children were leaving so i picked these ones up in wilkinson's i just got dinosaur ones and unicorn ones and then i got most of the contents just from poundland i picked up some packs of cards some little bubbles some little recorders and then i've got those minion chocolates as well and some harrybo so yeah i'm just going to put names on each one there is quite a variety of ages um because obviously fraser is nine caleb's six and jackson is three and then their cousins of different ages so i did really want to get like the age-appropriate things in there and because it was such a small party it was easy enough to just write their names onto the bags and then i knew who was getting what so i did like packs of cards for the two older children each one got a hairy bow and a chocolate and they all got bubbles which they loved they all got a little recorder and a little like sticky man and then i'll show you later but we made cupcakes and then i also put a cupcake in each one as they left but yeah i think these are just really exciting and also a really good way to like calm the meltdowns at the end of the party when it's time to go and they don't want to go you can always say well you will get your party bag and then they're happy to go and now that that's done it is back to the balloon arch while i've been doing those things and matt has blown all of these balloons up so now i just need to thread them onto the string so i'm going to quickly do that and then that's all the prep i'm gonna do for tonight [Music] and now it's the next day i know i'm wearing the same jumper but it was clean so don't judge me but today we're gonna start out the day by making his birthday cake we're completely cheating i've just got two mixes like they're betty crocker devil's food chocolate cakes but i thought keep it really simple we've had some amazing cakes in the past for birthdays but this year just felt a bit different with having such a small party i thought we could just make a little cake and some cupcakes ourselves and the boys loved helping out with this and i did do my hack of making the like boxed cake mix taste a little bit better so we swapped out the water for milk and we used five eggs instead of three eggs yeah so we're mixing up each cake mix in a separate bowl and then we're gonna make one cake and then some cupcakes as well so i'm just gonna mix it up with my electric mixer and then stick that into the oven and then also tidy up the kitchen [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] and now back to the balloon arch that we started making last night so as you saw i put all of the big balloons onto the string that it came with so now i wanted to hang it kind of like around this door so with matt's help he put these little nails um into the wall we do have like the stick on um hooks but i was really scared that it was gonna pull the paint off so i thought that this would be better and it worked really well we just attached the little like clear string because it has holes in it we attached some of the holes to the little nails and then it also came with these little glue dots so there was a big long string of them i don't know if i should have been using it the whole time but i didn't feel like i needed it but once the balloon arch was actually up then i used the little glue dots to put smaller balloons um in like places there were a few silver balloons in this packet um and i thought that that was perfect because it's like sonic colors again so i was just sticking the glue dots onto the smaller balloons and then kind of looking at the arch and seeing where there were spaces that needed to be filled so i'm just gonna go around and do that until i'm happy with how it looks [Music] [Applause] foreign and now back to the cakes so while i was in the balloon arch the cakes actually finished cooking and then they were cooling um so now i decided to make my own icing for some reason i thought how hard can it be so i did a whole thing of butter and then i think it was like three cups of icing sugar i just got a recipe online added some vanilla extract and then we have this really bright blue food coloring so i'm just gonna mix it up i thought like sonic theme and honestly i've never made icing before i'm not much of a baker but i think it turned out okay um then i don't know why i stopped making the icing and now i'm doing the table maybe the cakes weren't completely cool enough but i'm just gonna put this little sonic tablecloth out um again i just ordered a pack of sonic decorations on amazon i feel like he chose the most awkward um theme to his party because it was really hard to find um sonic themed stuff but anyway back to the cake so now i'm going to ice the cupcakes and then the big cakes and i found these little like cupcake toppers um that were a sonic themed so i'm just going to stick them on top of each cupcake and then i'm just sticking it onto my little cake stand so that i can then cover the cupcakes um so that like they won't you know go stale or there won't be any flies or anything like that and then yeah i'm gonna tackle the bigger cake [Applause] [Music] hello [Music] oh [Music] hello and once the cake was all done i just finished setting up the table by putting some drinks and crisps out and nibbles but i didn't go too crazy because it was just a two-hour party i also put the party bags by the front door and then this was the final setup of like the table area so i'm so pleased with how the balloons look and we also hired this perspex 4 for his actual birthday and she let me keep it until the party i also put out a little sonic banner outside and we actually hired this bouncy castle for the day i think it was 75 pounds to hire for the day and it really did make it i felt like it gave the kids something to do and focus on and they really loved it they also enjoyed the past the parcel and the pinata as well fraser was the one who actually smashed it open in the end um but yeah overall it was a great day and jackson had such a good time he keeps talking about how much he loved his birthday party and when is it his birthday again um but yeah this is some footage i took once they smashed the pinata open but anyway thank you so much for watching i hope you really enjoyed this video and i'll see you in my next one bye guys